PORT ANGELES – Bernard Gilbert “Pete” Barnes – who police have described as a major drug dealer – was formally sentenced on Thursday to six years in prison and a $30,000 fine.
He also forfeited two vehicles and $8,000 in cash that had been seized by police.
Barnes, 54, pleaded guilty on Oct. 3 to charges of conspiracy to deliver cocaine, using money acquired through criminal activity, money laundering and three counts of delivery of cocaine, all felonies.
He also pleaded guilty to solicitation of cocaine, a gross misdemeanor.
Court documents from a 2003 arrest referred to the Port Angeles man as the primary source of cocaine on the North Olympic Peninsula since 2001.
Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deborah Kelly said she was satisfied with the sentence.
“It was the pre-arranged sentence we agreed on a month ago,” she said Thursday.
“It assured him that sentence and assured the prosecution the conviction.”
Barnes changed his plea from not guilty about a week before he was slated for a three-week trial on two sets of charges, one in 2003 and another in 2004.
A total of seven cocaine delivery charges, cocaine possession and leading organized crime, were combined from multiple cases in September of 2005.
As part of the plea offer, Kelly dropped three of the cocaine delivery charges, reduced the possession charge to solicitation and dropped the leading organized crime charge in exchange for the money laundering and use of illicit proceeds charges.
The case was built on help from informants and unsolicited tips from the community to the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team, surveillance and a device called a “pen register,” according to court records.
A pen register records incoming and outgoing telephone calls.
Barnes was the subject of police investigations starting in 2001.
He had been released in 2000 from prison, having served five years on conviction of leading organized crime.
He was charged with cocaine distribution in October 2003 and again in November 2004. He entered pleas of “not guilty” to both charges.
His trial, which was expected to last three weeks, had been delayed repeatedly since 2003, but most recently was set for October.
