Dibartolo Fights Long Sentence Attorney Says Police Training Not A Factor In Wife’s Murder

With 30 years of Tom DiBartolo’s life in the balance, his attorney argued that the former sheriff’s deputy didn’t try to use his law enforcement training to get away with murder.

DiBartolo is a grieving widower unfairly blamed for betraying the public trust, Maryann Moreno said in a legal motion filed Friday.

“The state has not shown sufficient grounds for an exceptional sentence,” she said.

Prosecutors will point to DiBartolo’s two decades of police service when they request a 50-year sentence Wednesday.

The standard sentencing range for first-degree murder is 20 to 26 years - punishment Moreno supports.

In challenging Prosecutor Jim Sweetser’s arguments for the extra-long term, Moreno said no testimony during the trial showed that DiBartolo, 43, used police training in carrying out and concealing the crime.

She focused on contentions that DiBartolo shot his wife on Nov. 2, 1996, during an evening shift change to take advantage of a slower police response.

But the murder occurred during an overlapping shift change, she wrote, when an unusually large number of police officers were standing by.

“That’s the prime time to get a call answered,” she said in an interview Friday.

Sweetser also said DiBartolo’s account of the shooting was drawn from his police background.

DiBartolo claims he and his wife were strolling through Lincoln Park when two black men attacked them. One of them shot Patty DiBartolo in the head, he said.

DiBartolo told police he tried to disarm one man, and fired three shots as they fled - both standard police procedures.

“As a law enforcement officer sworn to uphold the law, he betrayed the public trust,” said Sweetser.

Judges have discretion to give exceptionally long sentences if they find “substantial and compelling” reasons for harsher punishment.

Moreno also disputed Sweetser’s argument that DiBartolo instigated racial unrest in Spokane by blaming minorities for the murder.

The community turmoil predated Patty DiBartolo’s murder, she said.

She cited an Oct. 23, 1996, news story detailing criticism of Sweetser by black community leaders. They demanded - but did not get - charges pressed against a white woman who stabbed a young black man.

“Mr. DiBartolo cannot be blamed for public unrest when that public unrest and dissatisfaction already existed,” Moreno wrote.

Disputing Sweetser’s pre-sentencing argument that DiBartolo lacks remorse, Moreno noted that witnesses saw him crying the night of the murder.

“Refusal to admit guilt or remaining silent is an exercise of one’s rights, not an indication of lack of remorse,” she wrote.

But DiBartolo’s sexual liaison the night of his wife’s funeral was hardly an act of grief, Sweetser countered.

“Any remorse was a big act he was orchestrating,” Sweetser said.

Moreno said she may call witnesses at the sentencing hearing before Spokane Superior Court Judge Neal Q. Rielly, but will wait until prosecutors produce their list of witnesses.

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