Jury reaches mixed verdicts

SANDPOINT — A Washington state man was convicted Wednesday of intimidating a witness in a drug case last year, but jurors acquitted him of threatening the woman with a pistol.

Jurors deliberated for about five hours before finding Robert James Sutton Jr. guilty of witness intimidation and not guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The jury deadlocked on a third charge alleging Sutton entered the woman’s former downtown apartment intending to commit either of the aforementioned felonies.

After the verdicts were rendered, Sutton, 26, pleaded guilty to being a persistent violator because of two prior felony convictions in Idaho for a 2001 burglary and attempting to elude law enforcement during a high-speed chase in 2003.

Sutton’s sentencing hearing is pending in 1st District Court. He faces up to five years in prison on the intimidation charge plus a consecutive sentence of five years to life because of the persistent-violator enhancements.

Sutton, 26, of Spokane Valley, Wash., was accused of forcing his way in the woman’s apartment on June 17, 2008. He allegedly pointed a .45-caliber pistol to her face. Sutton’s 46-year-old father was an alleged accomplice in the episode, but charges against him were later dismissed due to insufficient evidence.

The state argued Sara Rose Phelps was menaced because she was a potential witness in a methamphetamine-dealing case brought against Michael Ray O’Neil, who is the younger Sutton’s uncle and the elder Sutton’s brother.

Phelps, 28, testified on the three-day trial’s opening day that she took her pit bull terrier for a walk on the day in question and it ate two golf ball-sized wads of ground beef in the alley leading to her apartment. The dog became violently ill and was rushed to a veterinarian, who Phelps said gave a grim prognosis.

Phelps told jurors she was devastated and went to a downtown bar and drank half dozen cocktails before returning to her apartment and dozed off. She was awakened by the sound of the Suttons bursting into her apartment and advising her they knew she had betrayed O’Neil to Sandpoint Police investigators.

Phelps admitted she was paid $900 for the information used in the O’Neil takedown and that her dog, Bentley, ultimately recovered.

Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall emphasized during his closing remarks that Sutton had means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime. Sutton appeared in court that day on an unrelated matter and was only three blocks from Phelps’ apartment, and O’Neil was facing a potential lifelong prison sentence.

“The evidence shows that they were there to intimidate Sara Phelps because they knew or thought they knew that she was going to be a witness against Michael O’Neil in his upcoming hearing,” Marshall said.

One piece of evidence the state was unable to put up, however, was the handgun.

Chief Deputy Public Defender Isabella Robertson, meanwhile, entered into evidence timecards, phone records and testimony from relatives, all of which was used to show Sutton was not at Phelps’ apartment when the attack took place. Robertson said during her summation that Phelps, between the alcohol and sleep, was mistaken.

“Perceptions distort,” she said. “I’m not saying she’s made this up; I’d be stupid to say that. I’m saying that it was not Robert Sutton Jr. that was there.”