The Court of Appeals, citing a Clark County judge’s confusion over sentencing laws, ordered the lower court to re-sentence a Vancouver man convicted in 2009 of flipping a courtroom table and injuring a deputy prosecutor.
In an unpublished opinion released Tuesday, the higher court said Clark County Superior Court Judge Robert Harris did not realize he could grant Gerard Gray a sentence that could be served at the same time Gray was in prison on an earlier domestic violence incident.
The panel of judges said the table-flipping incident occurred before Gray was sentenced for the domestic violence case and could, therefore, be considered part of the same case.
That gave the judge, who is now retired, the discretion to run the sentences concurrently. Harris, though, imposed the prison terms consecutively and said he was bound to sentence this way.
The appellate court said Harris was wrong.
“When a person commits a felony prior to being sentenced for another felony, (the law) grants the sentencing court broad discretion in deciding whether to impose a consecutive sentence,” the panel of judges wrote in their opinion.
The higher court remanded Gray, 44, to be resentenced. It was unclear when Gray would come back to Clark County for sentencing; an assistant attorney general who prosecuted the case was not immediately available Wednesday for comment.
During a July 18, 2008, preliminary hearing on the domestic violence case, Gray flipped a heavy courtroom table, injuring Deputy Prosecutor Camara Banfield. Gray was upset at the prosecutor for opposing his request for the judge to lift a no-contact order between himself and his girlfriend.
Gray was subsequently sentenced to 30 years in prison for first-degree kidnapping and second- and fourth-degree assault relating to the argument with his girlfriend at her Hazel Dell residence that escalated to a standoff with police.
As for the table-flipping case, Gray went to trial in September 2009 on a charge of second-degree assault, which could have counted as his third strike under Washington’s law for persistent offenders.
The jury, however, sided with his defense attorney, who argued for a lesser charge of third-degree assault because he said Gray did not have the criminal intent to hurt Banfield.
Gray was sentenced to 50 months in prison. He’s serving his sentence at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.
Laura McVicker: 360-735-4516 or laura.mcvicker@columbian.com.
