Ruling Means Killer Returns To Court

OLYMPIA - The state Supreme Court today overturned the death sentence of a Pierce County killer and, in another death-penalty case, upheld the sentence of a Spokane man.

In the Pierce County case, the death sentence of Sammie Luvene was overturned because prosecutors were late in filing notice of their intent to seek execution.

In the other case, the court upheld the death sentence of Blake Richard Pirtle in the slayings of two fast-food-restaurant workers in Spokane.

In the Luvene ruling, the court said that although prosecutors had prepared a notice to seek execution, they failed through simple inadvertence to file it within the allotted time, Justice Pro Tem Bob Utter wrote for the majority in the 6-3 decision.

The justices upheld Luvene's conviction for aggravated first-degree murder.

The ruling means the case will be returned to Pierce County Superior Court for Luvene to be resentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Barbara Durham argued that the state's death-penalty law "explicitly provides for an extension of the notice to seek the death penalty if the failure to file was `external to the prosecutor.' "

Joining Utter in the majority opinion were Justices Charles Johnson, Barbara Madsen, Charles Smith, Richard Guy and Phil Talmadge.

Luvene, now 28, was convicted of the July 2, 1992, shooting death of Carroll Bond, a Milton liquor-store clerk, during a robbery attempt.

While Luvene will be taken off death row, he can still appeal his life-without-parole sentence.

In the Spokane case, the high court upheld Blake Pirtle's death sentence in the restaurant slayings, rejecting arguments on several appeal issues.

Pirtle, 27, admitted killing Dawnya Calbreath, 20, and Tod Folsom, 24, and robbing the restaurant of $4,200 in cash in May 1992. A Spokane County Superior Court jury found that part of his motive for slaying Calbreath was revenge for her role in his firing from the restaurant a few weeks earlier on grounds of sexual harassment.

Pirtle, who is on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, appealed the sentence on several grounds, including the contention he was abused as a child, had no history of violent crime and suffered from brain damage due to drug abuse.

The high-court action is just a first step for Pirtle. He still has numerous state and federal avenues for appeal of the sentence.