MONROE — Frank Chimenti Jr. is out of prison, but he isn’t free.

He knows that any day now he could be returning to serve roughly four more years behind bars.

When he shuts his eyes, the 20-year-old Monroe man hears the sounds of the cellblock: the slamming doors, the cacophony of people living close together, the blaring commands from the prison’s public address system.

" Main line! Main line! " Chimenti said. "That’s how they wake you up in the morning. They go, ‘Main line! Main line!’ "

Chimenti served more than a year at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center on the Olympic Peninsula after pleading guilty to a first-degree burglary he committed in July 2000.

He was 16 when the crime occurred. Even so, he wound up with a five-year sentence in an adult prison because of separate state laws that automatically required him to be treated as an adult and to receive harsh punishment because firearms were stolen during the break-in.

Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Gerald Knight in April 2002 allowed Chimenti to withdraw his guilty plea after the man’s lawyer, Pete Mazzone of Everett, presented records showing Chimenti was not correctly advised of his punishment.

Chimenti was released from prison while prosecutors appealed. In May, the state court of appeals ruled Chimenti’s conviction should stand.

Mazzone is now trying to convince the state Supreme Court to weigh in. A decision on whether it will hear the case could come at any time.

Although he vows to press the case as far as he can for as long as he can, Mazzone acknowledged that Chimenti’s best chance for continued freedom probably rests on being able to negotiate a deal with prosecutors.

"It boggles my mind to figure out why it is they are pushing this thing," Mazzone said. "If there is anybody who deserves a second chance, here is the guy."

Chimenti wouldn’t be facing this crisis if he had remained in prison and served his time, said Mark Roe, the county’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor.

"It is not our fault he got out in the first place. He shouldn’t have gotten out," Roe said. "It was his choice to do (his sentence) in two parts, not ours."

Court papers show Chimenti was a teenager who had attended high school special education classes when he accepted a ride home from a nearly 20-year-old five-time felon. Before the afternoon was out, he had assisted the older man in burglarizing a Snohomish-area home.

The thieves stole firearms and other items. The homeowner surprised them when they were carting loot out of the garage. A scary confrontation ensued, but ended without injuries.

Because of the seriousness of the offense, plus Chimenti’s prior misdemeanor juvenile convictions for property crimes, the case was automatically sent to adult court. That was in keeping with state law. So was the minimum five-year sentence imposed in March 2001.

The sentence came under the state’s "hard time for armed crime" laws, a set of tough punishments for firearms-related offenses approved by voters in the mid-1990s.

Before advising his client to plead guilty, Chimenti’s previous attorney tried to convince prosecutors to charge him with something less than first-degree burglary, a move that would have kept the then-teenage offender in the juvenile system and out of adult prison.

Roe said that wasn’t an option.

"This wasn’t a nonviolent offense," he said. "This offense was interrupted by a homeowner. These are not kids who turned around and ran way. They confronted that homeowner."

The man whose home was burglarized declined to be interviewed for this story.

Chimenti, who turned 20 in late October, said he is no longer the same person and regrets scaring the man.

"He probably thought he was going to die," Chimenti said. "He was screaming. He was freaking out."

But Chimenti said he has already spent substantial time behind bars. He said he’s spent the time since his 2002 release working on-call temporary jobs and doing his best to stay out of trouble. Records show he has a couple of traffic tickets.

Chimenti said that, if ordered, he’ll serve the rest of his sentence. But he hopes that doesn’t happen.

"It would probably teach me an even harder lesson, but I don’t think it will help me in the long run," he said. "You don’t learn to walk straight or mind your Ps and Qs in prison. I get discouraged sometimes. I give up. You know why? It is because I don’t know what is going to happen."

Roe said that whatever happens in Chimenti’s life is really up to the defendant.

"The ultimate choice of whether he moves on and becomes a better person is his, not ours," the prosecutor said. "Maybe part of becoming a better person is that he can’t evade responsibility for what he’s done. The passage of time doesn’t make it less serious."

Chimenti’s case in 2002 attracted statewide attention at a time when the state Sentencing Guidelines Commission and others were reexamining some of the get-tough laws adopted in Washington in the mid-1990s. State lawmakers have considered, but not passed, changes in state law that would give judges greater discretion in sentencing teens facing adult punishment.

Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.