SPOKANE — The family of a man who admitted he planted a bomb at Spokane’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade is asking a federal judge to issue a lenient sentence.
Family members of Kevin W. Harpham, 37, described him in letters to the judge as a gentle, intelligent, well-liked young man whose actions puzzled them.
“I know how and what he is,” Harpham’s mother, Lana Harpham, wrote to U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush. “I am very proud to say he is my son. I would want no other.”
The letters are part of a package presented to the court by Harpham’s defense attorneys in advance of his Nov. 30 sentencing. He faces 27 to 32 years in federal prison.
Prosecutors will file their sentencing recommendation soon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said. He had no comment on the defense request for 27 years.
Harpham pleaded guilty in September to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to injure people in a hate crime. Two other charges will be dismissed.
Harpham was arrested in March 9 after federal investigators tracked evidence, including the purchase of lead fishing weights that were laced with rat poison and packed into the bomb as shrapnel.
The bomb was discovered along the parade route Jan. 17 and disarmed without exploding. There were no injuries.
Harpham’s attorneys wrote that a sentence of 27 years was sufficient.
“Mr. Harpham, who has lived an exemplary life until recent events, who has no criminal history, who has been a good son, brother, neighbor, soldier and friend deserves to have this Court take into account the good works that account for the majority of his life,” defense attorneys wrote.
“I have never seen Kevin be anything but gentle with both people and animals,” wrote his sister, Carmen Harpham.
The letters describe family members attempting to understand how the man they knew would leave a bomb in downtown Spokane.
“There are many things that I have heard over the past nine months regarding my brother’s actions that I cannot explain,” Carmen Harpham wrote. “While I know we do not share a common philosophy about race, I am puzzled at what brought my brother to this point in his life.”
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