Lipinski admits threat to kill man
Double-murderer John E. Lipinski, 22, pleaded guilty Friday to threatening to kill a man in a case that was unrelated to his March 14 conviction for killing his pregnant fiancée in August 2004.
At the same hearing, Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke denied a motion by assistant public defender John Stine for a new trial based on a new opinion by forensic pathologist Terence Allen. He filed a declaration arguing that it was highly unlikely that Lipinski was able to push an adult out of a moving car.
Clarke sentenced Lipinski last month to serve 30 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of two counts of second-degree murder for pushing 19-year-old Melissa Saldivar out of a moving car. She was pregnant with their daughter when Saldivar suffered a fractured skull from which she died on Aug. 11, 2004.
Doctors kept her alive long enough to deliver their baby, Mataya, but the infant was determined to be brain dead and was taken off life support on Oct. 1, 2004.
Allen is married to Dr. Kim Thorburn, who is the director of the Spokane Regional Health District. He said he read about Lipinski’s sentencing in the April 20 edition of The Spokesman-Review and then contacted Stine to review the case.
After studying all the medical evidence, Allen told Stine he was convinced that Saldivar’s death “was accidental and not at the hands of Lipinski,” Allen wrote in court records.
But deputy prosecutor Steve Garvin argued that Allen’s analysis was simply one expert’s opinion and not evidence.
Judge Clarke sided with Garvin, saying that he did not believe that the expert’s testimony would have changed the outcome of the trial.
In the other case, Lipinski pleaded guilty to one count of felony harassment in connection with an encounter near Gonzaga University on Feb. 12, 2005. At the time Lipinski had not been charged in connection with Saldivar’s and Mataya’s deaths.
In the harassment case, two witnesses said they were driving near Mission Avenue and Hamilton Street when a man with dried blood on his face flagged them down and asked for a ride.
Once inside the pickup, the rider told the men to follow his dad and if they didn’t catch him, “I’m gonna shoot you in the head,” according to court records.
The two men drove Lipinski to downtown Spokane where they stopped and pulled him from the vehicle. They held him down and waited for police to arrive. No gun was ever found.
Garvin agreed to drop one felony harassment charge if Lipinski agreed to plead guilty to the second. Clarke sentenced Lipinski to nine months in prison but gave him credit for time served.