Teenager sentenced in murder of friend, 17

Fifteen-year-old James N. Beasley got more than he bargained for Friday when he was sentenced for the first-degree murder of a longtime friend in a drug robbery.

Beasley’s plea bargain in Spokane County Juvenile Court called for a below-standard sentence of 23/4 to 31/2 years in a state juvenile rehabilitation center, but he got a standard sentence that could keep him locked up until he turns 21.

The indeterminate sentence calls for Beasley to serve at least 31/2 years, but it is less harsh than the one wished on him by victim Matthew Migaki’s aunt, Colleen Egan.

“I hope you are imprisoned for the rest of your life by anguish and regret,” Egan said at Beasley’s sentencing.

Beasley helped plan and execute a botched robbery in which Migaki, a 17-year-old Shadle Park High School student, was shot to death June 5. Beasley supplied the shotgun and ammunition that killed Migaki, who had been a friend since grade school.

Two co-defendants – Caleb J. Hanowell, 17, who was another childhood friend of Migaki’s, and Nicholas J. Walter, 24, the alleged shooter – face trial next spring in adult court.

Even though Beasley got more incarceration than he expected, his plea bargain still requires him to tell jurors what he has told authorities: that he and his co-defendants planned to rob Migaki while pretending to buy marijuana from him, but Walter accidentally shot him.

The plan called for Walter to intimidate Migaki by working the action of a sawed-off shotgun, but the gun fired and struck Migaki in the neck as the four young men sat in a car on a side street near the Safeway store at Francis and Monroe, according to court documents.

Walter was supposed to flee with the loot and share it with Beasley and Hanowell later. Meanwhile, Hanowell and Beasley would tell Migaki they didn’t know Walter was going to rob him, according to Wayne Ristau, supervisor of the Juvenile Court investigation unit.

Under Washington’s felony murder rule, defendants can be convicted of murder if a victim dies in the course of a robbery or some other felony.

If Beasley fails to testify against Hanowell and Walter, his conviction and sentence may be revoked and Deputy Prosecutor Bill Reeves may resume his efforts to transfer Beasley to adult court, where first-degree murder sentences start at 20 years.

Also, a first-degree robbery charge could be restored.

Ristau opposed the below-standard sentence recommended by county Counsel for Defense attorney Megan Manlove and Reeves. Public safety and prospects for rehabilitating Beasley required a longer, standard sentence, Ristau told Judge Ellen Kalama Clark.

Clark agreed.

Ristau prepared a report on Beasley and found his behavior in school had been “really pretty good” in view of a turbulent home life in which he moved from one relative’s home to another’s. Beasley’s only brush with the law involved marijuana use.

Even so, Ristau told Clark, “There’s a lot of information that we may not know about this young man.”

Ristau said he was particularly concerned that Beasley’s crime involved “quite a period” of planning and betrayal of a longtime friend, whose family also had befriended him.

“If you had no intention of killing my brother, then why was the gun loaded?” Migaki’s sister Kayla asked Beasley in court.

Bruce Migaki said he and his wife, MaryAnn, now fear for their two teenage daughters whenever the girls leave their house.

“I can’t even imagine what Christmas will be like this year without Matt,” MaryAnn Migaki said. “What have we got to celebrate?”

She said she hoped Beasley would devote his life to God and helping people in her son’s name.

But one of Beasley’s sisters, Kristina Arnold, told the victim’s relatives that “we all must move on, and God will not forgive you and let you into heaven if you cannot forgive.”

Beasley apologized in a brief statement.

“This was a very obscene act, and I shouldn’t have done it,” he said.