John Craig

A Colville-area man pleaded guilty Monday to raping a Colville woman in a downtown Spokane alley on June 17. Michael Leroy Wright, 29, faces a standard minimum of 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 years in prison when Spokane County Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly sentences him Nov. 18. Under state law for serious sex crimes, a state parole board may keep Wright in prison for the rest of his life if the board finds him too dangerous to release after he serves whatever minimum sentence Rielly imposes.

A woman who tearfully insisted she was simply "at the wrong place at the wrong time" reluctantly pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree burglary for being in a room where a man was murdered and to second-degree assault for being in another room where a woman was attacked with a knife. Abigail M. Meckle, 21, insisted she didn't commit the crimes, but admitted she could have been convicted of that and more if she had gone to trial. She had been charged with a dozen crimes, including first-degree murder. Her attorney, Terry Ryan, noted she could have been sentenced to 66 years in prison if convicted as charged.

Maurice J. Plank III had some luck in August when he escaped a charge that he helped cover up a murder, but not this week. Plank, 36, was arrested on drug warrants when a June 13 homicide in the Shadle Wal-Mart parking lot led police to him and other associates of first-degree murder suspect Clifford Mark Meyers.

A Spokane felon, caught with child pornography during a drug arrest, pleaded guilty Wednesday in a plea bargain that will require him to register as a sex offender and be on probation for four years. Jack Kenneth Gannon II, 44, pleaded to more charges than he originally faced, but the sentence he receives on Nov. 9 may be served at the same time as a three-year sentence he recently received on a drug conviction. He also avoided the possibility that Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald would file additional child pornography charges.

A 19-year-old West Plains man was convicted Wednesday of causing, and fleeing from, an accident that totaled a woman's car minutes after he beat up a pedestrian whom he nearly ran over. Vasiliy A. Ustimenko faces 12 to 14 months in prison when Superior Court Judge Robert Austin sentences him Oct. 28 for second-degree assault, reckless driving, failing to remain at the scene of an accident and drunken driving.

Real-life trial lawyers don't get a lot of Perry Mason moments, but Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Debra Hayes had one Tuesday. David Elliath Sukin, 48, claimed he couldn't have severely beaten his wife on May 7 because he was staying with a friend, Spokane resident Ray Edward O'Donnell. That was true, O'Donnell testified.

Assault victim Natasha Gardner told police she knew Cinnamon Johnson had been married to Jello Johnson. But she didn't know Cinnamon Johnson was now married to her friend Larry "Tiny" Gatewood when Cinnamon came calling last December. Cinnamon Johnson didn't want to be married to Gatewood, though. Authorities say she wanted to serve divorce papers on Gatewood when she went to Gardner's home on East Nora, where she thought she would find Gatewood.

A Spokane man suspected of pouring semen into women's hair at the NorthTown and Spokane Valley malls became a fugitive Monday when he failed to appear for a pretrial hearing in Spokane County District Court. Judge Gregory Tripp ordered an arrest warrant for 31-year-old Roderick Glenn Thomas, who is facing three counts of fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation.

A former South Hill day care operator who nearly killed a 23-month-old toddler accepted a plea bargain Monday that will send her to prison for five years. Danette R. Zaring, 37, pleaded guilty to second-degree child assault and first-degree criminal mistreatment for throwing Hailee Rhoads into a playpen, fracturing the child's skull and causing a nearly fatal swelling of her brain.

A former corrections officer will be on the other side of prison bars for the next three years. Richard Leon Welty, 36, was sentenced Friday to 34 months in prison for having sex with a teenage girl over a two-year period, starting when she was 13.

A jury declared itself deadlocked Thursday on whether to convict the former chief operating officer of the Lilac Lanes/Classic Rock Casino of stealing $19,706 from the business. The jury had deliberated about a day when Spokane County Superior Court Judge Greg Sypolt declared a mistrial. Deputy Prosecutor Bob Sargent may bring 51-year-old Robert James Ramelow to trial again, but no date was set.

A Coeur d'Alene man who put the barrel of a pistol in his girlfriend's mouth and shot up her Deer Park home last October has been sentenced to four years in prison. Raymond A. Jensen, 28, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of second-degree assault and one count of first-degree malicious mischief. He faced a standard range of 49 to 53 months, and Spokane County Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins gave him 49.

An Idaho truck driver has been sentenced to five days in jail, starting Wednesday, for causing a three-vehicle crash near Bozeman, Mont., that killed a Spokane couple's unborn child. Brian Stanley Sala, 50, pleaded guilty Monday in Gallatin County Justice Court to negligent endangerment in exchange for dismissal of a marijuana-possession charge.

A 14-year-old Spokane Valley boy was sent to juvenile detention Friday for immediately violating conditions of his release while awaiting arraignment on two counts of first-degree child molestation. Juvenile Court Judge Ellen Kalama Clark released the boy Wednesday on condition that his parents keep an eye on him continuously and that he have no potential contact with the 4- and 7-year-old neighbor boys he is accused of molesting. Clark rejected Deputy Prosecutor Bill Reeves' call for the boy to be monitored electronically if not locked up.

A Spokane County jury ruled Friday that Robert L. Doney Jr. was guilty of more than murder when he beat his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter to death last December because he was angry with the girlfriend. The verdict opens the door for Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque to give Doney as much as life in prison when he sentences the 30-year-old defendant in October. Otherwise, the 260-pound Doney could have gotten no more than 27 1/2 years for killing 30-pound Victoria Ramon.

Deputy Prosecutor Larry Steinmetz drew two lines Thursday on a sheet of butcher paper to show jurors how vulnerable 2-year-old Victoria Ramon was to the man who murdered her last December. Beside defendant Robert L. Doney Jr.'s line, 5 feet 10 inches from the floor, Steinmetz wrote Doney's weight: 260 pounds. Beside Ramon's line, exactly a yard from the floor, Steinmetz wrote "30 pounds."

A heated dispute Wednesday between convicted murderer Robert L. Doney Jr. and his court-appointed lawyer disrupted what was to have been the last day of an unusual second trial to determine whether Doney should get extra punishment. Doney, 30, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the middle of his first trial in March, admitting he deliberately murdered his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter, Victoria Ramon, on Dec. 26, 2003. That conviction stands, but Doney's new trial could open the door to above-standard punishment.

A Spokane Valley woman apparently will get a break after trying to run over an ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend at a time when the attacker claimed she was pregnant with the man's child. Nineteen-year-old Jessica L. Englehardt, who wasn't pregnant and managed only to run over the girlfriend's foot, recently accepted a Superior Court plea bargain that calls for her to be sentenced to 1 2/3 years of confinement next June.

A homicide trial in Colville Tribal Court has been rescheduled for Nov. 15-17 because of an improper discussion between a witness and a juror. A mistrial was declared Friday shortly after testimony was to begin in the case of Benjamin Joseph Campbell. Esther Payne, one of two tribal prosecutors, said attorneys questioned the juror and witness when they were seen talking, and found their accounts of the conversation didn't agree.

A 44-year-old Spokane County man was convicted Monday of four counts for taking a girl as his live-in sex partner when she was 14 and 15 years old. Gerald Lee Hooper Jr. faces a 10-year prison term when Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke III sentences him on Oct. 31.

The long arm of the law is getting longer thanks to new electronic monitoring devices that show where people under court control are going and what they're drinking. Global positioning satellite signals and cellular telephones allow authorities to track the precise locations of criminal defendants they monitor, even how fast they drive. GPS monitoring systems can set off alarms and send pager warnings if someone under a no-contact order enters a prohibited zone, for example, or leaves a confinement zone.

It's said that iron bars can't make a prison. But they come a lot closer than electronic monitoring. Just ask Spokane County Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins.

An unprecedented second trial got under way Friday in the first-degree murder case of a Spokane man who has already pleaded guilty. Robert L. Doney Jr., 30, pleaded guilty in the middle of his first trial in March, admitting he deliberately murdered his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter, Victoria Ramon, on Dec. 26, 2003. That conviction stands, but Doney's new trial could result in additional punishment.