Man guilty of two voyeurism charges

A Spokane Valley sex offender with a long criminal history pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of attempted voyeurism at a Spokane Valley restaurant after a jury quickly convicted him of voyeurism at Cyrus O’Leary’s downtown.

In both cases, 48-year-old Michael Burke Fleming peered at women over the tops of restroom stall dividers. The April 5 incident at the Cyrus O’Leary’s restaurant occurred while Fleming was awaiting trial for doing the same thing last November at the Denny’s restaurant at Sprague and Pines.

Fleming fled the Denny’s restaurant after peeping at a woman in the restroom, and was caught when he returned within an hour and went back into the women’s restroom.

At Cyrus O’Leary’s, Fleming was caught with a backpack that contained about a half-dozen pieces of women’s lingerie and an unused disposable camera. Spokane Police Officer Dustin Howe said he also found five pornographic pictures in one of Fleming’s pockets.

The underwear and camera “had nothing to do with the case,” and the photos weren’t his, Fleming testified in the two-day trial that ended Tuesday morning. He said he is an alcoholic who often blacks out and claimed he was too drunk to remember what happened at Cyrus O’Leary’s.

His victim, a kindergarten teacher from Spokane, said she noticed what appeared to be men’s shoes in the stall next to her.

“The next thing I knew, I looked up and there he was,” she testified Tuesday. “I was very scared.”

Alerted by the victim’s screams, bartender Sarah West got in front of Fleming when he came out of the restroom and told him not to leave. West testified that Fleming kept walking, but she stayed in front of him until a male manager helped her detain Fleming for police.

West said she had refused to serve anything but food to Fleming and a woman who accompanied him because they both seemed intoxicated when they arrived. West said she was on alert when the voyeurism occurred because Fleming’s companion had disappeared before their bill was paid.

A jury of 10 women and two men quickly convicted Fleming, and he reluctantly pleaded guilty to the Denny’s voyeurism about an hour later. He accepted an offer from Deputy Prosecutor John Love while a panel of potential jurors waited in the hall for Fleming’s second voyeurism trial to begin.

Fleming had pleaded guilty in January to the Denny’s voyeurism, but was allowed to withdraw his plea. Love and Assistant Public Defender John Whaley discovered after the plea that Fleming potentially would be subject to unanticipated penalties under Washington’s relatively new law for serious sex offenders.

The new law, which can keep offenders in prison after they complete standard sentences, ordinarily wouldn’t have applied to voyeurism. But it came into play because Fleming was convicted of second-degree rape in 1989.

As a result, Fleming may be forced to serve the five-year statutory maximum for his voyeurism conviction if the state’s Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board determines he is too dangerous to release.

Voyeurism is a Class C felony that ordinarily carries the same standard penalty as his attempted-voyeurism conviction: up to a year in jail.

Fleming’s plea bargain calls for his penalty to be the approximately four months he will have served by the time he is sentenced on Aug. 8.

Then he is to be sent to the state prison at Shelton, Wash., for an evaluation by the Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board.

Fleming has eight felony convictions, dating from 1978, mostly for incidents involving break-ins at women’s homes.

He pulled the covers off a woman in 1985 while she slept, and was convicted of second-degree burglary in a 1987 incident in which he stripped to his shorts, got into bed with a teenage girl and fondled her before being chased away by her bat-wielding brother.

He was convicted of second-degree rape in 1989 when he forced his way into a woman’s home, ripped off her bathrobe and raped her.

As recently as 2003, Fleming was charged with residential burglary for allegedly breaking into a woman’s home, but the charge was dismissed. According to court records, Fleming was surprised by the woman’s male cousin, who was house-sitting for her.