Child killer’s sentence upheld

An appeals court has upheld the murder sentence of a man who beat his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter to death in December 2004 in the West Central neighborhood after the couple had a fight.

The Washington Court of Appeals, in a ruling this week, said Robert L. Doney Jr.’s conviction should stand, calling it a “harmless error” that Spokane County Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque impaneled a new jury in response to a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

That ruling, Blakely v. Washington, eliminated a judge’s sole authority to find aggravating circumstances without a jury determination.

Doney, then age 30, was sentenced in October 2005 to 35 years in prison for the beating death of toddler Victoria Ramon.

He’d been fighting with Ramon’s mother, Joan Richards, and committed the murder when Richards left the apartment they shared at 1412 W. Dean to call for help.

At sentencing, Deputy Prosecutor Larry Steinmetz called Doney “the epitome of evil” for killing a helpless child.

Doney’s appeal centered on whether Leveque had erred by impaneling a second jury to determine an above-standard sentence.

During Doney’s first trial in March 2005, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in an effort to take advantage of the Supreme Court ruling.

Doney’s court-appointed attorney, Tim Trageser, argued unsuccessfully that the plea prevented Leveque from asking a jury to consider aggravating circumstances.

Leveque kept the first jury in session, and it found Doney guilty of four aggravating circumstances.

But Leveque set aside that verdict, ruling in July 2005 that the procedures he improvised for the first trial – which occurred before the Washington Legislature fixed state sentencing law to comply with the Supreme Court ruling – may have hampered Trageser’s ability to screen potential jurors.

A new jury was selected and it found Doney guilty of deliberate cruelty and of choosing a victim who was particularly vulnerable.

Doney entered his guilty plea before April 15, 2005, which means the statute the Legislature adopted in response to the Supreme Court ruling did not apply to him for sentencing, the appeals court said.

But two juries had already determined that aggravating circumstances applied and Doney was notified the state intended to seek an exceptional sentence, the court said.

“If this case was remanded, Mr. Doney would again have a jury determine these factors. … Mr. Doney has already, arguably twice, received the benefit of the statute,” the appeals court ruled. “Thus, any error at trial was harmless and we affirm Mr. Doney’s sentence.”