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House bill addresses mandatory long sentences

Wiebe case was a "tragic example"

By Paris Achen
Published: January 19, 2015, 4:00pm
2 Photos
Jarrod Wiebe is placed in handcuffs in Clark County Superior Court after a jury found him guilty Oct. 1 of multiple felonies associated with a home-invasion robbery in Ridgefield.
Jarrod Wiebe is placed in handcuffs in Clark County Superior Court after a jury found him guilty Oct. 1 of multiple felonies associated with a home-invasion robbery in Ridgefield. Paris Achen/Columbian files Photo Gallery

What: Public hearing on House Bill 1148 to give judges discretion in firearm enhancement sentencing.

When: 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Where: John L. O’Brien Building at the Washington Capitol campus in Olympia.

Watch online: www.tvw.org

A state House bill would give judges more discretion in sentencing defendants convicted of felonies involving firearms. The bill’s introduction comes after a Snohomish man with no prior felony history was sentenced to some 45 years in prison in October for serving as an unarmed lookout during a home-invasion robbery in Ridgefield.

Jarrod A. Wiebe, 27, of Snohomish received a much more severe sentence than his three co-conspirators in the Dec. 19, 2013, robbery, even though he was the least culpable of the group, according to prosecutors.

State Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, has introduced legislation that would help curb disproportionate sentences for convictions with firearm enhancements, which means the crime involved a firearm. Currently, each firearm enhancement adds another mandatory five years to any base sentence, and each additional five years must be served consecutively with no credit for good behavior.

House Bill 1148 would give judges the discretion to impose shorter sentences in certain cases, including when the defendant is an accomplice or when the crime was attempted but not completed, said Goodman, who chairs the House Committee on Public Safety.

What: Public hearing on House Bill 1148 to give judges discretion in firearm enhancement sentencing.

When: 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Where: John L. O'Brien Building at the Washington Capitol campus in Olympia.

Watch online: www.tvw.org

“We’ve been looking at cases in which the sentences are clearly excessive in relation to the course of conduct,” Goodman said. “We have a very structured sentencing system, which binds judges in not being able to use their discretion.”

“Certainly in this Wiebe case, it was sort of a tragic example,” he added.

Unlike his co-conspirators, Wiebe was not armed and was not inside the Ridgefield home where one victim was tied up as the defendants stole a collection of firearms. In an agreement with prosecutors, Wiebe’s co-defendants pleaded guilty to reduced charges and received sentences ranging from 4½ to 14 years in prison.

Clark County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu offered Wiebe a similar deal. Instead, Wiebe opted to go to trial in Superior Court, where a jury found him guilty on Oct. 1 of 16 felonies.

Wiebe’s convictions were largely based on state law that holds accomplices accountable for the crimes of their co-conspirators regardless of their roles in the acts. Under the Hard Time for Armed Crime Act of 1995, each firearm enhancement added another mandatory five years to a base sentence, all of which must be served consecutively and with no credit for good behavior. That meant that Judge Scott Collier had almost no discretion in determining Wiebe’s sentence on Oct. 23.

Wiebe was convicted of first-degree burglary, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery, second-degree extortion, first-degree criminal impersonation and 10 counts of firearm theft.

Wiebe’s sentence was reduced last month to about 25 years when his defense attorney, Chris Ramsey, and Vu made a joint recommendation to vacate Wiebe’s kidnapping convictions and merge them with the robbery convictions. Ramsey argued that the kidnapping was incidental to the robbery crime under state law, and Collier agreed. As a result of fewer convictions, Collier was able to shave about 20 years off of Wiebe’s 45-year sentence.

“There could be some argument that this still could be an unjust sentence considering when you look at it in comparison to the co-defendants who got 4½ years, 10 years and 14 years,” Collier said last month.

Wiebe’s mother, Vicky Wiebe, said she plans to speak in favor of Goodman’s bill at a Wednesday hearing in front of the House Committee on Public Safety.

“I need this if my son has to go through this, endure this,” Vicky Wiebe said in a phone interview with The Columbian. “It has to count for something. I can’t let another person go down for doing someone else’s dirty work.”

State Rep. Lynda Wilson, R-Vancouver, also serves on the nine-member committee but said she was not yet prepared to comment on the legislation.

On the morning of Dec. 19, 2013, Wiebe and three friends — Larry C. Kyle, Ruben Vega and Regan C. Davis — traveled on Interstate 5 together in a white Isuzu Trooper from the Snohomish area to Ridgefield, Vu said during Wiebe’s trial.

Testimony in the five-day trial conflicted over whether Wiebe was with his three friends when they forced their way inside the single-wide mobile home of a 45-year-old worker on a dairy farm in the 23000 block of Northwest Hillhurst Road. However, both the farmworker, Casimiro Arellano, and his longtime partner, Manatalia Barragan, testified that Wiebe served as a lookout while Kyle, Vega and Davis restrained Arellano with disposable plastic flex cuffs and threatened to call immigration if he didn’t surrender his firearms and give them $10,000.

Kyle, Vega and Davis were armed with loaded pistols, Vu said. Barragan testified through an interpreter that Wiebe helped the other men steal 10 firearms from the home and pack them in the Trooper.

Kyle, 38, of North Bend pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery and second-degree extortion and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Vu said Kyle was the ringleader.

Vega, 37, also of North Bend pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery and second-degree kidnapping and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Davis, 53, of Everett entered an Alford plea, acknowledging that a jury could find him guilty of first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary and theft of a firearm, and was sentenced to 53 months in prison.

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