Joan Richards told a Spokane County Superior Court jury Monday that her 2-year-old daughter would still be alive if she hadn't reconciled with Robert L. Doney Jr. after kicking him out of her apartment. Doney, 29, is on trial for first-degree murder in the beating death of Richard's daughter, Victoria Ramon, on Dec. 26, 2003.
Spokane attorney Uche Umuolo's two-year suspension raises questions of equity in the view of some of his supporters, including Superior Court Judge Robert Austin. Like several others who know Umuolo, Austin suspects negligence rather than dishonesty in Umuolo's mismanagement of his trust account and failure to distribute a client's money after the client died.
Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza was at a loss for words Friday when he sentenced Stacey Lynn Jones for abandoning three newborn babies, one of whom died. Jones, 38, pleaded guilty in January to second-degree manslaughter and two counts of second-degree child abandonment.
A Grant County felon who created chaos in Washington courts with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court has been convicted of two counts of soliciting first-degree murder. Howard Ralph Blakely, 68, persuaded the Supreme Court to invalidate his 71/2-year kidnapping sentence last summer in a case that also partially invalidated Washington's sentencing law.
Robert L. Doney Jr. hopes to convince a jury the primal wails they heard on a 911 tape Thursday were the sound of a mother who had just killed her 2-year-old daughter. Doney, 29, is on trial for the alleged first-degree murder of his girlfriend's daughter, Victoria Ramon, in December 2003.
A Spokane woman was convicted Thursday of delivering the drugs that killed her husband in February 2004. A Superior Court jury of six women and six men convicted Christine D. Weber, 28, of controlled-substance homicide after half a day of deliberation.
Former Lakeside High School special education teacher Carl John Schubert was released from prison Wednesday because his sentence for indecent liberties with a student was overturned on appeal. The ruling, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer, sets up another test of whether Washington trial judges may still impose above-standard sentences without guidance from the Legislature.
Voters in Spokane, Whitman, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties will decide a variety of financial measures Tuesday, including a bond measure to modernize and expand Deer Park High School. The $11.9 million bond measure would cost an estimated $1.32 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The district includes voters in Spokane and Stevens counties.
David Meckelson won an impressive victory last month when he represented himself in a drug trial, but was taking no more chances Friday. Instead, he was thinking of a 12-year-old daughter who will be a young woman when he gets out of prison.
Long Hair Terry got a raw deal and Smurf just got lucky, a Spokane County jury seemed to say Friday in a trial that played like a bad gangster movie. The Superior Court jury convicted Colt Allen "Coltis" O'Connell of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree assault for stringing up Terry L. "Long Hair" Couveau in a garage and beating him.
A Spokane man facing a first-degree murder charge for beating another man to death two years ago pleaded no-contest Thursday to second-degree murder. Anthony M. Shirihama, 35, admitted hitting John P. Roberson several times in the head and kicking him in the side in January 2003. He insisted he struck the blows in self-defense, but agreed there was enough evidence to convict him.
A Spokane man will be released to his mother while awaiting a new trial on charges that he shot his girlfriend to death in May 1997. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Robert Austin on Thursday removed a roadblock to another judge's ruling last month that Joseph Duane Brooks may be released on $25,000 bond if he also submits to electronic monitoring.
A 21-year-old Spokane man was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for savagely beating a middle-aged man who rescued his daughter-in-law from the defendant. Samson Lawrence Lane was allowed to plead guilty to one count of second-degree assault and one count of fourth-degree assault in a deal made possible by his victim, Anthony M. Resendez.
A Spokane man who kidnapped his estranged wife last October and terrorized her with a stun gun and a .22-caliber revolver pleaded guilty Wednesday to reduced charges. Superior Court Judge Tari Eitzen sentenced Patrick Ray Theodorson, 34, to 63/4 years in prison.
Lots of people told stories about teenage blunders Tuesday during the trial of a 16-year-old Spokane Valley girl who let a friend fall off the back of her moving car and then drove away. But the defendant, Jessica Napier, had nothing to say about the accident that nearly killed 14-year-old Amaryssa Byers.
A half dozen suspected drug dealers, two of whom allegedly hid their methamphetamine in cheese ball cans, have been arrested in connection with a monthlong investigation into narcotics trafficking in the Newport and Loon Lake areas. Pend Oreille County Sheriff's Detective Questin Youk said Friday's arrests capped a two-county bust that began with an anonymous letter to Pend Oreille County officers. He said the letter alerted investigators to a link between a suspected Newport drug dealer and a Loon Lake family in Stevens County. Newport police and a state trooper assisted in the probe.
One of two men who killed a Spokane woman in December 1994 during a two-month crime spree pleaded guilty a second time Friday. Jason Victor Kukrall, 31, apologized this time for the stabbing death of 21-year-old Linda Guillen.
The man who sped through a north Spokane stoplight and killed 15-year-old Tesia Parris in July 2002 has filed a bankruptcy petition to escape a $3.6 million jury award to her family. Abdulwahab Al-Jazairy, 23, also wants a bankruptcy judge to excuse him from paying restitution he agreed to pay as part of a plea bargain in his separate criminal case.
A former Deer Park real estate agent was sentenced Tuesday to 26 1/2 years in prison for what Prosecutor Jerry Wetle said probably was the worst sex-abuse case ever in Stevens County. Superior Court Judge Rebecca Baker said David Bruce Campbell's crimes against an 11-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother were the worst she had seen as a judge or a lawyer.
A former Eastern State Hospital nurse likely will be tried again on a rape charge that resulted in a hung jury Friday. The jury of seven women and five men couldn't agree on the second-degree rape charge, but acquitted Guylin Michael Johnston, 43, of taking indecent liberties with a mental patient last June in a hospital laundry room.
Friends and relatives of a completely helpless 12-year-old girl who was raped by a home-care nurse offered gut-wrenching pleas Thursday for more punishment than a judge felt he could deliver. The rapist, Raymond Carl Hughes, 35, got the maximum standard sentence Spokane County Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque could hand down: 81/2 years.
Guylin Michael Johnston, accused of raping a mental patient at Eastern State Hospital, offered a defense Wednesday that a deputy prosecutor said was about as plausible as blaming space aliens. Johnston and a co-worker offered a loose conspiracy theory involving two co-workers to account for his semen having been found mixed with the alleged victim's saliva in a wad of gum in a tissue found in her pants pocket.
A former Gonzaga University student pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of forging driver's licenses for underage drinkers. In exchange, 14 other forgery counts and a dozen counts of possessing child pornography were dismissed.
A woman who went to Eastern State Hospital last June for treatment of severe depression testified in court Tuesday that a male nurse raped and groped her in the hospital laundry room. Licensed practical nurse Guylin Michael Johnston, 43, had been assigned "one-on-one" to watch the 30-year-old woman to make sure she didn't attempt suicide.
A controversial Pend Oreille County dog breeder was sentenced Friday to three days in jail, 20 days of community service and a $200 fine for whacking a television cameraman with her purse. Jeanette Bergman's attorney, Robin McCroskey, argued unsuccessfully that Bergman had been punished enough by numerous broadcasts of the videotaped assault.
