Child killer to be resentenced

OLYMPIA – The state Supreme Court on Thursday threw out the extra-long sentence of a Spokane child killer, sending Robert Doney Jr. back to court for resentencing.

The 35-year sentence was 7 1/4 years longer than Doney’s standard maximum for first-degree murder.

“He’ll be resentenced,” said Deputy Prosecutor Mark E. Lindsey. “The question is whether we have the legal basis to impanel a jury and seek an exceptional sentence.”

Angry after arguing with his girlfriend, Joan Richards, Doney killed her 2-year-old daughter, Victoria Ramon, a day after Christmas 2003.

The key issue in the appeal was how the state Court of Appeals applied a law designed to restore above-standard sentencing in such cases after a landmark 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

While Doney was awaiting trial, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that defendants are constitutionally entitled to have juries, not judges, decide facts used as a basis for exceptional sentences.

Three days into his jury trial in March 2005, Doney decided to plead guilty to first-degree murder. His attorney, Tim Trageser, said the plea was intended to avoid any possibility of an exceptional sentence.

Doney later unsuccessfully tried to withdraw the plea on grounds that his strategy was flawed by lack of certainty in the law.

After Doney’s plea, the high court ruled the new law on exceptional sentences didn’t allow a judge to impanel a sentencing jury for defendants, like Doney, who were convicted before the law took effect on April 15, 2005.

About the same time, though, the Washington Legislature established new rules without specifying whether they applied to cases already in progress.

Although he pleaded guilty, Doney did not admit the aggravating factors that justified the longer sentence: deliberate cruelty to a particularly vulnerable victim.

Over Doney’s objection, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque decided the new sentencing rules were retroactive and had a second jury weigh aggravating factors months after Doney was convicted.

Leveque handed down the above-standard sentence in October 2005, and Doney appealed.

While the appeal was pending, the Legislature passed another law that said trial judges could impanel sentencing juries in any case in which an exceptional sentence was overturned and remanded for resentencing.

The problem: Doney’s sentence wasn’t overturned.

According to the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals improperly short-circuited the process.

The appeals court concluded that Leveque had no authority to impanel a sentencing jury when he did so, but that no harm was done. There was no point in remanding Doney’s case because the outcome would be the same, a three-judge panel said.

That assumed too much, the Supreme Court said.

There was no certainty that the prosecutor’s office would again seek an exceptional sentence, justices said.

Also, the court noted that Doney challenged the constitutionality of the 2007 law on which the Court of Appeals based its ruling.

Leveque should have the first chance to rule on the constitutional argument, the Supreme Court said.

Richard Roesler can be reached at (360) 664-2598 or richr@spokesman.com. John Craig can be reached at (509) 927-2165 or johnc@spokesman.com.