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Teen who killed family may spend less time in jail

By Amelia Dickson, The Olympian
Published: April 28, 2017, 11:32pm

OLYMPIA — Brian Bassett, who was convicted of killing his mother, father and 5-year-old brother in 1995 at their McCleary area home, could get a new, lighter sentence, following a decision this week by the state Court of Appeals.

Bassett was 16 at the time of the murders, in August 1995. The court decided that the previous sentence — life in prison without parole — wasn’t appropriate for someone so young at the time of conviction.

Grays Harbor County Prosecutor Katie Svoboda told The Daily World in Aberdeen that attorneys now must decide whether to ask the state Supreme Court to review the ruling, or to have Bassett sentenced again.

Bassett and his friend Nicholaus J. McDonald, then 17, were charged with the slayings. According to court testimony, McDonald hid the family’s bodies off a logging road and the two teens stole a family vehicle and fled to California. Bassett’s parents had kicked him out of the family home roughly a week before, The Olympian reported.

Bassett was convicted of three counts of aggravated first-degree murder. McDonald was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder. McDonald is serving time at the Airway Heights Correction Center. Brian Bassett is at the Monroe Correctional Complex.

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