Ex-County CEO pleads guilty
Former Spokane County Chief Executive Officer Francine Boxer-Purtill, scheduled for trial today on her second drunken-driving charge in three years, has pleaded guilty to reduced charges.
Boxer-Purtill, 54, pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless endangerment in the second offense and was convicted of drunken-driving in the first. Previously, she had been granted a deferred prosecution on her first offense, which would have resulted in dismissal of the charge if she had kept out of trouble.
Visiting Franklin County District Court Judge Jerry Roach sentenced Boxer-Purtill to a year in jail on each count, but suspended all but two days of each sentence. Roach also allowed the sentences, which are to be served simultaneously, to be converted to 30 days of electronic home monitoring.
Boxer-Purtill must pay all the monitoring costs.
Roach also ordered Boxer-Purtill to pay $2,000 in fines. He suspended $8,000 of additional fines on the condition that she satisfy conditions of a five-year probation.
Spokane County officials asked Roach and Lincoln County Deputy Prosecutor Mel Hoit to handle the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Hoit said the prosecution was delayed because Boxer-Purtill was being treated for cancer. Her sentencing gave consideration to her medical condition, he said.
However, Hoit said, the sentence reflected standard minimum penalties.
Before her second drunken-driving incident cost Boxer-Purtill her job last year, she had been paid $93,500 a year in salary and $550 a month in car allowance.
Officers responding to a one-car crash shortly after midnight on Aug. 8 found Boxer-Purtill sleeping in the back seat of her Jeep, which had crashed into a tree at 27026 E. Moffatt Road, near Newman Lake. She suggested in early court proceedings that she hadn’t been driving the vehicle, but abandoned that claim in her plea bargain Monday.
A state trooper cited Boxer-Purtill and sent her home in a taxi, and a fill-in judge allowed her to remain free without bail on the condition that she pass twice-weekly breath tests. Testing about three hours after the accident showed Boxer-Purtill’s blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
In her first arrest, on Oct. 12, 2001, a trooper found Boxer-Purtill parked in the median of Interstate 90. She said she was on her way home from a family dinner. A breath test showed her blood-alcohol level at 0.22 percent – nearly three times the legal limit.
As part of her deferred prosecution in that case, Boxer-Purtill paid for alcohol-abuse counseling and had a breath-activated ignition lock in her car for a year.
Hoit said her driver’s license is to be suspended about a year as a result of this week’s convictions, and Boxer-Purtill will again be required to install a breath-testing ignition lock in her car for at least a year when her license is restored.