Nurse pleads guilty to rape
A 35-year-old nurse pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of raping a completely helpless 12-year-old girl in April while she was in his care.
Raymond Carl Hughes was supposed to be watching over the quadriplegic girl at her north Spokane home when he raped her.
The girl, who is dying of complications from cerebral palsy, can’t speak or move, according to Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald.
A registered nurse, Hughes was employed by Integrated Health Professionals at the time of the rape. He had been filling in for the girl’s regular home-care nurse, who had a family emergency.
The girl’s mother told police Hughes had attended to her daughter 20 to 30 times before the rape occurred.
According to court documents, Hughes was alone with the girl overnight while her mother slept elsewhere in the home. After Hughes left the next morning, the mother changed the girl’s diaper and found her sexual organs torn and bruised.
Hughes pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree child rape and one count of standard second-degree rape, even though there was only one alleged incident.
Defense attorney George Caplan argued Thursday before Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque that the two counts amounted to unconstitutional double jeopardy.
Hughes could have brought the issue to a head by proceeding with the jury trial that was scheduled to begin Monday. Instead, he pleaded guilty to both counts as charged, and Caplan will ask Leveque to throw out one of the counts when Hughes is sentenced on Dec. 9.
Fitzgerald acknowledged the issue is arguable, but contended the two charges don’t overlap. She said the child-rape charge is based on the ages of the victim and Hughes, while the other rape charge is because the girl was physically and mentally incapable of consent.
If Leveque finds the law allows both charges, he will then have to determine whether sentences on each should be concurrent or consecutive. The decision turns on whether the charges spring from the same course of conduct.
Should Leveque find both charges valid and distinct, state sentencing guidelines would boost Hughes’ standard sentence. One conviction would be considered sentence-padding criminal history for the other.
As a result, Hughes is facing a minimum standard sentence of either 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 years in prison or 8 1/2 to 11 1/3 years. In either case, he faces a possible maximum of life in prison as a serious sex offender. Once Hughes has served his minimum sentence, a parole board will decide whether he can safely be released or should remain in prison.
Fitzgerald said she plans to seek an above-standard minimum sentence despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that defendants are entitled to have juries decide all facts used to justify above-standard sentences. Many judges have concluded they can’t give above-standard sentences until legislators revise Washington’s sentencing law.
Fitzgerald said the Supreme Court ruling doesn’t apply to serious sex crimes because the standard maximum is life.