Judge stands by sentence in assault on child

PALMER — Having been told by the state’s appeals court to clearly state why he decided to sentence a man to a year in prison for hitting a 2-year-old with a door, a Superior Court Judge did so Friday, but didn’t change his opinion.

At issue was the case of Arthur Larue, 34, who was charged with assault in March 2008 for slamming a door into a 2-year-old boy, knocking the boy to the floor. Larue filmed the episode and the tape was submitted as evidence in the case.

Superior Court Judge Gregory Heath, saying he found the assault to be especially cruel and the victim especially vulnerable, gave Larue the stiffest possible sentence for the assault charge to which he eventually pleaded guilty.

But the appeals court noted that Heath said in his sentencing comments that there was no other way to explain Larue’s actions except to assume he’d been doing drugs at the time. The court told Heath he needed to address whether drug treatment should be a part of Larue’s sentence.

On Friday, Assistant District Attorney Trina Sears argued that it should not.

“There’s really no evidence that he was using drugs at the time,” Sears said.

She said prison time is, in one sense, a way to force someone to rehabilitate, to refrain from doing what got them locked up in the first place. And anyway, she told the judge, while out on parole while the appeal was sorted out, Larue had been ordered to do weekly urinalysis tests and hadn’t complied. That doesn’t show any inclination toward rehabilitation.

She asked for a flat one year of jail time with none of it suspended.

On the other side, Assistant Public Defender Hannah Thorssin-Bahri said she believed her client’s potential for rehabilitation is excellent. She noted that Larue had no criminal record before or after the assault case.

“For a man at 35 to have no criminal record, I think that says a lot about what we can expect from him in the future,” she said, noting that prison isn’t always rehabilitative. “People go in and don’t always come out better. We want Mr. Larue to come out better.”

She argued for a 360-day sentence with 240 days suspended, for 120 days to serve.

Twila Schmidt, grandmother of the 2-year-old boy Larue hit with the door, urged Heath to take the victim into account.

“Nothing’s been taken from him to have to pay a full year,” Schmidt said of Larue. “Just remember what’s been taken from a 2-year-old boy.”

Heath was visibly underwhelmed with Larue’s record while out on bail, saying that 15 urinalysis tests in 14 months when the order was to do them weekly was a very poor showing.

“(The order) wasn’t an opportunity for Mr. Larue to choose to follow or not to follow,” Heath said.

Heath eventually sided with Sears, re-imposing the one-year flat sentence and ordering Larue to report to prison in two weeks. He said he considered rehabilitation and drug treatment, but felt the more pressing concerns in his sentence were to condemn Larue’s actions and isolating Larue from society.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.