John Craig

A Millwood-area resident says he became a victim of identity theft because of his bank's carelessness. Donald S. Campbell sued Bank of America this week for unspecified damages, claiming employees of the bank's Millwood branch negligently stored his and other customers' personal records in a Dumpster outside the building.

Felons whose above-standard sentences survive final appeals aren't covered by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last June that partially overturned Washington's sentencing guideline law, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The ruling preserves extra-long sentences for perpetrators of some of northeast Washington's most grisly crimes, including Stanley Leonard Pietrzak, who told dinner guests he was serving them stew made with human flesh after he murdered a Spokane woman and burned her remains in a furnace.

A 15-year-old Lewis and Clark High School student pleaded guilty Thursday to shooting two classmates with a slingshot and metal ball bearings that knocked out several of one victim's teeth. Time Richard Meippen pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree assault and was sentenced to 40 days of detention, with credit for 35 already served. Spokane County Juvenile Court Judge Ellen Kalama Clark also sentenced Meippen to 70 hours of community service and a year of probation.

Robert Doney Jr.'s scheduled sentencing today for spitefully murdering his girlfriend's baby has been postponed because he wants to take back his guilty plea. Doney, 29, claims in court documents filed by his court-appointed attorney, Tim Trageser, that his March 16 admission of first-degree murder was invalid because his legal strategy was built on shifting sand. Doney says he wouldn't have pleaded guilty if he could have foreseen a subsequent state Supreme Court decision.

Grief counseling will be more accessible under the state Crime Victims Compensation Fund because of a recent state Supreme Court decision in a Spokane case. Hospitalization for indigent victims will not. Administrators of the relatively small program say a court order increasing access to counseling will have much less effect than an ongoing crisis in hospitalization costs.

A 23-year-old Spokane man pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempted first-degree assault and first-degree robbery in a Feb. 20 incident in which he had been charged with first-degree attempted murder and a half-dozen other crimes. Shawn Jeffery Nason was one of four people who allegedly attempted to kill crack cocaine dealer William Weller Bedford in the course of a drug robbery at Bedford's apartment at 6901 N. Wiscomb.

Jeremy A. Arnold got another maximum sentence Wednesday to remind him it's a good idea to come back when a judge gives him a furlough from jail. But he also caught a break: His new sentence was folded into others that total about 14½ years.

A trial court properly dismissed a lawsuit blaming Stevens County and the state Department of Corrections for a murder committed by a teenage felon while on probation, the state Court of Appeals in Spokane says in a decision released Thursday. The lawsuit was filed by the estate of 17-year-old Newport, Wash., resident Matthew Davis, who was murdered in July 1999 by three Stevens County youths he met at a community festival in Chewelah, Wash.

A 51-year-old child molester practically convicted himself Wednesday of systematically abusing a girl throughout much of her life, from age 11 to 18. Robert Alvin Sexsmith didn't take the witness stand, but jurors in his Spokane County Superior Court trial heard Sexsmith discuss the crimes in a secretly recorded conversation with his victim.

A 15-year-old boy accused of attempting to murder a Ferris High School teacher will go on trial this afternoon in Spokane County Juvenile Court. Judge Ellen Kalama Clark refused Thursday to dismiss a charge of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm. Defense attorney Ronnie Rae argued that Jacob D. Carr didn't do enough for any reasonable person to convict him.

A newly convicted felon's extra week of freedom is proving costly. Before that week, Jeremy A. Arnold, 28, negotiated a plea bargain that was to settle four cases with a recommendation for an eight-year sentence. The deal also called for a one-week furlough after Arnold pleaded guilty to reduced charges, but warned that failure to return as promised would result in efforts to increase his sentence.

A deputy prosecutor was knocked down Thursday morning when she tried to break up a fistfight in the Spokane County Courthouse. Deputy Prosecutor Kim Concannon was punched on both sides of the jaw by one or more partisans in a gang-related murder case. Colleagues said Concannon, who was taken to a hospital, had recently undergone treatment for a bad back.

A state trooper's car-mounted video recorder may have contributed to a Spokane County jury's refusal Thursday to convict a reckless driver of deliberately attempting to run over another trooper. The jury found Steven Allen Buck, 32, guilty of reckless driving in a drunken-driving stop that occurred early in the morning of Nov. 13, but acquitted him of second-degree assault.

This month's furlough of a violent felon with a long criminal history and brand-new convictions was a violation of policy, Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker said Tuesday. Tucker said his policy on furloughs is simple: to oppose them. Period.

A Spokane man was sentenced Monday in a violent home-invasion robbery in a case that gained attention last week when a co-defendant absconded from a court-granted furlough to get married. Eric James Vincent Singleton, 24, was sentenced to a minimum-standard three years in prison under a plea bargain that reduced eight counts of first-degree robbery to one.

Acting as his own attorney, Bryan Montez James told a jury last week that he had no alibi for charges that he attempted to murder two men. Then he invited jurors to "get at it." "Whatever decision you-all do, I'm still going to hold my head up high regardless," said the 24-year-old defendant, whose nickname is Squirrel.

A 15-year-old former Ferris High School student admitted Friday that he made death threats in connection with an alleged murder attempt at the school, but he will have a chance to clear his record. Robert S. Weathermon threatened a boy who said Weathermon's friend Jacob D. Carr deserved harsh punishment for allegedly attempting to kill English teacher Michelle Klein-Coles.

Another suspect pleaded guilty Thursday in a violent home-invasion robbery last October that recaptured the public spotlight this week when one of robbers absconded from a furlough. Justice Alan Erickson, 22, pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree burglary and conspiracy to commit first-degree burglary while police continued to search for one of his accomplices, Jeremy Arnold.

Despite pleas from his mother and new wife and promises to reform, a prolific Spokane County burglar failed Wednesday to convince a judge he deserves another chance. Even defense attorney Tracy Collins acknowledged that Christopher John Cannata, 32, had "about run himself out of rope" by the time he stood before Superior Court Judge Maryann Moreno to be sentenced for residential burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm. But Collins blamed Cannata's record of 19 criminal convictions on an untreated drug problem.

A Ferry County man was improperly charged with coercion for allegedly using a gun to try to keep rafters from using the Kettle River, a judge ruled Monday. "The judge felt that I had no business filing a coercion charge without first determining that the Kettle River was state property," Ferry County Prosecutor James von Sauer said. "She felt that my office was using this criminal proceeding not for criminal purposes, but to resolve a complicated civil matter."