Anti-Abortion Activist Guilty Of Attempting To Burn Home

Former GOP congressional candidate and anti-abortion activist Marlyn Derby was found guilty Monday of trying to burn down her estranged husband’s home.

Derby entered an Alford plea - not admitting guilt but acknowledging the evidence exists that would lead to being found guilty - to a charge of first-degree reckless burning. She will be sentenced in April.

In exchange for her plea, the charge was reduced from first-degree arson.

The main difference between the two crimes, said Deputy Prosecutor Mark Lindsey, is that a conviction for reckless burning allows Derby to be sentenced to psychiatric treatment.

Her estranged husband, Spokane physician Alfred Derby, requested that the courts have that option, Lindsey said.

Marlyn Derby, 59, told police shortly after the fire that she had set it outside the bedroom of the South Hogan home where her husband was living. The two were legally separated and going through a contentious divorce that led each to seek a restraining order against the other.

Alfred Derby filed for a separation in February 1996, and asked for a court order protecting him from his wife. He contended Marlyn was subject to uncontrollable behavior.

Marlyn Derby later asked for a protection order for herself, saying her husband had been arrested for domestic violence before the separation. Eventually, Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine ordered each to stay away from the other.

Last June 14, Marlyn Derby placed magazines in a metal bowl, doused them with gasoline, and ignited them outside her husband’s bedroom window, she told police. He awoke, saw the fire, and doused it.

Some of the magazines had her name and address on them. Police who arrived at her home noticed the smell of gasoline, and they say she admitted setting the fire.

Although the potential for injury or even death was high, the actual damage was small, Lindsey said.

“The fire charred a couple of pieces of siding on the house,” he said.

Marlyn Derby is an outspoken critic of abortion who was among activists arrested in the mid-1980s for violating a court order barring picketing in front of a local medical building.

The Derbys later channeled their energy on abortion and other social issues into the Republican Party, where Marlyn Derby helped write local GOP platforms and served as a delegate to county, state and national conventions.

Among the policy statements she helped write was the 1988 county GOP platform that said “criminal offenders should receive sentences commensurate with the severity of their crimes … make restitution to their victims and pay for the financial costs of their punishment and rehabilitation.”

She ran for Congress three times, trying unsuccessfully to oust Rep. Tom Foley in 1988, 1990 and 1992.

Contacted at her home late Monday morning, Marlyn Derby said she had no comment on her case.

, DataTimes