Killer Of Teen Girl Given 20-Year Sentence

Donald Dunn Jr. was sentenced to 20 years in prison yesterday for the murder of a 17-year-old girl last June as officials called for tightening gaps in the legal system that had let Dunn off easily for previous assaults against women.

Despite impassioned pleas by the teenager's parents for a longer sentence, King County Superior Court Judge Brian Gain accepted the prosecutor's recommendation to give Dunn the lightest sentence in the standard range.

"Clearly, Mr. Dunn exhibited red flags for a considerable period of time that I think were noticed but unfortunately not effectively dealt with," Gain said. "(But) I cannot go back and make up for insufficiencies in the prior handling of Mr. Dunn."

Dunn was on probation for assaulting his wife - and had violated probation by, among other things, assaulting a 14-year-old girl - when he shot Vanessa Baisden in the back June 2 after holding her hostage in a van outside Snoqualmie.

With good time in prison and credit for time served, Dunn, 23, of Enumclaw, will be out of prison in 16 years.

State officials have questioned how the Dunn case was handled, beginning in 1992, when a felony assault against his wife was plea-bargained to a misdemeanor, in part because she recanted statements to police.

John Ladenburg, Pierce County prosecutor and a board member of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said prosecutors should find ways to fully prosecute domestic-violence

offenders, even when victims are fearful and uncooperative. Pierce County, he said, recently set up special teams to videotape crime scenes and distraught victims before the victims have a chance to change their minds. "We think we'll be able to proceed even when the victim recants," he said. "That's going to help us go to trial and get convictions."

State Rep. Betty Sue Morris, D-Vancouver, co-chair of the Corrections Committee, said she will recommend that probation officers more closely supervise people like Dunn, even though the Legislature last year reduced their funds to do so.

Before yesterday's sentencing, John Baisden told the judge that while his wife still sobbed every night over their daugher's death, Dunn had "skated through the legal system and never paid." A family spokesman said afterward family members were "devastated" that Judge Gain had not imposed more time.

But Baisden yesterday told his daughter's killer he'd meet him again in a divine courtroom. "There will be an eternal judgement," he said. "Not one that lasts 20 years."