This news story was updated at 12:15 p.m. on Wednesday Sept. 28, 2011
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Toledo Elementary School Principal Ron Reynolds and his sons have been excused from testifying at the upcoming coroner’s inquest into Ronda Reynolds 1998 death.
Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod signed an order today quashing their subpoenas to appear and testify.
McLeod writes in his order that the four have asserted their fifth amendment constitutional right, that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.
Lawyers for the Reynolds’s and for Barb Thompson – mother of Ronda Reynolds – have been filing opposing motions with the coroner as he finalizes details about what will happen at the October inquest.
Thompson’s attorney has stated the men should be compelled to take the witness stand, where they could still choose to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination. But McLeod in his order said he isn’t going to make them do that.
Ronda Reynolds, 33, was found with a bullet in her head and covered by a turned-on electric blanket on the floor of a closet in the Toledo home she shared with her husband of less than a year, Ron Reynolds. He and his three sons – then 18, 17 and 10 – were present when the first sheriff’s deputy arrived the morning of Dec. 16, 1998.
Nobody has ever been charged with any crime related to the case.
While her death was initially ruled a suicide, it was changed back and forth between that and undetermined as it it was reinvestigated and then as it was the subject of a judicial review two years ago.
Coroner McLeod hopes the inquest will bring resolution to the case.
In his order McLeod writes that despite attorney Royce Ferguson’s assertion the privilege against self incrimination shouldn’t apply in a non-criminal proceeding, case law says it does apply.
McLeod also noted the sons’ motions are similar to their father’s motion, which is similar to one a judge granted during the 2009 judicial review allowing Ron Reynolds not to testify then.
McLeod has decided if they did testify – and if the inquest determines the deceased died by homicide and names the person responsible which could conceivably occur, he would expect prosecutors to dissect their answers looking for guilt.
“Thus, I find it reasonably likely that the Reynolds testimony might be used in evidence in subsequent criminal proceedings against any or all of them,” McLeod wrote.
Coroner McLeod will instruct the jurors the Reynolds have asserted the privilege against self incrimination and no adverse inference should be drawn based upon their exercise of their constitutional right.
In a separate decision yesterday, McLeod noted the inquest jury will consider all possible manners of death.
Ferguson had objected to the label of suicide being one of the options the inquest jury may choose from, citing a ruling in the judicial review civil case in which the previous coroner was ordered to remove suicide from the death certificate .
The inquest is scheduled to begin on Oct. 10.
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For more details about McLeod’s decision, download and read his order, here
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Read most recent news story on the inquest, here
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