LAS VEGAS – A Nevada judge on Friday dismissed a drug trafficking charge against a Dances With Wolves actor, but upheld a broad indictment by a Las Vegas grand jury of 18 felonies related to sex abuse.
In her order, issued late Friday afternoon, Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny said prosecutors had presented enough evidence for “a reasonable grand jury to conclude that the sexual assaults against two minors occurred,” but noted states that “there was no substantial evidence” linking Nathan Chasing Horse to the psilocybin mushrooms that investigators found when searching his home.
Chasing Horse, 46, had asked Kierny dropping all charges and saying that his accusers wanted to have sex with him and that the mushrooms found in a refrigerator at his home were not his. One of his accusers was under 16 — the Nevada age of consent — when she says Chasing Horse began abusing her.
Public defender Kristy Holston said she did not comment on the judge’s decision.
Chasing Horse was indicted by a Las Vegas grand jury in February on charges of sexually assaulting a minor, kidnapping, child abuse, fornication and drug trafficking. He has been held in a county jail since January 31 arrested by SWAT officers near the home he shared with his five wives in north Las Vegas.
The allegations of sexual abuse date back to the early 2000s and span multiple US states, including Nevada, Montana and South Dakota, according to the indictment. Chasing Horse is also facing sexual abuse charges in Canada and the US District Court in Nevada and on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana.
Police and prosecutors say that in the decades since Chasing Horse’s portrayal of Smiles a Lot in Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning 1990 film, he had marketed himself to tribes across the country as a medicine man with healing powers who could communicate with higher beings. They accuse him of taking advantage of his position lead a cult known as The CircleGain access to vulnerable girls and women and take underage wives.
One of the victims was 14, authorities said, when Chasing Horse told her her ancestral spirits commanded him to have sex with her.
“Her mother is ill,” said Clark County Prosecutor Stacy Kollins, “and was told that her virginity was the only pure part of her and that she had to sacrifice that to preserve her mother’s health.”
a process The state case is scheduled to begin May 1. Chasing Horse has pleaded not guilty and has asserted his right to a trial within 60 days of his indictment.
He is due to be heard in court next week on another motion asking the judge to grant him three separate trials. Chasing Horse and its attorneys argued in the filing that the sexual assault allegations and the drug trafficking charges were unrelated.
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