Plea hearing scheduled in Smith murder case

SANDPOINT — A Cocolalla man charged with murder is scheduled to enter a plea next month in 1st District Court.

Austin Blake Thrasher’s plea hearing is set for Feb. 4, court records indicate.

Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall declined late Friday to say if Thrasher is expected to enter a guilty plea or elaborate on a potential plea agreement in the case prior to the hearing.

However, Thrasher entered a plea of not guilty last April. The setting of next month’s hearing presents a strong indication that Thrasher might be reconsidering his original plea.

The plea hearing also coincides with Thrasher’s recent and unexplained return to the Bonner County Jail. He had been held in southern Idaho, where he underwent a psychological examinations to determine if he was competent to assist in his own defense and stand trial for first-degree murder.

Thrasher, 20, is accused of luring Michael Wyatt Smith into the woods near Thrasher’s home and shooting him to death with a pistol. Authorities believe Smith, 19, was killed in September 2011.

Smith was slain because he was dating a 16-year-old Clark Fork girl that Thrasher was also seeing, court records allege.

The killing went unreported and undetected until early 2012, when Thrasher, his now-estranged wife, Jennifer, and Christopher Robin Garlin, were arrested in connection with a Ponderay pawn shop burglary.

While in custody in the burglary case, Garlin, also 19, told sheriff’s investigators he witnessed Austin Thrasher execute Smith, according to court documents.

Jennifer Thrasher, 23, led detectives to Smith’s makeshift grave and pleaded guilty last year to accessory to murder for withholding information about Smith’s killing and received a two-year sentence.

The prison sentence runs concurrently with her sentence on federal charges for the pawn shop burglary.

Garlin was also charged with being an accessory in Smith’s killing for withholding knowledge of it. He also was charged federally in connection with the Pawn Now heist.

He entered an Alford plea to the accessory charge, meaning he admitted no wrongdoing but agreed he could be convicted.

Garlin’s court-appointed defense counsel, Sandpoint attorney Paul Vogel, moved to seal the plea agreement, but that motion came after the terms of the agreement had been laid bare in the public record.

In the plea agreement, Garlin agreed to betray Austin Thrasher and testify against him. The motion to seal, which was ultimately withdrawn, was meant to protect Garlin from retribution for being a snitch.

Garlin was to be sentenced on the accessory charge on Monday, but the proceeding is being postponed because he’s still awaiting sentencing in U.S. District Court for the Pawn Now break-in.

Garlin faces concurrent sentences of up to two years. A sentencing date in state court is pending. His sentencing in the federal matter is set for Feb. 19 in Coeur d’Alene, U.S. District Court records indicate.