In 1986, Dwight Emmett McGunnigle had been riding in his wife’s Porsche 914 sports car when a .357 magnum pistol discharged, killing Kathleen McGunnigle almost instantly.
His version was that she was on drugs and obsessed with guns. He said he was defending himself when she pulled the gun to force him to give her money.
Prosecutors maintained that he was at fault, killing her in the middle of a domestic fight.
A jury believed the prosecutors, convicting McGunnigle, now 51, of second-degree murder.
He served less than 10 years in prison and was released in 1995.
However, a pair of state Supreme Courts threw out McGunnigle’s conviction, along with scores of others around the state. All those murder defendants were convicted under a theory that death, which was unintended, occurred during an assault.
McGunnigle, of Camano Island, was back in Snohomish County Superior Court Monday to plead guilty to attempted second-degree assault, the lowest class of felony.
He will suffer no additional penalty as a result of his guilty plea because he already has served considerably more time behind bars than the nine months the crime carries under the state sentencing range.
With Everett defense lawyer Mark Mestel at his side, McGunnigle took the guilty plea rather than risk the possibility of the prosecutor filing intentional murder or manslaughter charges, serious felonies that would remain on his record if a jury convicted him.
Deputy prosecutor Seth Fine told Judge Gerald Knight that trying McGunnigle again for the shooting would be a waste of taxpayer money and judicial effort because he already had served nearly 10 years.
“He pleaded guilty to what the jury found,” Fine said.
Even with a new murder or manslaughter conviction, “the bottom line is he would have walked out of the court a free man because he already served the sentence.”
McGunnigle said he made the most of his time in prison, getting the equivalent of a high school diploma and graduating from a University of Washington correspondence course, earning a degree in business administration.
“It’s sad. I loved my wife,” McGunnigle said. “It’s sad.”
After the gun discharged, McGunnigle said, he moved to the driver’s seat, attracted the attention of a police officer and raced to Stevens Hospital, where his wife was declared dead.
“I tried to do everything right,” McGunnigle said.
His is one of more than a dozen Snohomish County cases that have returned to the local court for a new trial or a guilty plea.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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