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News >  Spokane

New charges added to rape suspect”s list

A former Eastern State Hospital nurse was charged Friday with bribing and coercing a hospital worker to tell an elaborate lie in his rape trial earlier this year. Guylin Michael Johnston, 43, was tried in February on charges of second-degree rape and taking indecent liberties with a hospital patient whose DNA was mixed with his in a wad of gum she had been chewing.
News >  Spokane

Court reporter celebrates 50 years of service

Ann Prideaux, the "dean" of Spokane County's Superior Court reporters, this week quietly observed her 50th year of taking down everything that's said in court as fast as people can say it. Prideaux, 70, retired in 2003 just long enough to start collecting her pension. Otherwise, she has no use for retirement.
News >  Spokane

Repeat sex offender, 43, found guilty of new crimes

A Spokane County jury took just an hour and a half Thursday to convict chronic sex offender Terry Milton Moncrief of new crimes that are expected to put him in prison permanently. The jury convicted Moncrief, 43, of third-degree child molestation, sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of photos of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, as charged.
News >  Spokane

”Squirrel” acts as own attorney

Bryan Montez James couldn't blame his lawyer Wednesday when a jury convicted him of two counts of attempted first-degree murder. And the drive-by shooting verdict couldn't have come as a surprise to the 24-year-old defendant, whose street name is "Squirrel."
News >  Spokane

Attempted murder suspect won”t be tried as an adult

A 15-year-old boy charged with attempted murder of a Ferris High School teacher will not be tried as an adult. Deputy Prosecutor Bill Reeves announced Tuesday in Spokane County Juvenile Court that he will not ask a judge to transfer Jacob D. Carr to adult court.
News >  Spokane

Judge to decide if it”s third strike

A jury couldn't decide all the charges against murder suspect Devenniyon Marquise Courtney, but enough to send the 27-year-old man to prison for the rest of his life. After about seven hours of deliberation starting Monday afternoon, a Spokane County jury ruled Tuesday that Courtney was guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of attempted first-degree robbery in an Oct. 19 motel-room holdup.
News >  Spokane

Double murderer gets life in prison

A 20-year-old Spokane man faces life in prison with no possibility of parole after he was convicted Monday of killing two men and trying to kill a third in a rampage at a Mead home in 2003. Brandon W. Martin also faces trial July 25 for allegedly helping strangle a man in the Spokane County Jail while awaiting the double-murder trial.
News >  Spokane

Powers siblings plead guilty in beating

Former Spokane Mayor John Powers' grown children pleaded guilty Friday to beating up a family friend. John T. Powers, 24, and his sister, Annie P. Powers, 21, were flanked by lawyers, but neither of their parents was present when they pleaded guilty in Spokane County Superior Court to fourth-degree assault and first-degree trespass.
News >  Spokane

Top court firm on lawyer suspension

Despite unprecedented support from local attorneys and judges, Spokane attorney Uche Umuolo has lost his bid for reconsideration of a two-year suspension for mishandling money held in his trust for clients. Umuolo earned the respect of many in the Spokane legal community for his unstinting willingness to represent clients who couldn't afford to pay him. He has "a heart of gold," Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly said in an unsolicited letter to the Washington Supreme Court.
News >  Spokane

Judge grants mistrial motion

A "three-strikes" child-molestation trial was halted Thursday when a juror reported her displeasure with comments by other jurors and the performance of the defense attorney. Terry Milton Moncrief's trial is to begin again Monday with selection of a new jury. If convicted as charged, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole under a law that gives violent criminals only three chances.
News >  Spokane

Teen ruled mentally competent to stand trial

A former Ferris High School student charged with attempting to murder one of his teachers is mentally competent to stand trial, a Juvenile Court commissioner ruled Thursday. Commissioner Steve Grovdahl accepted the finding of Spokane psychologist Mark Mays that 15-year-old Jacob D. Carr understands the charges against him and is able to assist in his defense – the legal test for competency. Grovdahl didn't deal with the question of whether Carr was legally sane at the time of the alleged crime, or whether he is sufficiently mature to be tried in adult court.
News >  Spokane

Sex offender’s trial abbreviated

Testimony started and ended Wednesday in a trial that could put Level III sex offender Terry Milton Moncrief in prison for the rest of his life. Moncrief, 43, didn't testify, and no one testified on his behalf. His entire defense will consist of Assistant Public Defender Al Rossi's closing arguments to the jury today. Rossi gave no opening statement and no indication of his strategy.
News >  Spokane

First trial starts for man suspected in jail death

A man accused of committing a murder in the Spokane County Jail last year went on trial Monday on earlier murder charges that were the reason he was in the jail. Brandon W. Martin, 20, had been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. He allegedly helped kill a jail inmate a year later, on Oct. 2, 2004.
News >  Spokane

Man convicted in rape, robbery

A 43-year-old Spokane man was convicted Friday of raping, seriously injuring and robbing a 68-year-old woman last July – leaving her with coins for bus fare and with a moral dilemma. Testimony in Mi-cheal Jefferson's trial indicated he made the victim, a devout Christian, promise not to call police after he left.
News >  Spokane

Stabbing case ends with plea to assault count

A Spokane man who stabbed a neighbor in the throat pleaded no contest Friday to second-degree assault. Gary S. Sunderland, 44, also known as Gary Sunderlin, had been charged with first-degree assault in the Jan. 24, 2003, stabbing of Arthur Jeremy Avila, who was hospitalized with a lacerated trachea and esophagus.
News >  Spokane

Judge reverses homicide ruling

A Spokane woman who was to have been sentenced today for delivering the drugs that killed her husband has had her conviction overturned by her trial judge. Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza granted a defense motion Wednesday to overturn last month's jury verdict that Christine Dana Weber, 28, was guilty of controlled-substance homicide.
News >  Spokane

Man sentenced to almost 12 years for violent crimes

A 28-year-old Spokane man pleaded guilty Wednesday to numerous charges stemming from two violent crimes within one week last summer. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins sentenced Rory Allen Jamison to 112/3 years in prison as recommended in a plea bargain.
News >  Spokane

Teen pleads guilty to attempted robbery, theft of a firearm

A 19-year-old defendant with a ninth-grade education, mental health issues and a drug problem trembled as he stood before Judge Tari Eitzen on Wednesday to admit hijacking a car last August with pistols he had just stolen. "I've just never been in trouble like this," Dennis Lee Smith said when Eitzen asked him whether he was well.
News >  Spokane

Pets seized in Newport ready for adoption

Forty-five animals seized in a Pend Oreille County animal-cruelty case may be adopted through the Spokane Humane Society because of a ruling this week by the visiting Spokane County District Court. The dogs and other animals were seized March 25 in a raid at the rural Newport-area home of Mary Ellen Breitenstein Gutierrez, 44, who was charged with second-degree animal cruelty and transporting or confining animals in an unsafe manner. Authorities said Breitenstein Gutierrez was operating a "puppy mill" that treated animals inhumanely, keeping them in enclosures that forced them to stand in feces and water. The charges are misdemeanors, punishable by up to three months in jail. Breitenstein Gutierrez faces a May 11 hearing, in which a trial date will be set.
News >  Spokane

Curry denied release from supervision

A jury took little more than an hour Monday to decide that Sharon L. Curry, who stabbed her 8-year-old daughter to death in 1999, still has a mental defect that makes her dangerous. Curry, 46, had asked the jury to release her from court-ordered supervision stemming from the insanity defense that kept her from having to stand trial for first-degree murder.
News >  Spokane

Guilty plea entered in woman”s 1987 killing

It took a lifetime to achieve justice for Tina Phillips: her lifetime. The second of two men who killed Phillips in 1987 at a Spokane park pleaded guilty Monday in Spokane County Superior Court, nearly 18 years after Phillips died at age 18.
News >  Spokane

Man gets 23 years for Valley stabbing

Stabbing a man to death while he was seat-belted in a car with a gun pointed at his head didn't look like self-defense to the Spokane County jury that convicted Lance A. Leighton of second-degree murder. Nor did it appear that way to Superior Court Judge Greg Sypolt, who sentenced the 24-year-old defendant Friday to 223/4 years in prison. Sypolt said the jury had already given Leighton a break last month by rejecting a first-degree murder charge.
News >  Spokane

Court upholds bias suit judgment

The Washington Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a Spokane County jury's $4 million award to a woman who said she was subjected to gender discrimination as a manager for ABM Janitorial Services. The verdict in May 2003, after a six-week trial, was the largest employment discrimination compensatory award in Washington, according to Jury Verdicts Northwest, an organization that tracks settlements and verdicts in the Northwest.
News >  Spokane

Second defendant pleads guilty in shooting

A second defendant pleaded guilty Thursday in a New Year's Day gang shootout that killed a man and wounded a woman at a north Spokane bar. Christopher Jerome Route, 18, had been charged with second-degree murder, first-degree assault with a firearm and riot in the death of rival gang member Calvin Banks, 24, and the wounding of a young woman who was standing nearby. As 20-year-old Eric Burton Jr. did earlier this month, Route pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree assault.
News >  Spokane

Murderer pleads guilty a second time

A 68-year-old man who murdered a woman in Spokane 18 years ago pleaded guilty a second time Wednesday and soon will head to Chicago to pay for an even older murder. Robert Daniel Clark strangled Rochelle M. English with a cloth in April 1987 because he didn't want to pay her for a sex act. English's body was found in an apartment at 1221 N. Monroe, and police found Clark's fingerprint on a beer can. He was in the Grant County Jail on unrelated charges when police caught up with him and took his confession.