Wapato man receives 50-year sentence for three homicides

SPOKANE — A Wapato man who pleaded guilty earlier this year to three counts of second-degree murder on Yakama tribal land has been sentenced to 50 years in federal prison, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington in Spokane.

Clifton Frank Peter, 37, pleaded guilty earlier to killing three people with a shotgun following what the press release called a day spent consuming alcohol and playing video games in his house located inside the boundaries of the Confederated Bands and Tribes of the Yakama Nation.

The names and ages of the victims were not given in the press release. Peter was arrested by Yakima County Sheriff’s Office deputies and Yakama Nation Police.

“Three people are dead. Two children have been orphaned without any immediate family in the United States. A family patriarch will never see his grandchildren graduate from high school or walk his daughter down the aisle,” said U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref in the press release. “Violence like this is not normal and cannot be normalized.”

Waldref said the U.S. Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting violent crime across Eastern Washington, regardless of where it happens, including on tribal land.

Peter, himself an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation, was previously convicted in Yakima County Superior Court of first-degree robbery with a deadly weapon and theft of a motor vehicle in 2011 and sentenced to three years in prison, followed by a 2013 conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm, the press release noted.

In addition to the prison sentence, Peter was also ordered to pay restitution of $86,170 and submit to five years of court supervision following the end of his prison term, the press release said.