PORT ORCHARD — A hearing on a motion that could result in the freedom of a man once convicted of two murders will resume Monday after witness testimony was not finished Thursday.
If the motion for the dismissal of charges against Michael J. Pierce, 38, is granted, the Quilcene man could be freed four years after he was convicted of the 2009 murders of Pat and Janice Yarr of Quilcene and sentenced to life in prison.
“In the five years since our parents were taken from us, it feels that we’ve suffered at the hands of the legal system,” said Michelle Hamm, one of the Yarrs’ two daughters, after the Kitsap County Superior Court hearing was halted for the day.
“We hold out the hope that he will be convicted of this crime and are terrified that he could be returned to society.”
Superior Court Judge Sally Olsen said the hearing would resume at 1:30 p.m. Monday at the court, 614 Division St. in Port Orchard.
If she rules in favor of the defense motion to dismiss charges, then Pierce could not be tried again on them, said Jefferson County Deputy Prosecutor Chris Ashcraft, who added that he has not examined the options for appeal.
Pierce was convicted by a Jefferson County jury in 2010 of two counts of first-degree murder as well as one count each of first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, first-degree arson, theft of a firearm, second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and second-degree theft.
The state Court of Appeals overturned Pierce’s 2010 conviction in 2013, ruling that Pierce’s constitutional rights were denied after his arrest and that Prosecuting Attorney Scott Rosekrans’ closing argument in the original trial represented prosecutorial misconduct.
Pierce has been tried two times since, once in Jefferson County and once in Kitsap County, with both ending in mistrials.
A third retrial is set Oct. 9 in Kitsap County Superior Court.
His client should not be subjected to a fourth trial, said Pierce’s attorney, Richard Davies of Port Townsend, in his motion for dismissal, since “the failures of previous trials are solely attributable to the State.”
Davies especially cited the discontinuation of Pierce’s psychotropic medications during his third trial when he was in custody in the Kitsap County jail.
During the Kitsap County retrial before Olsen, Pierce was not given all his medications March 8, 9 and 10.
Olsen called a mistrial, saying Pierce’s right to a fair trial had been “impossibly infringed.”
Kitsap County contracts its jail medical services with Conmed Healthcare Management.
Jefferson County jail officials said they had provided a month’s supply of medications for Pierce when he was taken to Kitsap only two weeks earlier.
Davies had claimed that Pierce’s medication was “intentionally discontinued” by Kitsap County jailers and amounted to “physical and psychological torture.”
The earlier retrial in Jefferson County had been halted after a juror told the judge she might have seen a man resembling Pierce the night of the slayings.
During Thursday’s hearing, Dr. Henry Levine, a Bellingham psychiatrist testifying by phone as an expert witness for the defense, said the discontinuation of Pierce’s medication during his third trial had a severe effect.
Stopping psychotropic medications suddenly can return the patient to a more dangerous mental state than before the medications began, Levine said.
“His not having received the medication for several days and having been underdosed for several days did cause Mr. Pierce to experience severe symptoms, symptoms that were painful and had the potential of being life-threatening,” Levine said.
In cross-examination, Ashcraft challenged Levine’s ability to evaluate Pierce through transcripts of phone calls instead of listening to the calls themselves, which Levine said was due to his hearing difficulties.
“Since you didn’t listen to the phone call, you can’t have any real professional opinion about it,” Ashcraft said.
“I disagree,” Levine said. “I agree that I didn’t have the complete data about affect and rate of speech, but there were plenty of other data.”
Ashcraft’s cross-examination will resume Monday.
About 20 members of the Yarr family and their friends attended the hearing.
Many were wearing red, Pat Yarr’s favorite color. They said that Thursday would have been his 66th birthday.
Pierce, attending the hearing in an orange jumpsuit, has been housed in the Jefferson County jail in Port Hadlock.
Three Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies were in the courtroom to transport him.
Also attending were interim Jefferson County Sheriff Joe Nole and Capt. Mike Stringer, also of the Sheriff’s Office, who said he had attended every day of the third trial “to show our support for the family and how important this case is to us.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
