Davenport Suspect Faces Trial As Adult 17-Year-Old Accused Of Setting Fire To Lincoln County Courthouse
From For the Record (Wednesday, March 13, 1996): Stan Reider, misidentified in a Tuesday story, is chief criminal deputy in the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department.
Seventeen-year-old Will Hill, accused of setting the fire that gutted the Lincoln County Courthouse, will be tried as an adult.
But the decision Monday by Spokane County Juvenile Court Judge Richard Schroeder will have little effect on Hill’s sentence if he’s convicted of first-degree arson as charged.
Under standard sentencing guidelines, he faces up to three years in prison. His sentence as a juvenile would have been only about six months shorter.
A four-hour hearing on the issue in Spokane revealed that Hill’s Juvenile Court file apparently was stolen Dec. 21 - the day the Davenport courthouse burned.
Lincoln County Deputy Prosecutor Clark Colwell said the file was found later along with a briefcase belonging to Hill’s juvenile probation counselor, Vickie Harris, with whom Hill was angry.
The file and briefcase were found in the crawl space under a house across the street from the courthouse a day or two after Hill was charged with first-degree arson on Jan. 22.
Several people had seen Hill watching the fire from the yard of that house, said Stan Reider, Lincoln County’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor.
Court-appointed defense attorney Kelly Dougan argued that much of the evidence against Hill is hearsay. He said Hill’s statement to police that he had broken into the courthouse without setting the fire may be inadmissible.
Dougan accused authorities of doing little or no investigation into a report that another teenager may have started the courthouse fire by throwing a Molotov cocktail through a window.
Reider said that report isn’t supported by facts. He said arson specialists have concluded the fire was set in the attic above Harris’ office.
Schroeder based his decision in part on the gravity of the crime and the previous failure of the juvenile justice system to rehabilitate Hill.
Hill has been convicted of possessing stolen property, stealing his grandmother’s car and committing third-degree assault.
His mother, Thonia Johnson, and his grandfather, Al West, faulted the juvenile justice system for not forcing Hill to complete a long-term drug and alcohol treatment program. Testimony indicated Hill was drunk the night of the fire.
West and Johnson described a gut-wrenching childhood that Schroeder agreed may have contributed to Hill’s problems.
They said Hill was still a toddler when his father abandoned him. Johnson said an alcoholic man she subsequently married beat her and began giving Hill beer when he was 11 years old. Hill also was unjustly suspected of raping a girl before one of his stepfather’s sons was convicted, Johnson said.
When Johnson suffered lymph cancer, the stepfather encouraged Hill to believe she was faking. But she underwent a last-ditch bone marrow transplant about a month ago.
Unable to care for Hill when she separated from her abusive husband, Johnson sent him to live with West in Davenport about two years ago. West said Hill moved out on his own about a week before the fire when West told him he would have to obey a curfew and resume drug and alcohol treatment.
Davenport High School teacher Jim Stinson said Hill “did a very good job of trying my patience” during his first year at the school.
But Stinson said Hill had turned himself around in the current school year. Hill turned out for the wrestling team and had an “A” in one class until he dropped out the week before the courthouse fire, Stinson said.
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