PORT TOWNSEND — A man whose case was returned to Jefferson County Superior Court after an appeal acknowledged his criminal history and told a judge he’s learned to be more responsible.
Charles Carroll Hartzell IV, 38, accepted a plea deal Friday in a 2017 case that involved eluding a Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy at speeds up to 100 mph in addition to possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture or deliver.
Hartzell agreed to the top of the standard range at five years in prison.
“It’s not an ideal resolution for me,” he said to Judge Keith Harper during his sentencing hearing.
“It still gives me an opportunity to say you’re not sentencing the same person you sentenced three years ago.”
Hartzell thanked deputy prosecuting attorney Anna Phillips for working with him through his defense attorney, Joseph Schodowski, and he told Harper he remembers a conversation from his previous sentencing.
“You told me, ‘You’re a drug addict,’ and it bothered me,” Hartzell said during the course of a several-minute statement. “It bothered me because it was true, but I didn’t want to blame it all on drugs.
“It’s been the fuel to push me in my life to make some serious changes.”
Harper told Hartzell he was impressed with his comments.
“A lot of people come up here and say a bunch of things, and a lot of it is B.S., and a lot of it I don’t know if it’s B.S. or not,” Harper said.
“It sounds like you have a lot of self-awareness.
“I try to motivate the person standing there to do better than what they’re doing.”
Hartzell’s case had returned from the state Court of Appeals, which reversed the first conviction in which a jury found Hartzell guilty of six charges in July 2017. A second trial had been set to begin in Jefferson County on Oct. 28.
His last known address was in Tacoma, police said in 2017.
During the first sentencing in 2017, Phillips had recommended consecutive sentences with an aggravating circumstance for a total of 194 months — a little more than 16 years — based on Hartzell’s criminal history.
Hartzell has 13 previous felony convictions dating back to 1993 with crimes in Pierce, Thurston, Mason and Clallam counties. Six of the convictions were in juvenile court. Three of those were in Clallam County.
In Jefferson County, Deputy Brian Anderson recognized Hartzell and watched him drive away from the Chimacum Chevron station about 10 p.m. on Feb. 6, 2017.
Anderson knew Hartzell had a suspended license and an active warrant for his arrest from the state Department of Corrections, so he initiated a traffic stop. Hartzell pulled over and got out of his car.
When Anderson told Hartzell he was under arrest on the warrant, Hartzell got back in his car and fled.
Anderson pursued at high speeds and estimated Hartzell went through the four-way stop near the QFC in Port Hadlock at 80 mph.
Hartzell missed the next turn in the road, lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree next to a house. Then he ran away on foot and was tracked down by a K-9 unit in some bushes about an hour later.
Hartzell was transported to Jefferson Healthcare hospital to be assessed for his injury complaints before he was taken to the Jefferson County Jail.
Meanwhile, Hartzell’s car was stuck on a ball of roots on the tree, and a power line was in a precarious position near the private residence where Hartzell crashed.
It took deputies an hour or two before they could reach a tree contractor to cut the tree after midnight. A tow truck driver would not remove Hartzell’s car from the scene until it was free from the tree.
During an impound search that took less than a minute, deputies spotted a plastic baggie in an open backpack that contained a substance they suspected was methamphetamine, so they immediately stopped the search in order to apply for a warrant.
A question of how deputies found the backpack and what they learned about it prior to obtaining a warrant was the basis of the appeal.
A jury convicted Hartzell of attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle, hit-and-run property damage, possession of heroin with intent to manufacture or deliver, possession of meth, and two counts of possession of payment instruments.
Three additional charges were dismissed.
On Friday, Hartzell said he had asked his attorney about his options to go to drug court, but he realized he was beyond that point.
“I wish I was one of those people you sentenced with the hope that I’d figure it out while I was locked up,” he said to Harper.
Based on his criminal history, he said he knew he was “untrustworthy.”
“You say you’d like to come back to this court and show us all how you’re doing,” Harper said. “I would welcome that, and I’d like to see that happen.”
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Jefferson County Managing Editor Brian McLean can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 6, or at bmclean@peninsuladailynews.com.
