Coleman facing death penalty
SANDPOINT — Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall has filed notice that he intends to seek the death penalty against a Washington state man accused of repeatedly stabbing a cab driver and allowing the man to slowly bleed to death.
Marshall put the defense in Jacob Corban Coleman’s first-degree murder case on notice that the state intends to prove aggravating factors in the slaying of Gagandeep Singh. Those factors include the especially heinous, atrocious or cruel nature of the murder and the circumstances surrounding its commission, which demonstrated an utter disregard for human life, according to the notice.
Marshall filed the notice on Tuesday, 1st District Court records show.
Coleman, a 20-year-old Puyallup resident, is accused of hailing a ride from Singh after arriving at Spokane International Airport on Aug. 28, 2017. Coleman flew from Seattle intending to enroll at Gonzaga University, but the school said he was not a prospective student of the university.
Coleman, according to prior testimony in the case, had Singh drive Coleman to a friend’s home in Hope, although he later told sheriff’s investigators that it was a ruse to lure Singh to a secluded area. Coleman also had Singh take him to Walmart in Ponderay, where he purchased a hunting knife authorities said was used to kill to Singh.
After overshooting Hope and driving to Clark Fork, the cab doubled back and stopped in Kootenai, where Coleman is accused of perpetrating the onslaught.
Singh, a 22-year-old Spokane Valley resident, was stabbed more than 20 times and bled to death inside the minivan over an extended period of time in which Coleman rendered no aid, court records indicate.
Coleman was ordered to stand trial following a preliminary hearing in magistrate court last fall. A detective testified that Coleman confessed to perpetrating a ferocious attack on Singh.
“I attacked him like a feral animal,” Det. Phil Stella recalled Coleman saying during the confession.
Coleman, who remains held without bail, is scheduled to be tried in April.
It’s the first time a capital case has been prosecuted in Bonner County since 1996, when Faron Earl Lovelace was convicted of the first-degree kidnapping and murder of Jeremy Scott.
Lovelace confessed to killing and burying Scott in the remote Upper Pack River Valley of the Selkirk Mountains in 1995. Lovelace and Scott shared white supremacist and anti-government beliefs, and Lovelace believed Scott was a government informant.
Lovelace told investigators he took Scott at gunpoint and held him through the night during which time they talked, discussed religion and prayed. The following day, Lovelace executed Scott with a .38-caliber gunshot to the back of his head.
Lovelace was convicted by a Bonner County jury a 1st District judge sentenced him to death, which triggered an automatic review by the Idaho Supreme Court. The high court affirmed Lovelace’s conviction but vacated the death sentence in 2003 in order to comport with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling which held that juries, not judges, must determine whether aggravating circumstances exist in a criminal matter.
Lovelace was resentenced in district court in 2005 and was ordered to serve a life sentence without possibility of parole.
Lovelace, 60, is imprisoned at the Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.
Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.