Man who kidnapped daughter sentenced
A Spokane man who kidnapped his daughter and hid her in Mexico for three weeks in March was sentenced Wednesday to a maximum-standard prison term of 52/3 years.
Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins also ordered 32-year-old Shawn C. Rainey, 32, to have no contact with his 4-year-old daughter or his ex-wife for the rest of his life.
The jury that convicted Rainey last month of first-degree kidnapping and telephone harassment found that he kidnapped his daughter, Lilly, as a means of hurting her mother — his ex-wife, Kim Bernhardt.
“He wanted to get revenge against his wife,” Deputy Prosecutor Debra Hayes said Wednesday, noting that Bernhardt filed for divorce and began dating Joe Bernhardt, whom she later married. “She had the audacity to go on with her life.”
Trial testimony indicated Rainey called his estranged wife up to 18 times a day late last year and in January this year. He admitted that he repeatedly violated the couple’s court-ordered parenting plan and that he threatened on one occasion to take their daughter and disappear if his wife didn’t sign over custody of the child to him.
Kim Bernhardt didn’t speak Wednesday, but her father, Ronald Sharpe, joined Hayes in calling for a maximum sentence.
Sharpe said Rainey caused “immeasurable emotional damage” to his daughter, granddaughter and the rest of their family.
Rainey apologized for his behavior, saying he has come to realize he made mistakes. But, he said, “I don’t feel I’m a threat to anybody, especially my daughter.”
Rainey’s new attorney, David Miller, called for a minimum-standard 41/4-year sentence. Miller said he thought there was no evidence that Rainey’s daughter was endangered by the kidnapping. Rainey may have used poor judgment, “but that is still in dispute,” Miller said.
Rainey said at trial that he took his daughter to Mexico to protect her from physical abuse, and Miller said without elaboration that it now appears she may be exposed to a sex offender.
Hayes said Joe Bernhardt’s adult son was convicted of a sex offense as a juvenile but has no contact with Lilly Rainey.
Bernhardt’s 20-year-old son, Keith Bernhardt, pleaded guilty in February 2002 to the first-degree rape of a 10-year-old girl in June 2001, when he was 16. He is still undergoing sex-offender treatment in lieu of a prison term and has been ordered to have no contact with minors.
Keith Bernhardt’s case will be an issue in Rainey’s appeal of his conviction and is the reason Rainey fired trial attorney Rob Cossey and hired Miller. Court documents indicate Cossey realized when Joe Bernhardt testified that they had met, but he couldn’t remember how he knew Bernhardt and found no record of having represented him.
After Rainey’s trial was over, Cossey discovered Bernhardt had hired him to defend his son against the child-rape charge. Rainey and Miller sought a new trial on grounds that Cossey had a conflict of interest, but trial Judge Michael Donohue rejected the motion earlier this month at a hearing in which Hayes called Cossey as a prosecution witness.
Cossey’s defense of Rainey wasn’t affected by his representation of Keith Bernhardt because he didn’t remember it, Hayes told Donohue.