A Snohomish man with no prior criminal history was sentenced to more than 45 years in prison Thursday for serving as a lookout during a home-invasion robbery Dec. 19 in Ridgefield. During the robbery, a victim was tied up and several firearms were stolen.
Jarrod A. Wiebe, 27, received the most severe sentence among his three co-conspirators in the robbery, even though the prosecutor and defense attorney agreed that he was the least culpable of the group because he was not armed and was not inside the home when one victim was tied up during the robbery.
However, the state’s sentencing laws gave Clark County Superior Court Judge Scott Collier almost no discretion in determining Wiebe’s sentence.
“This is one of those cases (for which) I think the Legislature should have given a safety valve to the court,” Collier said.
He said the sentence is “a shock to the conscience.”
In an agreement with Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu, Wiebe’s three co-defendants pleaded guilty Sept. 22 to reduced charges. As a result, each was sentenced to between 4½ and 14 years
Vu offered Wiebe a similar deal, but Wiebe decided to take his case to trial even after being informed of the potential consequences, said his attorney, Chris Ramsay.
A jury found Wiebe guilty Oct. 1 of 16 felonies, nine of which had firearm enhancements. His convictions were largely based on state law that holds accomplices accountable for the crimes of their co-conspirators regardless of their roles in the acts.
Under the Hard Time for Armed Crime Act of 1995, each firearm enhancement added another mandatory five years to a base sentence, all of which must be served consecutively and with no good time. That meant that the judge was forced to sentence Wiebe to a minimum of 41½ years on top of any base sentence.
“I think that’s the way I have to apply it, even though I don’t like the application and the results it causes in this case,” Judge Collier said.
He questioned whether locking Wiebe away for that long was a good use of public resources and was necessary for community safety.
Collier said he had some discretion in the base sentence, which under the state sentencing standard would have added a minimum of another 10 years to the total sentence. He reduced the base sentence to four years, coming up with the total of 45½ years.
Ramsay noted that the sentence exceeds that of some convicted murderers.
“There is something fundamentally unfair about that, and that is something for the Legislature to look at,” he said.
On the morning of Dec. 19, Wiebe and his friends Larry C. Kyle, Ruben Vega and Regan C. Davis traveled on Interstate 5 together in a white Isuzu Trooper from the Snohomish area to Ridgefield, Vu said. On the way, they stopped at a Wal-Mart, where Kyle, Vega and Davis changed into military-style clothing, he said.
“We don’t know what exactly was said or agreed to … but in the defendant’s own words, there was talk in the car that someone had been wronged, someone needed a visit, and consequences needed to be taken care of,” Vu said.
The men were looking for a man named Francisco but apparently went to the wrong house, the prosecutor said.
Testimony during Wiebe’s five-day trial conflicted over whether Wiebe was with his three friends when they forced their way inside the single-wide mobile home of a 45-year-old farmworker on a dairy farm in the 23000 block of Northwest Hillhurst Road in rural Ridgefield. However, both the farmworker, Casimiro Arellano, and his longtime partner, Manatalia Barragan, testified that Wiebe served as a lookout while Kyle, Vega and Davis restrained Arellano with disposable plastic flex cuffs and threatened to call immigration if he didn’t surrender his firearms and give them $10,000. Kyle, Vega and Davis were dressed in military-style clothes and armed with loaded pistols, Vu said.
Arellano and Barragan said that the men kept asking for Francisco and they kept denying that they knew anyone by that name.
Barragan testified through an interpreter that Wiebe helped the other men steal 10 firearms from the home and pack them in the Isuzu Trooper.
Wiebe admitted that he knew Vega was carrying a pistol in the waistband of his pants and that Davis was armed with a 1911 Springfield .45-caliber pistol, Vu said. Kyle also was armed with a firearm, which was visible, the prosecutor said.
Ramsay argued that Wiebe wasn’t aware that the victims were being tied up, threatened and robbed.
“The only thing he said he saw was that they were bringing out firearms,” Ramsay said. “He doesn’t know whose firearms they are. They didn’t want to give him information. He wasn’t in on it.”
Kyle, 38, of North Bend, pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery and second-degree extortion and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Vu said Kyle was the ringleader.
“Even Mr. Kyle at the time of his sentencing apologized to Jarrod while motioning to him with tears in his eyes, saying, ‘He should not be here,’ ” Wiebe’s mother, Vicky Wiebe said Thursday.
Vega, 37, also of North Bend, pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery and second-degree kidnapping and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Davis, 53, of Everett entered an Alford plea, acknowledging that a jury could find him guilty of first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary and theft of a firearm and was sentenced to 53 months in prison. Ramsay said Wiebe’s plea offer was similar to the one Davis received.
Wiebe was convicted of first-degree burglary, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery, second-degree extortion, first-degree criminal impersonation, and 10 counts of firearm theft.
Ramsay said Wiebe plans to appeal his convictions.
