Prosecutors Put On The Defensive

TWO MEN SENTENCED in the slaying of a Snohomish County teenager have had their convictions overturned by the state Court of Appeals, which said they may not be tried again.

EVERETT - Three rootless young men and a teenager who wanted to be just like them went into the woods by the Snohomish River one winter night in 1994. The teenager never came out.

No one saw, no one heard, except the three men. Only they knew which of them had choked, kicked and stabbed to death 16-year-old Matthew Everist, dropped his body in a hollow by the Snohomish River and covered it with a log. Only they knew if they were all willing participants.

And they weren't talking.

The "unusual stubbornness," as Snohomish County prosecutors later called it, of Seth Weber, Dwayne Dodgen and Anthony Crane, was the start of an unusual case that has put county prosecutors on the defensive in the state's highest legal arenas.

The state Court of Appeals recently overturned the murder convictions of Crane and Dodgen and said they may not be tried again. As a result, Crane soon may be released from prison. There is a hearing today on the matter.

Guilty verdicts, although routinely appealed in murder cases, are rarely overturned. The Crane and Dodgen verdicts were the only ones from Snohomish County overturned in the past five years; they also were the only ones in the state dismissed, freeing the defendants - unless the Supreme Court intervenes.

Weber got a 20-year sentence. Crane and Dodgen got 14-year sentences after they were convicted of second-degree murder.

According to the appellate court, Snohomish County prosecutors - by first winning conviction of Crane and Dodgen only of helping to dispose of Everist's body and months later charging them with his murder - violated an important rule meant to curb prosecutorial power.

The rule says that prosecutors must, with some exceptions, prosecute criminal defendants once for a crime, not subject them to successive prosecutions.

As Richard Tassano, director of the Washington Appellate Project, which handles appeals for indigent defendants and appealed Dodgen's conviction, explained: "If you're going to nail me with something, if you have the ability, bring it all on the table. Don't hit me with a little thing, get me in jail, then hit me with something else."

Snohomish County prosecutors are asking the state Supreme Court to review the appellate court's decision. They say they acted correctly, under an exception to the rule: They didn't have enough evidence to bring murder charges until after the pair's conviction on the lesser charge.

Prosecutors were handed additional evidence in May 1995, about six months after Dodgen and Crane had started serving one-year sentences. Weber - who had been implicated by Crane and Dodgen - struck a deal with prosecutors: He'd testify that his two former friends were deeply involved in the killing and plead guilty to second-degree murder, rather than go to trial on first-degree murder charges.

"The indispensable thing to convict (Crane and Dodgen) was Mr. Weber's statement. And Mr. Weber's statement to the authorities did not come until after the trials (on rendering criminal assistance) had occurred," said David Thiele, a Snohomish County prosecutor handling the appellate case.

The appellate ruling didn't apply to Weber, because he was only prosecuted once, on murder charges.

The Court of Appeals disagreed with the county's position.

Lis Wiehl, a former federal prosecutor who's now a University of Washington law professor, said the Court of Appeals decision may sound good, but it's not realistic.

"It puts the prosecutor in a difficult position," she said, explaining that the prosecutor must provide a speedy trial. ". . .The reality on how much they (prosecutors) can produce may not be as neat as the appellate court would think. . . . The appeals court has 20/20 hindsight."

Weber, Crane and Dodgen, all in their early 20s, lived at Weber's grandmother's house in Everett. Poorly educated and often unemployed, they hung out in a local park and concocted violent fantasies in which they were always the victors.

Everist apparently wanted to be a member. But Weber didn't like him because the two were interested in the same girl. And Crane didn't like him because he thought Everist had been involved in an arson of Crane's father's house.

Dodgen, apparently, didn't have strong feelings about him one way or the other.

On Jan. 24, 1994, friends saw Everist drive away with the three men.

He was never seen again.

When police questioned the men, they all said Everist had gotten out of the car soon after getting in and that they didn't know what had happened to him.

But in September 1994, Weber's cousin walked into the Everett Police Department and said that Weber in February had admitted killing Everist and had said Crane helped "finish him off" and that Dodgen had helped hide the body.

Tassano said getting guilty verdicts on defendants like Crane and Dodgen is "like shooting ducks in a barrel."

"What's going on is they're squeezing everybody," he added. "The prosecution sets out their plea agreement and if you don't go with their agreement, they will inevitably throw everything they can at you. It's legal. But from a moral point of view, it's vindictive."

No court motion has been filed asking for the release of Dodgen, who has maintained he's not guilty of murder. Despite lying several times to authorities, could Dodgen really have been innocent?

"I have no idea," Tassano said. "I find it's much easier not to go down that path. I'm not advocating people should go around killing people. People should pay for what crime they committed. But we have another policy. That's that the state, with all its power and authority, should lay all its cards out at one time. If they don't do that, we as citizens with our limited resources are at a tremendous disadvantage."

Nancy Montgomery's phone message number is 425-745-7803. Her e-mail address is: nmon-new@seatimes.com ------------------------------------------- Appeals of murder verdicts and sentences

In the past five years, according to the Office of the Administrator FOR THE Courts, 341 first- or second-degree murder verdicts and sentences were reviewed by the state appellate court; only 30 were overturned and it's likely that the majority of those were sentence.

Washing Court of Appeals 1993-1997

Appeals................Reversals

1993 57 4 . 1994 57 4 . 1995 64 2 . 1996 68 6 . 1997 95 14 . ------------------------------------------- TTHE SEATTLE TIMES