Term erased, felon faces new sentence
A Grant County felon who created chaos in Washington courts with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court has been convicted of two counts of soliciting first-degree murder.
Howard Ralph Blakely, 68, persuaded the Supreme Court to invalidate his 71/2-year kidnapping sentence last summer in a case that also partially invalidated Washington’s sentencing law.
Now, though, Blakely faces a minimum prison term in the neighborhood of 20 years when he is sentenced March 22, according to Grant County Prosecutor John Knodell. The precise sentencing range hadn’t been calculated Friday.
Blakely was charged in the murder-for-hire plot one week before the Supreme Court overturned his kidnapping sentence last June. He had already served more time than he could have gotten if he had been re-sentenced.
“It’s been kind of a wild ride for us,” said Knodell, who helped Deputy Prosecutor Carolyn Fair try the murder-solicitation charges. “I think it’s probably best for everybody that he’s going to be spending the next several years in prison.
Blakely tried to hire a hit man to kill his ex-wife while serving a prison sentence for kidnapping her. The hit man, who turned out to be working with authorities, also was to kill a “Lorene B.,” believed to be Blakely’s daughter, Lorene L. Blakely.
Blakely kidnapped his then-estranged wife, Yolanda Blakely, from her home in Othello, Wash., in October 1998. At knifepoint, he forced her into a wooden box in the bed of his pickup and drove to Gallatin, Mont.
He also forced the couple’s then-13-year-old son, Ralphy, to follow in his mother’s car by threatening to shoot the boy’s mother. Ralphy asked employees for help at a Moses Lake truck stop, and his father tried unsuccessfully to drag him away before fleeing.
Blakely’s adult daughter, Lorene L. Blakely, helped police catch him when he called her from a friend’s house in Montana.
Blakely pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree kidnapping involving domestic violence and the use of a firearm. He faced a standard sentence of 49 to 53 months, but Grant County Superior Court Judge Evan Sperline gave him 90 months.
Sperline found the crime was aggravated by “deliberate cruelty,” which justified an above-standard sentence under Washington’s sentencing guideline law.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the sentence – and part of the sentencing law – last June with a ruling that defendants are entitled to have a jury decide any facts used to justify above-standard sentences. Since then, perpetrators of a number of egregious crimes have avoided extra punishment while some judges wait for the Legislature to fix the law.
While serving his kidnapping sentence at the Airway Heights Corrections Center, Blakely offered a former inmate, Robbie T. Juarez, $40,000 to kill Blakely’s ex-wife and another person he didn’t immediately identify.
Juarez reported the offer to Grant County sheriff’s Detective David Matney, who launched a sting investigation with Juarez’s help. Juarez said Blakely wanted revenge and claimed his ex-wife and “Lorene B.” were trying to steal his money.
Matney said money apparently was a factor in the 1998 kidnapping, in which Blakely was widely reported to have been trying to keep his wife from divorcing him.
Court records showed Yolanda Blakely told FBI agents her husband wanted her to drop litigation over assets as well as dropping the divorce. Matney said Yolanda Blakely told the FBI that the assets included $1.2 million from the sale of property, $460,000 in a stocks-and-bonds account, and some real estate.
In a six-day trial that ended Thursday, Spokane defense attorney Rob Cossey argued unsuccessfully that Juarez was unreliable, that there was no proof Blakely offered him money for murder and that there was no evidence Blakely really wanted to hurt anyone.