Thomas Clouse

A “Joint Intelligence Bulletin” issued on the day federal agents raided the Colville home of Kevin W. Harpham suggests that the bomb may have included a rocket motor igniter and was made in such a way to focus shrapnel at a specific target.

The decision by Spokane County District Court to privatize the collection of all fines and fees, using the same company that handles its bad debts, is raising conflict-of-interest questions within the legal community. Defense lawyers and advocates for the poor worry that PAR Acceptance Corp., hired by District Court in December to handle time-payment agreements, has an incentive to push past-due accounts into bad debt status as quickly as possible because it benefits its subsidiary, Valley Empire Collections. Both companies are owned by Troy Peterson, a Spokane Valley businessman who’s made millions handling debt collection for courts in Spokane.

Kevin William Harpham bought 10 acres of land on a Stevens County hillside south of Colville and built a home a neighbor said he’d long planned. On Wednesday, dozens of federal agents converged on the property in one of the region’s largest law enforcement actions.

Federal agents today arrested an ex-soldier with ties to the white supremacist movement and charged him with planting the backpack bomb along the planned route of the Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane.

Former Spokane Police Officer James “Jay” Olsen, who was exonerated two years ago of criminal wrongdoing in the shooting of a fleeing, unarmed man, now will avoid any civil responsibility for the 2007 attack as well. U.S. District Court Judge Edward F. Shea agreed Wednesday with a request by Olsen’s attorney, Rob Cossey, to dismiss the civil lawsuit brought by Shonto Pete, who was shot in the back of the head by Olsen. Pete was unable to find an attorney to represent him after Shea decided last year to drop the city of Spokane from the case.

It took three tries, but a jury has convicted prolific thief Gary D. McCabe of burglary for the 17th time.

A Spokane County jury will now decide whether Cole K. Strandberg should face the prospect of life imprisonment or indefinite commitment to a mental institution after a judge concluded he was sane in 2008 when he shot a woman with a crossbow.

Testimony on Wednesday in the insanity hearing of accused killer Cole K. Strandberg raised questions about evaluations and conclusions made by mental health professionals at Eastern State Hospital. Dr. Richard Adler, a forensic psychiatrist for the defense, read from documents that indicate Eastern State officials knew Strandberg was hearing voices commanding him to do things before they concluded he was essentially faking mental illness to get out of his murder charge.

Testimony Wednesday in the insanity hearing of accused killer Cole K. Strandberg raised questions about evaluations and conclusions made by mental health professionals at Eastern State Hospital.

A judge ruled late Tuesday that accused killer Cole K. Strandberg suffers from mental illness, but she withheld judgment whether he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Superior Court Judge Tari Eitzen said after two days of testimony from mental health professionals, “there is no doubt” that the troubled 24-year-old suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. But she has not yet decided how that mental disease affected Strandberg on Jan. 7, 2008, when authorities say he fatally shot 22-year-old Jennifer Bergeron with a crossbow.

Accused killer Cole K. Strandberg wore a hood in court today after he spit in his lawyer’s face on Monday. It is the second day of a hearing to determine whether Strandberg was insane when he allegedly used a crossbow to kill a Spokane woman.