Appeals court affirms Palmer judge’s decision in Houston kidnap-murder case

The Alaska Court of Appeals has affirmed a Palmer Superior Court judge’s decision to restrict parole eligibility for a man convicted in the 2005 kidnapping and fatal shooting of an Anchorage man on a Houston ATV trail.

The appeals court’s memorandum opinion, released Thursday, follows up its prior request Judge Eric Smith explain his sentencing of Mario Page, who must serve 30 years of his sentence before being considered for parole — 10 years longer than most first-time felony offenders receive.

Page traveled to California in April 2005 to buy illegal drugs, court documents stated. While he was gone, his girlfriend, Kira Gray, then 16, took a large bag of cocaine out of Page’s car and gave it to her sister’s boyfriend, Terrell Houngues, 23. Houngues took 9 ounces of the cocaine and returned the bag to Gray. Houngues sold some of the cocaine and gave some away.

Page became angry and told Gray to do something, so Gray called Houngues and told him Page assaulted her. She said she knew where Page kept more drugs and suggested she and Houngues could go steal those drugs.

“All of this was a pretext to lure Houngues to a remote location in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley,” the court document stated.

On May 8, 2005, Gray drove Houngues in Page’s car out to the Valley. Page, then 20, and two accomplices — Tommie Patterson and Fredrick Johnson — drove to the same spot in a Kia. When Gray arrived at the agreed-upon location, she drove past where Page and his accomplices were waiting. Page and the others then followed Gray.

Page and his friends confronted Houngues and then, at gunpoint, forced Houngues into the trunk of the Kia. They drove Houngues to a remote spot on a dirt ATV trail.

Page pulled Houngues out of the trunk and confronted him about the stolen cocaine. Gray then shot Houngues in the leg. When Houngues screamed in pain and jumping around, Page told Gray to “shut [Houngues] up.” Gray shot Houngues four times in the head and Tommie Patterson then shot Houngues several times.

Afterward, Page and his friends drove to a lake and threw their guns in the water. They dropped off the Kia, retrieved Page’s car, and drove back to Anchorage. A week later, Page, Patterson, and Johnson poured gas on the Kia and set it on fire, destroying the vehicle.

A jury later convicted Page of second-degree murder and kidnapping, so Smith sentenced Page under the assumption Page had not acted with the specific intent to kill Houngues.

Nevertheless, because of the circumstances of the kidnapping and murder, Smith concluded Page bore a large responsibility for Houngues’ death and that Page’s second-degree murder sentence should exceed a first-felony offender’s so-called benchmark range of 20-30 years to serve in prison. The judge sentenced Page to serve 70 years with 20 years suspended for the murder. For the kidnapping, Smith imposed a consecutive 20 years to serve with five years suspended.

Smith then ordered Page not be eligible to apply for discretionary parole until he served 30 years of his sentence, delaying for 10 years Page’s parole eligibility.

“Under Alaska law, when a sentencing judge restricts a defendant’s parole eligibility, the judge must ‘specifically address the issue of parole restriction [and must set] forth with particularity his or her reasons for concluding that the [normal] parole eligibility prescribed by [statute] is insufficient to protect the public and [e]nsure the defendant’s reformation,’” the opinion stated.

After the case returned to his court, Smith found the parole restriction was justified because normal parole eligibility would be inadequate to protect the public and ensure Page’s rehabilitation.

The second-degree murder and kidnapping convictions were Page’s first felonies, but Smith noted that Page had been convicted of several misdemeanors as well as a probation violation during the three years preceding Houngues’ slaying. He concluded that in the context of Page’s sentencing for kidnapping and murder, Page’s misdemeanors were particularly serious because they involved weapons misconduct, resisting arrest, failing to appear and providing false information to a police officer.

“The judge declared that these misdemeanors demonstrated ‘[Page’s] lack of respect for authority and [his] disturbing tendency to believe that … societal rules do not apply to him,’” the appeals opinion stated.

Smith also noted Page was a cocaine dealer, and that these crimes were directed at someone who had stolen a substantial amount of cocaine from him.

“Even though Page was not the one who fired the bullets that killed Houngues, and even though the jury acquitted Page of intending to kill Houngues, Judge Smith found that Page ’[bore] substantial responsibility for the shooting’ in that Page set up the kidnapping and planned the abduction of Houngues to a remote location where the murder was committed. Page then ’provided the gun to his highly intoxicated and somewhat manipulatable [teenage] girlfriend, who pulled the trigger,” the appeals opinion stated.

Smith also commented on Page’s “deplorable” behavior while he was in jail awaiting trial. The judge said Page committed 14 infractions in jail, and concluded the infractions showed Page’s “complete lack of respect for authority” as well as Page’s “inability to behave appropriately even in a highly structured setting.”

Smith again imposed the 30-year restriction on Page’s eligibility to apply for discretionary parole.

Appeals Court Chief Judge Robert Coats and Judges David Mannheimer and Joel Bolger drafted the memorandum opinion.