The case of a man who abused his wife for years on a filthy sailboat may be headed back to Snohomish County Superior Court for sentencing after a recent state Court of Appeals ruling.
Victor Matthew David was sentenced in 2001 to an exceptionally long prison term of 10 years on a second-degree assault conviction, a crime that normally would have netted between six months and a year in jail.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne imposed the maximum penalty allowed by law when David was sentenced in August 2001.
Wynne agreed with prosecutors that evidence showed David for years had been responsible for the abuse of his wife, Linda David.
Victor David was supposed to be his wife’s caregiver. Instead, his beatings left her brain-damaged, blind and unable to walk.
The exceptionally long sentence came into question in June 2004 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juries, not judges, need to decide if defendants deserve exceptionally long prison terms.
The case, known as Blakely vs. Washington, affected state and federal sentencing rules around the nation.
Wynne used six “aggravating factors” to determine David’s sentence, which came three years before the U.S. Supreme Court decision. Nonetheless, an appeals court said it was an improper sentence in view of the Blakely decision.
To get the same prison term, prosecutors would have to bring the case back to court and conduct a sentencing proceeding in front of a jury, said Mark Roe, chief criminal deputy prosecutor. That process would be similar to a full-blown trial.
Roe on Friday said he hadn’t decided what to do.
“It can come back for re-sentencing, or we can try an appeal,” Roe said. “My decision, having tried the case … is to look at how much time he has served and how much time he has left to serve, and determine a course of action.”
David had two trials. In the first, a jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
He was arrested in 1999 and has been in custody since. Under state law, he is entitled to time off his sentence for good behavior (about one-third off), possibly meaning that he will have served his full sentence in a year or two anyway.
Roe said he needs to calculate whether it would be worth judicial time to bring him back for a lengthy sentencing hearing.
“There’s a lot of work ahead of us if we’re going to have that sentence reimposed,” Roe said. “In essence, we have to do some math.”
Roe said the high court’s decision was frustrating because trial judges rarely impose exceptionally long sentences.
“In Snohomish County, at least, the application of Blakely was the imposition of a cure for a disease that doesn’t exist,” Roe said.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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