Court upholds 28-year sentence for rapist

SPOKANE — A three-judge panel of Washington’s Division III Court of Appeals has upheld a 64-year-old Soap Lake man’s 28-year prison sentence for the 2014 rape of a 17-year-old boy.

A contemporary statement from the victim to police indicated he traveled to the Corsican Apartments in Soap Lake to visit a friend who was moving away. Jeffry McFadden had approached the victim and said the friend was at McFadden’s home.

Once the two approached McFadden’s door, McFadden took out a bullet-shaped knife and held it to the victim’s chest while placing a hand over his mouth, telling the victim to enter McFadden’s home.

The victim told police that McFadden showed him a rifle and said “he didn’t care who he killed,” before proceeding to rape the victim. Before allowing the victim to leave, McFadden told him that “he would hunt me to the ends of the earth if I so much as told a single soul,” and proceeded to say he knew where the victim lived.

McFadden was apprehended later that night by police, and was initially charged with first degree rape, first degree kidnapping, second degree assault, and unlawful possession of a firearm. All but the unlawful possession charges included deadly weapon enhancements.

As part of a negotiated plea agreement, the State agreed to amend the charges to first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, distribution of marijuana to a minor and intimidating a witness, allowing McFadden to avoid a persistent offender sentence of life without possibility of parole.

The court imposed an exceptional sentence of above-range terms of 114 months for unlawful firearm possession and 115 months for intimidating a witness, and a 114-month standard range term for marijuana distribution. Those sentences were to run consecutively for a total of 343 months, or about 29 years, in prison.

McFadden agreed to the exceptional sentence “because of the high risk of a third strike if he went to trial,” court documents show. McFadden was a convicted felon before the incident occurred and had been previously convicted of rape in Oklahoma.

However, McFadden later appealed the trial court’s decision, arguing that the court did not have statutory authority to run the sentences consecutively.

The state appeals court rejected this argument, stating that McFadden had ignored existing statutes authorizing a trial court to impose consecutive sentence if the defendant and the state agree to an exceptional sentence, as occurred in this case.