Conviction of Royal City man upheld

SPOKANE – The Washington State Court of Appeals upheld a 2012 conviction of a Royal City man involved in a string of gang-related crimes in Grant County.

Salvador Garcia Sanchez, 22, was convicted in April 2012 for intimidating a witness, harassment, second-degree assault while armed with a deadly weapon and riot while armed with a deadly weapon.

Garcia Sanchez appealed the convictions, claiming the trial court exceeded its authority in allowing the jury to consider gang aggravator evidence. He claimed that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to timely move to divide the gang enhancement from the trial on the substantive offenses.

Garcia Sanchez also contended the state failed to prove the witness intimidation charge and that the charging documents and “to convict” instructions were constitutionally deficient for failing to include the “true threat” element.

The charges stemmed from four incidents over a six-month period, beginning Oct. 31, 2010, when Garcia Sanchez and three others left a Halloween party in Othello to meet up with women in Soap Lake. A Soap Lake police officer witnessed the driver make an illegal U-turn and, when the officer attempted to stop the suspected vehicle, one man inside the car shot at the officer.

The suspects escaped but the next day, one of the men confessed to the incident to police and identified the shooter.

About two months later, Garcia Sanchez saw the man who confessed driving in Royal City. Garcia Sanchez ran into the middle of the street to stop the vehicle, ran to the passenger side of the car, attempted to open the door and break the window while calling the man “a snitch” and threatening to kill him. Garcia Sanchez reportedly threw rocks at the vehicle after seeing the man again later in the day, according to court records.

In January 2011, a group of men, including Garcia Sanchez, approached two men at a home in Royal City and began flashing gang signs. Garcia Sanchez then hit one of the men, a rival gang member, in the head with a metal object and continued to hit him at least four times after the man fell to the ground.

A few months later, Garcia Sanchez and several other men again approached the same man in his vehicle, urging him to fight. The man opened his window and Garcia Sanchez reach through and hit him on the head with a closed fist.

Two Grant County juries found Garcia Sanchez guilty and he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

The appeals court judge affirmed the convictions, adding the trial court correctly allowed the jury to consider whether Garcia Sanchez committed the crimes “with intent to directly or indirectly cause any benefit, aggrandizement, gain, profit, or other advantage to or for a criminal street gang.”

The judge also said there was substantial overlap between the gang evidence presented during trial and the evidence relevant to establish the substantive crimes and evidence that Garcia Sanchez was a member of a street gang, that gang members exact revenge on “snitches” and that the fight with rival gang members was relevant to motives in both trials.

Garcia Sanchez failed to show a reasonable probability the outcome of the trials would have been different if evidence of unrelated criminal acts were presented at a separate proceeding.

The judge also determined there was sufficient evidence to support Garcia Sanchez’s conviction for intimidation of a witness as well as sufficient evidence to support the convictions of felony riot and second-degree assault.

The state cross appealed the pretrial dismissal of a gang enhancement that could have led to an exceptional sentence. Although the appeal court ruled the trial court did not have the authority to separately dismiss the gang enhancement without a motion to dismiss the underlying charges, it was ruled any error was harmless and it is unlikely the trial court would have imposed an exceptional sentence even with the gang enhancement.

Despite extensive gang-related evidence presented at trial, the court imposed a standard range sentence.