Plea deal is reached in murder

Had he kept a court date on a domestic violence charge, Richard Hanes could have been free by now, or close to it.

But the 30-year-old Athol, Idaho, man skipped out on a Kootenai County judge last February and now faces the possibility of life in prison when he is sentenced for shooting and killing another man with a rifle that day.Hanes reached an agreement with Kootenai County prosecutors Friday in which he will plead guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 40-year-old Eddie Edmiston. As part of the plea deal, sentencing will remain open so that Edmiston’s family members and other victims can testify what punishment they think the crime deserves, Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas said Friday.

Hanes will enter the plea change on Aug. 13, Douglas said, with sentencing expected in September.

Hanes is charged with shooting Edmiston twice on Feb. 6, once through the leg and again in the back of the head after the wounded man tried to flee the Athol house of Hanes’ ex-wife. Hanes found the two in bed together when he broke into the house at about 4 o’clock that winter morning, court documents say.

Hanes was supposed to have been in a courtroom in Coeur d’Alene that morning, finally scheduled for sentencing – a sentence that most likely would have sent him to a prison boot camp for six months – for a June 2003, domestic violence attack on Carol Mae Hanes. Instead, prosecutors allege, after a night of drinking, Hanes aimed his blue pickup truck north and drove to Carol Mae Hanes’ house.

Carol Mae Hanes has testified Hanes said he was going to kill her and stage her death to appear a suicide.

Prosecutors filed as many as 11 felony charges against Hanes and a notice of intent to seek the death penalty. On July 1, Douglas withdrew the death penalty and 1st District Court Judge John Luster tossed or reduced a number of the felony counts.

“Basically the judge said we were charging Hanes with too many crimes and that we were duplicating crimes,” Douglas said. “The important charge is murder, and really the only difference between first-degree and second-degree murder is the death penalty.”

The maximum sentence for second-degree murder is still life in prison, Douglas said.

Douglas said the plea agreement will spare Edmiston’s family and three of the six children Hanes and Carol Mae Hanes raised together when married from having to testify at a trial.

“The families are in concurrence with this,” Douglas said of the agreement. “It will bring them some finality, avoid some issues at trial and serve justice. They will have full say: Part of the agreement is that there will be no objection by the defense that family members can testify” before Luster on fitting punishment for Hanes.