Danny A. Wing at his sentencing hearing in Lewis County Superior Court in 2015.
Updated at 4:33 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The former Vader man incarcerated for his role in the abuse, neglect and death of a toddler he and his wife were caring for will be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea, an appeals court has ruled.
Danny A. Wing was given nearly 35 years when he was sentenced in Lewis County Superior Court in September 2015. He had pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and third-degree child assault for the death a year earlier of 3-year-old Jasper Henderling-Warner.
His wife entered into a similar deal with prosecutors and received a similar sentence.
Jasper Henderling-Warner
A unanimous decision of a three-member panel of the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II issued on Tuesday concluded Wing’s plea was premised on an incorrect offender score for the third degree assault of a child conviction, rendering the plea involuntary.
His offender score was improperly calculated at six rather than five, an error the state conceded, and therefore resulted in applying the wrong standard sentencing range, the appeals court wrote. An offender score is related to a person’s previous felony convictions.
For the assault, the range ought to have been 17 to 22 months instead of 22 to 29 months, according to the decision.
Wing was given 416 months for the manslaughter and the two sentences were ordered to be served concurrently. The state argued the error did not determine Wing’s ultimate sentence.
A plea agreement must be treated as “indivisible” and an error on one count means the entire agreement must be set aside, Justice P.J. Worswick wrote.
The family, from the Vancouver area, had been living in the Vader house about two weeks when the Wings called 911 to say the toddler was unconscious and not breathing on on Oct. 5, 2014. Jasper’s 21-year-old mother had given the couple temporary custody while she was homeless and looked for work out of state.
The autopsy found abrasions, bruises, facial trauma and healing fractures and labeled the cause of death as chronic battered child syndrome. Jasper was suffering from skin infections that were found to be secondary to his cause of death.
Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt called it an incredible story of horror and suffering inflicted.
Wing, now 28, appealed his sentence based also on another issue, claiming prosecutors breached the plea agreement.
His appeal lawyer Lisa Elizabeth Tabbut argued the agreement permitted the state to argue for sentencing enhancements but not to file aggravating factors, but the appeals judges disagreed with the distinction.
Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Sara Beigh argued the appeal case for the state.
It’s not clear exactly what happens next.
“We don’t know, that’s the long and the short of it,” Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer said today.
Wing may petition the state Supreme Court to review the part of the appeal decision he lost, Meyer said. If he doesn’t or even if he does and fails, the case will be back in Lewis County Superior Court, he said.
“Then he gets to choose whether he wants to withdraw his guilty plea or not,” Meyer said. “He can opt to do that and if he does, we go to trial.”
Meyer suggested if Wing were to go to trial on one of the original charges, homicide by abuse with aggravators, and lost, the potential sentence could be lengthy.
Brenda A. Wing was sentenced in January of last year to 34 years and eight months for first-degree manslaughter, third-degree child assault, two counts of witness tampering and two counts of possession of a controlled substance.
She also has an appeal in the works.
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For background, read “Vader man gets 34 years for toddler death” from Friday September 25, 2015, here
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