Attorney seeks to bring teen case back to juvenile court

U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grant County case cited

The attorney for 13-year-old Evan Savoie has filed a motion to bring his first-degree murder trial back to juvenile court, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Grant County case.

Attorney Monte Hormel argued that Superior Court Judge John Antosz' decision to try Savoie and Jake Eakin as adults is unconstitutional because of the recent Blakely decision, and the case should be sent back to juvenile court.

"The unconstitutional dilution of the standards of proof significantly undermines confidence in the outcome of the declination hearing and requires the court to vacate its decision and return this case for juvenile adjudication," Hormel wrote.

Savoie, who lives in Ephrata, and Eakin, who lives in Moses Lake, are accused of beating and stabbing to death 13-year-old Craig Sorger on Feb.15, 2003 in Oasis Park in Ephrata.

Both boys were 12 years old at the time of the alleged crime. They are the youngest defendants to potentially face trial in adult court in

Washington history.

Hormel argued that because of the Blakely decision, all factors of a crime must be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt" to warrant a sentence

beyond the maximum amount of time allowed by law.

As a juvenile, Savoie could serve a maximum of 180 weeks in prison for first-degree murder until his 21st birthday if he is found guilty. As an

adult, he faces between 240 months and 320 months.

To warrant that increase in time served, Hormel wrote prosecutors must be held to a higher standard of proof, which can only be decided by a jury.

"Any fact necessary to increase the sentence beyond that maximum must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt," he wrote.

No similar motion has yet been made for Eakin though Alan White, Eakin's attorney, said that he will file a similar motion in the near future.

Eakin and Savoie have both denied committing the murder, though they were the last people seen with Sorger before his death.

Their trial was scheduled to begin Sept. 14, but White requested it be pushed back until next January. Eakin and Savoie have been held in the

Grant County Juvenile Detention Center since their arrest 19 months ago.

Antosz made his decision this March following an eight-day declination hearing. His focus was the eight guidelines known as the Kent factors,

which determine whether adult court should be declined for a juvenile defendant.

In a 41-page written ruling, Antosz pointed to the seriousness of the crime, the protection of the public and an unlikely rehabilitation in the

juvenile court as the primary reasons to move the case to adult court.

Attorneys for both boys appealed that case to the Court of Appeals in Spokane, which upheld Antosz' decision. The appellate court made its

ruling before the Blakely decision.

Grant County Prosecutor John Knodell said the effects of the Blakely case are unknown, and he predicts numerous other contests to judges'

sentencing to surface in Washington.

Arguments on Hormel's motion are scheduled for Sept. 14. But Knodell, who is arguing the motion in lieu of Deputy Prosecutor Ed Owens, who is sick,

said he will ask for a continuance of the motion.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision this spring that judges cannot impose a sentence greater than the statutory maximum when not all

the facts have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

The decision stemmed from the case of Ralph Howard Blakely, a rancher who pleaded guilty to the second-degree kidnapping of his wife in 1998, a

crime that held a sentencing range of 49 to 53 months.

Grant County Superior Court Judge Evan Sperline sentenced Blakely to 90 months in prison because of the mitigating factors in the crime. Blakely

had forced his wife into a homemade coffin and drove her to Montana from Grant County.

The ruling threw into limbo 40 years of sentencing laws in Washington state, where judges can impose a sentence outside the maximum when they feel the factors of the crime deem it necessary.