Judge accepts Harpham plea in MLK bomb case

A federal judge has accepted the guilty plea of Kevin W. Harpham for leaving a bomb along the planned route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Unity March last January in downtown Spokane. In accepting the plea, U.S. District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush will now determine at Nov. 30 sentencing how much time the 37-year-old Colville area resident will serve in prison. He faces a range of about 27 to 32 years. Harpham pleaded guilty in September to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to injure people in a hate crime. Two other charges - possessing a “destructive device” illegally and using one in a crime of violence - are to be dismissed. If the case had proceeded to trial and a jury convicted Harpham, he would have faced life in prison. “Such a sentence would be considered by any court in view of the egregious nature of the actions of (Harpham), actions which could have led to death and massive injuries to a large number of innocent persons and actions with no rational reason — actions that shock the conscience of the court,” Quackenbush wrote in his opinion. At the time of the plea, U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby said Harpham acted alone. “There is no indication of a conspiracy,” he said then. Harpham’s case was reviewed at the Justice Department’s highest levels. The hate-crime charge was pressed by Chris Lomax, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of the department’s Civil Rights Division. Ormsby said he considered it especially important for Harpham to admit the hate crime. Harpham told authorities that he personally built the mortar-like weapon that temporary workers for the Public Facilities District found Jan. 17 in an unattended backpack at the northeast corner Main Avenue and Washington Street. “It was a period of time, a month,” Harpham said when asked how long it took him to build the weapon. He left it along the route of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Unity March, which drew an estimated 2,000 people. Officials don’t know why it wasn’t detonated, but it was armed and capable. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Harrington said in September that the device consisted of a 6-inch-long, 3-inch-diameter steel pipe welded to a steel plate. It was packed with 128 lead fishing-line weights that had been coated with rat poison. A plastic bag containing about 100 grams of black powder would have sprayed the projectiles at anyone within range. “It was a very significant load,” powerful enough to damage buildings 40 feet away, Ormsby said in an informal press conference. Harrington told the court a model rocket igniter, controlled by a remote car-starter radio receiver, would have touched off the gunpowder. A key-fob transmitter for the device was found at Harpham’s Stevens County home. Genetic material on the backpack was matched to Harpham, and video cameras recorded him at the parade. In addition, federal agents found several dozen pictures of the parade on Harpham’s camera, including some he took of himself. “He ultimately walked in the parade,” Ormsby said. A number of small discoveries led to Harpham’s arrest, Ormsby said. Harrington said investigators found quarter-ounce fishing weights at the Colville Wal-Mart store that were similar to those in the homemade weapon. Then they learned the Colville store sold an unusually large number of the sinkers during a one-week period in November. Cash register records showed 130 sinkers, among other items, were purchased on Nov. 1, 3 and 7. The first two purchases were in cash, but the third was with Harpham’s bank debit card. Harpham made all three purchases, according to his plea agreement. Investigators also found that Harpham purchased the remote car starter from an online store in October, and that he posted racist comments on a white-supremacist website. Ormsby said sealed court files, which he expects to be opened after Harpham is sentenced, will reveal additional evidence. Quackenbush said in his opinion that those case files should be opened soon. He set a deadline of Nov. 16 for attorneys to make objections to the release of the files.