March 11, 2010 in News

Link should stay in prison, panel says

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OLYMPIA – Convicted cop killer Lonnie Link does not warrant a lighter sentence for shooting Spokane police Officer Brian Orchard in 1983, even though he helped federal prosecutors bring down more than two dozen members of an outlaw motorcycle gang after he went to prison, a state board said Thursday.

The state Clemency and Pardons Board heard what members agreed was an extraordinary plea to commute Link’s sentence of life without parole and make him eligible for release.

The prosecutor who convicted him, former Spokane County Prosecutor Don Brockett and one of the detectives involved in the case joined Link’s former defense attorney Mark Vovos in arguing for clemency for Link.

“I believe the verdict was unjust,” Brockett said. “I’m here today because I think it’s the right thing to do.”

But the current prosecutor, Steve Tucker, joined Orchard’s family and the state’s law enforcement community in arguing against clemency. While it’s true Link later helped convict many members of the Ghost Riders by testifying in later trials in the late 1980s, that’s no reason to commute his sentence, Tucker said: “His reward was to be put under the federal witness protection program.”

The board recommended unanimously against clemency, although the final decision rests with Gov. Chris Gregoire.

If Gregoire meant what she said about the state not forgetting the sacrifices of slain officers and their families, she’ll reject it too, said Debbie Jacobs, Orchard’s daughter, who was 18 when he was killed.

Link was a 24-year-old convicted burglar in 1983 and an associate of the Ghost Riders when the gang’s president, Al Hegge, told him and another man, Donald Beach, to steal guns from a Wenatchee couple. They later arranged to sell the guns back in an extortion plot, and were supposed to collect the money at a downtown Spokane hotel. Link told detectives later that he had planned to double-cross Hegge, take the money and flee, cutting all ties with the gang.

But police were tipped to the extortion scheme, and were waiting for Link and Beach that night near the hotel. Link was waiting in a car while Beach went to the hotel room; Orchard and another plainclothes officer approached the car. Police and witnesses said the officers identified themselves and told Link to put his hands on the dashboard. Link said he thought Orchard, who had a shaggy beard, was either Hegge or another gang member, saw a flash and feared for his life. He shot and fatally wounded Orchard and escaped, but was later captured in Oregon.

Link refused to mention any connection between him and Hegge or the gang at trial. He later said Hegge threatened to kill him and his family. The jury convicted him, but deadlocked over the death penalty and he received life without parole.

After sentencing, he agreed to help a federal task force investigating the Ghost Riders, and his testimony was responsible for about 25 convictions, said former Detective Brent Pfundheller, who worked on those cases and has kept in contact with Link, who remains in prison but under the witness protection program.

“He killed Brian Orchard, he should pay the price for that,” Pfundheller said. But he should have been charged with first-degree murder, and even if sentenced to life in 1985, he’d likely be paroled by now. “I believe he’s truly remorseful. He’s changed.”

But Douglas Orchard, the late officer’s brother, said Link is a con man.

“There’s no reason on God’s earth to grant Link commutation,” Douglas Orchard said. “You cannot know how much this hurts. Mr. Link and his attorneys re-victimize us with his petitions.”

Brockett agreed that if he thought Link truly believed Orchard was a gang member, not a policeman, and was afraid for his life, Link would’ve been charged with first-degree murder even though he was committing a crime at the time of the shooting. Last year, a Spokane jury acquitted an off-duty police officer who shot an unarmed suspect, contending he thought the man was armed and threatening his life, Brockett noted, and if the self-defense argument applies to Officer Jay Olsen, it could apply to Link.

“If equal justice means anything, it has to apply to everyone,” he said.

But current and former police officers argued that Link got leniency when the jury didn’t sentence him to death. Releasing him would send the wrong message, particularly after the murders of six officers in Western Washington late last year.

“This is a violation of Brian Orchard’s memory… it victimizes his family and the people that put their lives on the line to be out on the street protecting us against the Lonnie Links and the Maurice Clemmons of this world,” said Douglas Orchard, referring to the man who shot and killed four police officers in Lakewood, Wash., in November.

Members of the clemency board said they were unswayed by the arguments supporting Link, and noted that similar requests from him had been rejected in 1992 and 1996.

Board member Amanda Lee said she couldn’t say she would never commute a life sentence given to someone who killed a police officer, under the right circumstances: “I don’t know what those facts are, but these aren’t those facts.”

Seven comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Anne_Observer on March 11 at 6:43 p.m.

  The state does NOT need to “send a message to criminals about the penalties for killing police officers”!!!! Stop trying to create a special category of citizen, especially out of law enforcement personnel. If the state needs to send a message, it is about killing PEOPLE, period. Being involved in law enforcement does not, and should not, have a damned thing to do with it.

  The moment you make rights or penalties different for a particular category of citizen, PARTICULARLY law enforcement personnel, you have just created a monster. Just don’t go there.

• 

  Marie on March 11 at 7:14 p.m.

  How can Don Brockett insult Brian Orchard’s memory by asking for leniency for his killer?

• 

  cowboy on March 11 at 7:40 p.m.

  Sad to say the time is already here when one class of people has more rights than any other and their dead are held as heroes while everyone else’s story is on page 5.

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  cowboy on March 11 at 7:44 p.m.

  It is hard for me to understand why he cannot go up for parole when he helped investigators. And recently we read where a foster parent that starved a little boy to death has only served 3 years is getting out. And 7 police officers that murdered an innocent man are still at their 100 grand year jobs with no repercussions at all. What gives?

• 

  CharlesBillford on March 11 at 9:58 p.m.

  Its a topsy turvy world. If convicted today he would get 20 years plus any agravating factors.

  It is time we cleaned up DOC by moving all the old convictions under the parole system to the new sentencing guidelines even if it means resentencincing them to lower sentences.

  27 years is what this 24 year old got. more than half his life behind bars. You really think another year or two is going to really make any difference?

  If he got out he would be 51 with no skills, no way to earn a living.. thats probably the biggest punishment.

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  D Statler on March 11 at 10:57 p.m.

  Heck, they gave my son 42 years for a crime he didn’t commit and nobody was hurt.The sentencing guidline commission is a joke.Right alongside the Spokane County Prosecutors office that manipulates the legal system.How the Prosecutors office can make the deals with these snitches amazes me.They gave Mathew Dunham(SNITCH) 18 months in a juvenile facility after admitting being at 5 violent armed robberies.These deals need to stop.The prosecutors office is way to corrupt to be this powerful.
  If the criminal did his sentence,let him go.He will either sink or swim.

• 

  Hope4Justice on March 13 at 3:36 p.m.

  The Washington State Pardons and Clemency Board ought to be ashamed. Prior to December 2009, it was clear that Lonnie Link might have his sentence commuted, which would make him eligible for parole. The original prosecutor, the lead investigating detective on the case, Link’s trial attorney and an additional decorated retired police detective ALL agree that Link did not receive a fair trial. The integrity of the justice system depends on all persons receiving the opportunity to a fair trial no matter what crime they are being charged with. This is a constitutional right, and it is part of being an American.

  The recent murders of six police officers in Washington State made clemency for Link unpopular. The board then participated in unabashed political theater. The hearing became not just about Brian Orchard’s tragic death and Lonnie Link’s life in prison (which is what it should have been about), but about Spokane County politics and the Governor’s political capital.

  May all police officers that have been killed on duty rest in peace. And may the justice system that they died for become more than what it was yesterday.