John Craig

An Okanogan County couple are entitled to keep $507,070 in drug money they found along a roadside, a judge has ruled. But Dan and Jane Gerth may not get the money – which they turned over to the Okanogan County Sheriff's Office – for two or three years while the county appeals this week's ruling by visiting Chelan County Superior Court Judge T.W. "Chip" Small. The sheriff's office had asked Small to give it the cash instead.

A persistent Spokane stalker who threatened to kidnap and kill a woman's children because she wouldn't date him was convicted Monday of two felonies. Thomas Melvin Crook, 42, has so many criminal convictions that the only standard prison term he can get when he is sentenced Feb. 3 for felony stalking is the five-year statutory maximum.

No one had much to say Friday when murderer Bryan M. "Squirrel" James got a maximum 67-year prison sentence on top of the 64 1/4-year term he already had. James, 25, said nothing when Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke III sentenced him for murdering a man, who defended a woman from James' uncle in November 2004.

Testimony began Wednesday in the nonjury trial of a prolific Spokane felon charged with stalking and threatening a woman who spurned his romantic overtures. Thomas Melvin Crook, 42, is charged with stalking and two counts of felony harassment for what witnesses said were dozens of malicious phone calls, including death threats, last June to Terra Florian, her ex-husband, Steven Florian, her boyfriend at the time, Claudio Mastel, and the packing company where she worked.

An Adams County jury Tuesday convicted a 43-year-old felon of trying to kill two sheriff's deputies, one of whom was shot. The jury deliberated about a day before finding Florentino S. Barajas guilty as charged of two counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Unless 25-year-old Brian M. "Squirrel" James has a lifespan of biblical proportions, he's never going to get out of prison. A jury convicted James on Thursday of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, second-degree assault, first-degree burglary, first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and enough weapon "enhancements" to put his sentence in the neighborhood of 60 years.

A Spokane Valley attorney's former girlfriend and longtime legal assistant was convicted Wednesday of paying a "hitman" $1,000 to kill him. Fortunately for attorney Peter Dahlin, the assassin was an undercover sheriff's detective, Leroy Fairbanks.

A Spokane County jury saw a videotape Monday of an estranged girlfriend hiring a "hitman" to kill Spokane Valley attorney Peter Dahlin as though she were negotiating with a termite exterminator. Jackie R. Burton, 37, didn't know that the hitman really was sheriff's Detective Leroy Fairbanks when she gave him a $500 down payment Jan. 12 on a painful death for her former boyfriend and longtime employer, Dahlin.

Two 19-year-old men who helped snatch a $1,200 purse got below-standard sentences Thursday to compensate for what a judge said was "some real unfairness" caused by "the right hand not knowing what the left was doing." Daniel M. Morita and Brandan J. Nye, both 18 when the crime was committed last December, were charged with first-degree robbery. A jury convicted them on Aug. 24, and they faced standard-range sentences of 2 1/2 to nearly 3 1/2 years in prison.

A Spokane man who kidnapped his daughter and hid her in Mexico for three weeks in March was sentenced Wednesday to a maximum-standard prison term of 52/3 years. Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins also ordered 32-year-old Shawn C. Rainey, 32, to have no contact with his 4-year-old daughter or his ex-wife for the rest of his life.

A 64-year-old former Grand Coulee, Wash., school bus driver convicted of having sex with a student had his conviction permanently overturned Tuesday. The Washington Court of Appeals in Spokane said the only evidence that Dennis A. Clinkenbeard had intercourse with the student was improperly presented to an Okanogan County Superior Court jury in May 2004.

Maurice J. Plank III cut his losses Monday, but not before he had turned a five-year prison sentence into nine years. Plank, 36, was doing well in August when Deputy Prosecutor Shane Smith dismissed a charge that Plank helped cover up a murder by moving a car. Then Plank rejected Deputy Prosecutor David Stevens' offer to settle four pending drug cases with a plea bargain calling for a five-year sentence.

A Spokane teenager who shot a rival gang member to death in April and tried to kill another one was sentenced Monday to 41 years in prison. Dustin Allen Davis, who turned 19 last Tuesday, shot 17-year-old Frank Joseph Silva in an alley behind 2410 W. Boone Ave. After putting a .38-caliber bullet into Silva's forehead at close range, Davis tried to kill Silva's 16-year-old nephew, Brandon Silva.

A 19-year-old man was sent to prison for 1 1/2 years Thursday for instigating a gang assault against another man who complained about his drunken driving and for causing a hit-and-run crash while fleeing the assault scene. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Robert Austin gave West Plains resident Vasiliy A. Ustimenko consecutive nine-month sentences on his second-degree assault and hit-and-run felony convictions in the July 2004 incidents.

Spokane pimp Robert T. "Shorty" Spencer was sentenced Thursday to 44 3/4 years in prison for murdering a man who protected a prostitute Spencer kidnapped, assaulted and coerced. The sentence was the most Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke III could give for the murder last November of James Alan Johnston and crimes that led up to the killing.

The first-degree assault trial of a Fairchild Air Force Base airman accused of shooting his girlfriend's ex-husband was cut short Wednesday when he pleaded guilty to aiming or discharging a firearm illegally. Senior Airman Omar Cedrik Jones, 24, contended he acted in self-defense when he shot Martez Williams in the elbow in September at the Graymayre Crossing apartments at 636 E. Magnesium Road.

Barely 23, Tucero Antonio Knippling will never be a free man again. He struck out Tuesday. A jury handed the young Spokane felon his third strike under a state law that allows no fourth chances for people who commit serious, violent crimes.

A Spokane double-murderer pleaded guilty Monday to helping in a third murder while he was in jail for the first two. Brandon West Martin, 21, pleaded guilty to first-degree rendering criminal assistance in the October 2004 killing of 21-year-old Christopher Lee Rentz while they were cellmates in the Spokane County Jail.

A judge has overturned a jury's decision two months ago that Whitworth College did nothing wrong when it fired a tenured chemistry professor for failure to get along with his colleagues. Superior Court Judge Robert Austin said this week that former chemistry department Chairman Dr. Tony Mega, 44, is entitled to 13 months' wages and a new trial on several questions.

A Spokane County jury ruled Wednesday that James M. White meets only three of four requirements for locking him up as a sexually violent predator. So White was set free.