Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The state Court of Appeals today reversed a life sentence given to a man convicted of attempting to rob Twin Star Credit Union in Centralia five years ago.

Michael Anthony Lar, now 62, lost his appeal, but was successful in a personal restraint petition.

Lar was found guilty by a jury in Lewis County Superior Court of first-degree attempted robbery, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree burglary in March 2010 for events two months earlier.

Prosecutors sought and were granted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release, based on the Persistent Offender Accountability Act, the so-called three strikes law.

He had previously pled guilty in federal court to bank robbery on two occasions, each time involving two robberies.

Lar, through his lawyer, contended his prior convictions were not comparable to “most serious” convictions under Washington law and appeals judges agreed.

It was an early January morning in 2010 when two employees arrived to the bank on South Gold Street and found a man who’d gotten inside by breaking a window. An arriving officer was able to pull one woman to safety and fired two shots before an hours-long standoff.

Police surrounded the bank, but after hiding in nearby bushes nearly 12 hours, a wounded Lar called a taxi and headed to Olympia, where he was arrested the same night, according to court documents.

According to the opinion issued today, at sentencing Lar’s lawyer objected to use of the 1985 and 1997 federal convictions.

In its review, the three-member panel noted in order for a trial court to determine that a prior conviction from another jurisdiction is comparable to a strike offense, it must first query if the “foreign” offense is legally comparable, that is whether the elements of the two are substantially similar, the judges state.

If the elements of the “foreign” offense are broader, then the sentencing court must determine if the offense is factually comparable, the judges wrote.

The appeals court concluded the trial court’s analysis on the second line of inquiry fell short, and that at least one of Lar’s previous convictions should not have been used as strike offense.

The appeals court remanded the case for resentencing.

While Lar awaited sentencing in 2010, a Centralia police detective got DNA samples that matched material found on duct tape from an unsolved similar robbery at the same financial institution a year earlier.

Prosecutors charged him with that crime – in which he allegedly managed to get away with approximately $360,000 – but the case was dismissed before going to trial.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2015 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Top story of the day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.