SEATTLE (AP) — The office of Gov. Chris Gregoire says she’s considering whether to overrule a state board and block the parole of a man who has served seven years in prison for a cold case murder conviction.
The Seattle Times reports King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg and the family of Kristen Sumstad are opposing the decision of the state Indeterminate Sentence Review Board to release John Nicholas Athan as soon as next month.
The 43-year-old was convicted in 2004 of second-degree murder in the 1982 killing of Sumstad when he was 14 and she was a 13-year-old neighbor in Seattle. The case went unsolved for two decades until police got a DNA sample from Athan by tricking him into licking an envelope.
The parole board says Athan is unlikely to reoffend.
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Information from: The Seattle Times, http://www.seattletimes.com
