FORKS –– Olympic Animal Sanctuary director Steve Markwell was sentenced to 20 days in jail and fined $500 on a third-degree malicious mischief conviction Monday.
Markwell was convicted in Clallam County District 2 court last Wednesday when a six-member jury found he willfully kicked the car belonging to Maggie McDowell of Seattle, a protester of his dog sanctuary, last December.
Forks City Attorney Rod Fleck had requested a two-day jail sentence.
But District Court Judge John Doherty, after listening to the transcripts of last week’s trial, handed down the 20-day term in the Forks city jail.
“The judge felt, after listening to the trial, he was terrorizing Ms. McDowell and that the sentence should reflect that,” Fleck said.
Markwell must report for jail next Monday and undergo a mental health evaluation, Doherty ordered.
Markwell’s public defender, Doug Kresl, had requested no jail time and no fine.
Maximum sentence for third-degree malicious mischief is 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
In addition to the fine, Doherty also ordered Markwell pay $1,500 in costs associated with the trial, including $641.61 for the jury he requested, and ordered him to repay McDowell the $53.46 she spent to repair a reflector Markwell kicked off her BMW sport utility vehicle.
Doherty rejected a request from Fleck to order Markwell to register and license any dogs he has and to order that he not own, possess or control more than 10 dogs.
Markwell drove off with the shelter’s 124 dogs packed into crates he had built in the back of a semi owned by the sanctuary in the middle of the night Dec. 21.
He delivered them to a makeshift shelter in the Arizona desert set up by New York-based animal rescue organization Guardians of Rescue on Christmas Eve.
The last 18 of those dogs were adopted July 27 by a California rescue agency.
McDowell was one of the protesters who stood vigil outside Markwell’s sanctuary, a pink warehouse owned by Markwell’s mother at 1021 Russell Road, last fall, saying the more than 100 dogs in the shelter were mistreated.
The charge came from an incident in which he kicked McDowell’s car in the twilight morning hours of Dec. 12, 2013.
Markwell founded Olympic Animal Sanctuary as a home for “dogs you’d rather see dead” in 2006, gaining national prominence for his efforts in such national media outlets as People magazine and the Los Angeles Times.
Many of the shelter’s dogs, he said, had been condemned to death by courts around the country, and he took them in as an alternative to euthanasia.
Protesters had rallied against the shelter, fueled by a Facebook campaign that posted photographs said to have been taken by volunteers and the Forks Police Department.
Markwell was charged last Tuesday, July 29, by the state attorney general on charges he failed to register the shelter as a charity and did not provide an accounting of how he had spent the more than $300,000 in donations he collected without registration.
Markwell also faces a civil suit for breach of contract and misuse of a restricted donation filed by Sherrie Maddox of Port Angeles, one of the sanctuary’s largest donors, saying he improperly used a $50,000 donation she made in July 2012.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
