Man gets 30 years for rape
A Spokane man who raped his helpless and dying sister got at least 30 years in prison and two words from the judge who sentenced him Friday: “disgusting” and “inexcusable.”
“The facts in this case are truly disgusting,” Spokane County Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza told 46-year-old Dennis Patrick Bucknell. “Inexcusable. I don’t know that I can find words more appropriate than that.”
Bucknell’s sister, Michelle R. Mummert, was bedridden with Lou Gehrig’s disease, unable to move her legs and barely able to move her arms or fingers when he raped her Feb. 19.
Bucknell then tried to keep his cousin, Judy Coulter, from testifying against him. He sent her a threatening letter that contained a “curse” written in his own blood.
On one page of the letter, he drew a five-pointed star in blood under the heading: “The Curse Of The Blood Of God’s People.” Various names were written at each point of the star, but Coulter’s was at the top.
Coulter became the most important living witness in the case when Mummert died about a month after the rape.
Five days before she died, Mummert gave videotaped testimony, but there was no DNA evidence. Coulter’s testimony put Bucknell at the scene of the crime.
Coulter had come to care for Mummert because Mummert’s husband – her usual caregiver – was severely burned in an accident.
Bucknell and his 15-year-old daughter took over when Coulter had to leave briefly to care for her seriously ill father. But Bucknell sent his daughter to a store, according to Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald said she also received a threatening letter with a bloody star from Bucknell, and he flashed swastikas – drawn on his hands – at her while she gave her closing statement. No decision has been made on whether to charge Bucknell with intimidating Fitzgerald.
Bucknell faced a standard minimum sentence of 17 1/2 to 23 1/3 years in prison, but Cozza gave him 30.
The sentence is the minimum Bucknell must serve. A state parole board may keep him locked up for life if it determines he is still dangerous.
Fitzgerald proposed consecutive sentences on each count of second-degree rape, first-degree incest and intimidating a witness. But Cozza achieved the same result by finding the rape was aggravated. “Some people get to a certain point where they simply have to be removed from society to protect society, and you have come to that point,” Cozza told Bucknell, who previously was convicted of third-degree rape of a 16-year-old girl in 2003.
Bucknell’s convictions also include assaulting a jailer in 2003 and third-degree assaults in 1996 and 1993.
Cozza said the latest rape was aggravated by abuse of trust and invasion of the victim’s “zone of privacy.”
Although Mummert was in severe pain, she went without pain medicine for 24 hours to ensure her videotaped testimony against Bucknell would be lucid.
“A very brave woman,” Fitzgerald said. “And she had to face him when she testified.”
Assistant Public Defender Ken Knox argued that Bucknell should receive only a standard-range sentence, in part because Mummert’s mind was sound and “she could have said no.”
But Mummert “was very clear in her statement” that she told Bucknell to stop and he refused, Fitzgerald said.
Mummert told Coulter about the rape the day after it occurred. She said Bucknell had threatened to hurt her if she told anyone.
A jury took only a couple of hours on Oct. 9 to convict Bucknell after a 1 1/2-week trial. After the jury gave its verdict and left the courtroom, Bucknell picked up a large, heavily constructed table and hurled it toward the judge and court reporter, striking a wooden railing.
The performance belied a defense motion’s depiction of Bucknell as a “frail, obviously sickly man” whose partial confession should be suppressed because he was intimidated by police.
Bucknell’s ankles were chained Friday, and his handcuffs were locked to a belly chain. He wore his hair in a Mohawk, sported a bushy mustache and goatee, and said nothing.