Prosecutor says man was called snitch, shot

Three men called Robert J. Galliher a “snitch” before one shot him earlier this year, a prosecutor said in a trial that began Tuesday.

Galliher, who has said under oath he was sexually abused in the 1970s by Spokane’s late mayor Jim West and West’s former law enforcement partner, Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy David Hahn, was the lead-off witness in the jury trial of Todd A. Sawyer, 22, accused of first-degree assault as an accessory to Galliher’s shooting. Sawyer has pleaded not guilty in the Jan. 6 incident that took place in northeast Spokane.

Justin M. Mullenix, 24, is charged with attempted first-degree murder in Galliher’s shooting. His trial is scheduled for June 2.

In an opening statement, Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Lawrence Haskell said Galliher “reluctantly” agreed to drive a friend, Jenay Putt, to Everett and Regal to meet a friend she called “Doofy” – Mullenix.

When they arrived, three men approached Galliher’s car “and made comments that Galliher was a snitch,” Haskell said. They yanked the door open, hit Galliher, and Mullenix shot Galliher with a handgun, Haskell said. He managed to drive to a nearby gas station and was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he had emergency surgery.

“The state will ask you to convict Sawyer as an accomplice,” Haskell told the jury.

Assistant Public Defender Kari Reardon said her client was not involved in the shooting. “The state is asking you to convict someone for merely being present,” Reardon said.

Galliher, 39, said in his testimony he agreed to drive Putt to Everett and Regal and drop her off on the snowy Sunday morning. When they arrived, he said he saw three men standing in the road with hoods on. “I told her, get out here; I’m not picking anyone up. I didn’t recognize any of them,” Galliher said.

When they ripped his door open, “I put my foot on the gas pedal. … My main concern was just getting out of there,” he added. Mullenix stood on the door jamb and shot him; he then drove “60 or 70” mph to a gas station and passed out, Galliher said. He woke up in the intensive care unit of Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Galliher admitted on the stand that he has an extensive criminal history, including burglary, possession of stolen property and eluding the police. He also said he’d taken meth the day before the incident.

But left unaddressed in his testimony is why Galliher was shot.

A police affidavit filed in the case says that Sawyer and Mullenix are associated with the Sureno street gang.

Chet Gilmore, a Spokane Police Department detective assigned to the case, said during a break in the trial that there were allegations “on the street” that Galliher was a police informant. But Haskell didn’t ask Galliher to speculate on the witness stand on why he may have been shot.

Galliher had some suspicions of his own in a 2004 letter he wrote from prison, where he was serving a burglary sentence. He wrote to St. Paul, Minn., psychologist Mic Hunter, author of “Abused Boys,” a study of the impact of sexual abuse. In the letter, he said both Hahn and West had molested him as a child, and that he started to use drugs to escape the pain of the molestations, lost his business, stole materials from job sites and ended up serving 54 months in prison.

He also accused Spokane sheriff’s deputies of retaliating against him after he filed a lawsuit in 2004 against Spokane County for not taking action to stop Hahn after the molestation was reported.

In their lawsuit against the county, Galliher, his older brother Brett and two other men claimed Hahn sexually molested them during the mid-1970s and early 1980s. West was not named in the lawsuit, but the allegations against West are included in Galliher’s deposition taken in April 2005 in Seattle and also in his letter to Hunter.

Hahn committed suicide with his service revolver in 1981 after being confronted by sheriff’s officials with accusations of pedophilia.

In his 2004 letter to the psychologist, Galliher said he alerted police in the fall of 2002 that an informant in the drug scene in Spokane was “being hunted down and going to be killed.” Instead of warning the informant, “the police told the dealers that I had contacted them,” Galliher wrote. He also said he was badly beaten in the Spokane County Jail in retaliation for his accusations against Hahn.

Last November, Spokane County commissioners voted unanimously to settle his lawsuit for $325,000. Galliher’s share from the county’s risk pool was $225,000, but $113,000 of those funds were seized for legal-financial obligations from Galliher’s convictions.

Sawyer’s trial continues today in the courtroom of Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price.