A 20-year-old Monroe man who is serving more than five years in prison for a burglary he committed as a teenager won a small victory in court Friday, but hopes for an even bigger win within a couple of months.
Frank Chimenti Jr., who has been in and out of prison for a crime he committed when he was 16, hopes the state Court of Appeals will either give him a new trial or find that he won’t have to serve about three more years behind bars.
On Friday, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Gerald Knight let Chimenti post a $10,000 bond, allowing him to get out of prison until the Court of Appeals rules.
His father, Frank Chimenti Sr., also of Monroe, said he doesn’t know if he can finance his son’s bond, however.
Nonetheless, defense attorney Pete Mazzone of Everett is encouraged.
He said that a separate decision in June by the state Supreme Court is good news for the younger Chimenti. It was the high court that sent the case back to the appeals panel, a sign that the law might give Chimenti a break, Mazzone said. He hopes for a ruling in a month or two.
Although he was only 16 at the time of the crime, Chimenti wound up in adult court because of state laws that require him to treated as an adult for a serious crime, and also to receive a stiff penalty because firearms were stolen in the residential burglary.
The case has prompted a series of appeals and counterappeals by Mazzone and Snohomish County prosecutors.
In court Friday, deputy prosecutor Rebecca Quirk told the judge that the June ruling by the Supreme Court does not look good for the state’s case.
Chimenti was already serving time in 2002 when Knight ruled that he could withdraw his guilty plea because he had not been correctly advised of the punishment he would receive.
He was released from prison, but the prosecutors appealed and won. Mazzone went to the Supreme Court, and the high court bounced the case back to the appeals panel with the encouraging news for Chimenti.
Chimenti was allowed to post a $10,000 appeal bond in 2002, but Knight said he would send him back to prison if he was ever arrested. In May, he was arrested and sent back to prison when he was picked up in a car in which stolen property was found.
Mazzone claimed Chimenti didn’t know there was stolen property in the car.
“It’s been up and down for Mr. Chimenti,” Knight told him, “like a roller coaster.”
Then he warned Chimenti that if he should make bail, “all the conditions, including no arrests, still apply.”
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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