Ryan McCarthy consults with his attorney Rick Cordes as they wait for the judge this afternoon.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Attorneys are staying mum about what didn’t happen today in court with one of the defendants in the triple homicide from last summer near Salkum.
Both the prosecutors office and the defense lawyer for 29-year-old Ryan McCarthy previously said they reached a plea agreement and he would be pleading guilty today in Lewis County Superior Court.
McCarthy’s lawyer said he was going to plead to two counts of second-degree assault. He was charged with murder.
But in a hearing that lasted less than five minutes, the attorneys only told Judge Richard Brosey they’d like to come back before the court in three weeks.
“We didn’t do the change of plea,” Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said outside the courtroom.
“I can’t comment,” Meagher said, as to why not.
Olympia attorney Rick Cordes was brief as well: “We’re working on it,” he said.
McCarthy and former Onalaska resident John A. Booth Jr. are both charged in the Aug. 21 shootings of David West Sr. 52, his son David West Jr., 16, and a friend Tony E. Williams, 50, of Randle. Denise Salts, then 51, who was also at the house off Gore Road, survived a gunshot wound to her face.
Charging documents in the case don’t offer much detail as to who fired shots that night.
Booth is scheduled for a November trial.
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Read “Deal in Salkum homicides: McCarthy to plead to second-degree assault” from Tuesday July 12, 2011, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
If the judge looked at the plea bargain and decided there was no “bargain” to be had then the headline would have read something more like “Plea Bargain Denied”
I would think that the judge looked at the plea “bargain” and decided that there was no “bargain” to be had…
That is one of the good things, in that a judge is not bound to honor the plea bargains that are constantly made. Pleading down from 1st degree assault to 2nd degree assault, I can see them approving…. but to go from three counts of 1st degree murder to 2 counts of 2nd degree assault, there is NO justice in that.