PORT ANGELES — Andrea Freese’s maximum 41-month sentence for second-degree manslaughter can be extended to up to 10 years under a ruling Wednesday by Superior Court Judge George L. Wood.
Wood opened the door to a longer sentence by ruling that Freese showed an egregious lack of remorse over stabbing William Boze to death and that Boze’s physical vulnerability ¬– he had emphysema and heart disease ¬– played a substantial role in Freese fatally harming him in his west Port Angeles living room on July 28, 2007.
Wood will factor in these aggravating circumstances when he sentences Freese, 34, on April 23.
“I am pleased and cautiously optimistic with respect to sentencing,” county Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly said after the hearing.
“But simply because he finds the factors does not mean he has to utilize them.”
It’s rare that judges go beyond the standard sentence range, but it’s also rare that judges leave themselves the opening by finding aggravating factors, Kelly said.
Boze’s daughter, Diana Waldron of Seattle, hopes Wood employs the latitude he gave himself.
“I don’t think three years is worth it for my dad’s life,” Waldron, 46, said after the hearing. “He was a good man.”
Public Defender John Hayden said he was not surprised by the ruling.
He said Freese’s long history of mental illness ¬– she has been diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder and said she hears voices ¬– should weigh more heavily than her lack of remorse or Boze’s vulnerability.
Element of remorse
But in his ruling, Wood said Freese’s disorder did not preclude Freese from feeling empathy, a key element of remorse.
A jury March 21 found her guilty of second-degree manslaughter, the least serious charge at its disposal, rejecting second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter.
Freese, 32 and homeless, stayed with Boze off and on for two years at his invitation.
She maintained that Boze punched her in the nose, and Hayden argued she stabbed him in self-defense.
Juror John Garrison, a Sequim computer analyst, said Wednesday that one juror in particular would convict her only for second-degree manslaughter.
“He could not be absolutely sure that what she did in that room was assault,” Garrison, 59, said.
Freese’s mental disorder did not seem that relevant, Garrison added, saying she wielded the knife intending to hurt Boze.
“I believe she had a mental disorder, but I didn’t think it played into what she did to any degree that made it seem justifiable in any way,” Garrison said.
“The rest of us were so convinced she was guilty of something so much more serious.
“We felt like we were letting her get away with it.”
In finding her guilty of second-degree manslaughter, the jury said Freese was criminally negligent in causing Boze’s death.
Under normal circumstances, a person who has been negligent in killing someone would feel empathy for the victim, which Freese did not, Wood said.
Instead, Freese exhibited extreme and ongoing indifference, Wood said.
Wood said he saw her smile in court while her taped statement to police about the stabbing was played to the jury.
In that statement, she also seemed more concerned about getting her possessions from Boze’s house than she did about his condition, Wood said.
While she did not know Boze was already dead, she knew she left him lying in a pool of blood, and all she worried about was getting her possessions, Wood said.
‘Callousness’
“It was a callousness toward what happened,” he said.
Boze was so frail he had difficulty getting up out of a chair. That made it difficult for him to escape from Freese the night of his death and vulnerable to catastrophic violence, Wood said.
Outside the courtroom, demonstrating how her father walked with a cane, Waldron leaned down heavily on a walking stick and took tiny steps of a few inches.
Boze’s sons, William and John, were scheduled to testify by phone but did not.
They were slated to answer questions on whether Boze acting as a good Samaritan should be an aggravating factor, a standard that Wood ruled did not apply to the case.
Waldron said she and other family members will attend Freese’s April 23 sentencing to make public statements to the court.
________
Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladaily news.com.
