Man Sentenced For Montana Standoff Involving 17-year-old Boy

A 36-year-old man arrested after a six-hour standoff at a Montana hotel where police say he barricaded himself in a bathroom with a 17-year-old boy from Twin Falls County has pleaded guilty to Kidnapping. Mulligan was arrested in December 2010 after Kalispell Police Department SWAT officers stormed the Super 8 Motel where Mulligan had barricaded himself with a 17-year-old boy.  Police say Mulligan and the boy were traveling in a vehicle that was stolen from the boy's grandmother in Filer. Officers spotted the vehicle at the Super 8 Motel in Kalispell last new years eve. Through the deal, Mulligan faces 10 years in Montana State Prison, although if sentenced to the full 10 years he would be eligible for parole within 2 1/2 years. With the one year he will have spent in jail by the time he is sentenced, that would leave just 1 1/2 years until he became eligible. Mulligan has been held in the Flathead County Detention Center for 10 months, all of which has been spent in solitary confinement. In exchange for Mulligan taking the plea agreement, a charge of criminal endangerment was dropped. Additionally, prosecutors in Twin Falls County  and federal attorneys in Boise agreed not to pursue their own charges against Mulligan. The lack of any future charges was significant to Mulligan, who has in the past openly worried in letters that if he were to be incarcerated in a federal jail he would be tortured and killed. Those comments led to a psychological evaluation, which determined he was competent. Mulligan would have faced significantly more jail time in the Idaho case.