Northwest Briefly: State Supreme court limits child porn charges
Published 10:49 pm Friday, April 10, 2009
OLYMPIA — People found with images of child pornography can be prosecuted under Washington law only for a single offense per possession, not multiple counts based on the number of images or children, the state Supreme Court has ruled.
To the outspoken dismay of prosecutors and a dissenting justice, the high court on Thursday upheld an appeals court ruling that requires the resentencing of Randy J. Sutherby on one count, rather than the seven on which he was sentenced in Grays Harbor County Superior Court.
Writing for the majority in the 8-1 ruling, Justice Debra L. Stephens noted that state law bars possession of “any” visual or printed image depicting a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and that the high court has consistently determined that the word “any” means everything, regardless of quantity.
As a result, she wrote, the proper unit for child pornography prosecution is one count per possession, rather than one for each image or each child who is depicted.
In a separate ruling, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn Sutherby’s convictions for child rape and child molestation on grounds of ineffective counsel because his privately hired initial lawyer did not ask to have the rape and molestation cases heard separately from the porn charges.
Medicaid employee charged with theft
The Washington Attorney General’s Office says a state health case manager used her position to funnel money to her own family.
The Federal Way woman, Sarah Matovu, and two members of her family pleaded not guilty Thursday in King County Superior Court to charges of theft and making a false statement to Medicaid.
She worked in the Division of Developmental Disabilities in Kent and was trusted to authorize care for patients with cerebral palsy, autism and mental disabilities.
Bellingham: WWU dorm construction
Work begins in three months on a 100-bed dormitory addition at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
The $11.6 million addition to Buchanan Towers is WWU’s first new dorm in about 40 years. The school applied for a building permit March 26, plans to advertise for bids this month and expects construction to begin in early July.
The addition is designed to meet high environmental standards when it is opened for the fall term next year.
Meanwhile, the school’s long-planned overhaul of another dormitory, Miller Hall, is stalled in the Legislature. The Senate’s proposed Capital budget includes about $47.5 million for the project, but there’s no money for it in the House version.
Miller Hall was built as the Campus School in 1943 and was enlarged in 1968.
Seattle: Private meetings questioned
Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr says the mayor and City Council may be violating the state’s open meeting law by holding private sessions on the budget.
The Seattle Times says one of its reporters was ejected from one such meeting Thursday when an aide dragged the reporter away by the strap on her bag.
Officials said the meetings would be kept small, without a quorum of council members, so they would not violate the Open Public Meetings Act.
Judge punished for rudeness again
King County’s own “Judge Judy” is once again being punished for rudeness.
The state’s Judicial Conduct Commission censured Judge Judith Eiler on Friday and suggested that the Supreme Court suspend her for 90 days without pay.
The commission says Eiler frequently cut off defendants when they tried to speak, belittled them and didn’t allow them to present evidence — the same conduct that drew a reprimand for Eiler from the commission in 2005.
“Witnesses … testified that they left the judge’s courtroom with little respect for the judiciary or the judicial process,” the opinion said.
Eiler, who works in a courtroom in Issaquah, completed sensitivity training following the earlier reprimand. Her lawyer, Anne Bremner, says she’s just a no-nonsense judge with an extremely high caseload and that people appearing before her are sometimes upset when she won’t dismiss their traffic tickets.
Yakima: State snowpack normal
A cold, wet March has pushed Washington’s mountain snowpack to about normal, but some pockets of the state still face lower than average stream flows this summer.
Overall, the measurements show snowpack averaged 99 percent of normal statewide, but conditions differ dramatically from basin to basin.
As a result, summer stream flow forecasts vary from 125 percent of average on the Cedar and Rex rivers, in the central Cascades just east of Seattle, to 59 percent of average on north-central Washington’s Okanogan River, according to April 1 measurements taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Federal Way: Baby death leads to arrests
Federal Way police have arrested a 14-year-old girl and say they will recommend she be charged with second-degree murder in the death of a newborn found in her bedroom.
Police said Friday they also arrested the baby’s father, a 20-year-old Federal Way resident, for investigation of second-degree child rape because of the mother’s young age.
The baby girl was found unresponsive Thursday in the teenager’s bedroom at the Club Palisades Apartments and was later declared dead.
Investigators arrested the teen after learning the baby was alive when born.
Vancouver, Wash.: School chief pay cut
Vancouver, Wash., school Superintendent Steven Webb has voluntarily taken a 4.5 percent pay cut, and he’s asking teachers to take a 1 percent reduction.
Citing state budget cuts, Webb says he’s having his pay cut to $204,370 from $214,000.
Vancouver schools face a $5.6 million to $8 million shortfall out of a $212 million budget.
Tacoma: Two years for timber theft
A man responsible for stealing old-growth red cedar trees — some more than 600 years old — from the Olympic National Forest has been sentenced to two years in prison.
The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton was longer than the 18-month sentence prosecutors requested for 46-year-old Craig James of Aberdeen.
James and several others illegally cut 31 trees from the old-growth stand near Nielton. They falsified paperwork to say the trees were cut on private land.
Associated Press
