SEATTLE — A 10-year prison term was too harsh for a man who was convicted of severely abusing his wife, leaving her blind, partially deaf, unable to speak and physically deformed, a state Court of Appeals panel has ruled.
A unanimous three-judge panel ruled Monday that Victor M. David, 67, who has maintained throughout the highly publicized case that he is innocent, must be resentenced within state guidelines that specify about a year behind bars for second-degree assault.
Resentencing will be a formality, however, because David was released from prison about a year ago and was deported to Canada, defense lawyer Oliver Ross Davis said.
David was convicted in 2001 after medics pulled his severely malnourished and battered wife, Linda, from a cramped and dirty sailboat where investigators said she had been kept as a prisoner.
David, paid by the state Department of Health and Social Services as her caretaker, claimed the couple had been battling with drug dealers and that she had been injured falling out of a truck.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne gave David the maximum sentence allowable under the law, saying no punishment he could impose would be proportionate to the crime.
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