Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Woman sentenced in drug case

A prostitute who hooked up one of her Spokane customers with her cocaine supplier has been sentenced to nearly as much prison time as the supplier.

Dona Reyes Heit, 37, was recently sentenced to two years – just four months less than drug supplier Larry Howard Booth, 31, of Pasco, got last year in a U.S. District Court plea bargain.

Booth was given credit for testimony that helped convict Heit when she went to trial in August 2006.

“She didn’t have anyone to testify against,” said Doug Phelps, the Spokane attorney who represented Heit when U.S. District Judge Edward Shea sentenced her Aug. 24 in Richland.

Big fish often eat little fish in federal plea bargains, Phelps said.

“You’ve got the big guys a lot of times rolling on the little guy and, when you represent the little guy, sometimes he doesn’t have as much to give as the big guys,” Phelps said. “So the system kind of works in favor of the guy who is sometimes more involved in the crime.”

The Spokane Drug Enforcement Administration informer who answered one of Heit’s Internet advertisements for “erotic services” and built the drug case against her in August 2005 was David Randolph Palmer. He had such a troubling history of rape arrests and allegations that the Spokane County prosecutor’s office had refused to work with him since 1997.

Court documents Phelps filed in connection with Heit’s sentencing indicate she had a sexual relationship with a computer technician in the U.S. defender’s office and that Phelps was hired in part by another Spokane attorney, Mark Hanley, who befriended Heit and hired her to work in his office. Heit’s ex-husband and Hanley paid Phelps’ bill.

Heit contended last month that she should have a new trial on grounds the U.S. defender’s office didn’t represent her effectively when it failed to obtain e-mails in which she said Palmer threatened her. She suggested the reason was that the computer technician who had sex with her didn’t want his own e-mails to be revealed.

Efforts to reach the technician for comment were unsuccessful.

“The (Palmer) e-mails appeared to me to give Dona the best defense of entrapment I had seen in 30 years as a criminal defense lawyer,” Hanley said in an affidavit.

Phelps’ investigator, Ted Pulver, said the computer technician admitted having sex with Heit before she became a federal defender client on Aug. 31, 2005 – the day after her arrest. Pulver also said in an affidavit that the computer technician acknowledged contacting Heit at Hanley’s office to ask her not to tell anyone about their relationship.

However, Phelps said Pulver’s investigation found the computer technician didn’t work on Heit’s case.

Federal Defender Roger Peven said the technician resigned in December 2005, before the office began preparing for Heit’s trial. The technician “had no role to play in the defense of that case in any regard,” Peven said.

He declined to comment on why no e-mails were offered in Heit’s defense.

Heit withdrew her motion for a new trial and reserved her complaint against the federal defender’s office for a possible appeal.

Palmer was 55 when he died of end-stage kidney disease and heart and circulatory problems last September at Deaconess Medical Center. His death came just a week after a jury convicted Heit of possessing more than 500 grams of cocaine with intent to deliver and of conspiring to distribute more than 500 grams of the drug.

Heit claimed she had never before arranged a drug transaction, and her only previous conviction was for topless dancing within six feet of a patron.

Assistant Federal Defender Kimberly Deater argued unsuccessfully at trial that it was “outrageous government conduct” for the DEA to employ a convicted kidnapper with a history of targeting women.

Palmer abducted a woman at knifepoint outside a Reno, Nev., bar in November 1973 and allegedly beat, robbed and raped her. He was charged with robbery, kidnapping and infamous crime against nature, and he pleaded guilty to second-degree kidnapping.

After Palmer became a Drug Enforcement Administration informer, three women accused him of raping them. He was arrested twice on suspicion of rape but wasn’t charged.