PORT ANGELES — Citing a potential conflict of interest, a judge on Friday postponed arraignment and granted a motion to appoint a new defense attorney for Ronald Eugene Last Jr.
The 41-year-old Port Angeles man is the father of Lauryn Louise Last, 16. The girl was charged on Wednesday with first-degree and second-degree murder in the Dec. 30 death of her newborn son.
She will be tried as an adult and faces a maximum punishment of life in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Prosecutors say that the girl drowned her son in a toilet bowl after giving birth to him a little after 3 a.m. on Dec. 30, then disposed of the body in a trash bin outside her father’s 12th Street house in Port Angeles.
Her father is charged with felony possession of a firearm and possession of methamphetamine, as well as the gross misdemeanor of concealing birth.
Both were arrested on Jan. 2. Both will be arraigned in Clallam County Superior Court on Friday.
Judge Ken Williams set a $10,000 bail for Ronald Last on Monday. He posted a bail bond at 5:41 p.m. Wednesday, Clallam County jail superintendent Ron Suckert confirmed.
If convicted, Ronald Last faces between 86 and 116 months in prison because of previous felony convictions.
Lauryn Last is being represented by Suzanne Hayden, an attorney in the Clallam County Public Defender’s Office.
Last’s father also was being represented by an attorney from the Public Defender’s Office.
Wood appointed Sequim attorney Gary Sund to defend Ronald Last.
Conflict of interest
“It was a conflict for the public defender to represent you and your daughter,” Clallam County Superior Court Judge George Wood told him in a 10-minute hearing.
“I am appointing Gary Sund, who is an experienced lawyer in town.”
The misdemeanor charge of concealing birth presents a conflict of interest because it is directly related to his daughter’s murder case, the judge said.
Sund said he gets about 20 cases per year from the public defender’s office — and enjoys taking them on.
“I’m on a short list of people who occasionally get appointed for accused people who have a conflict of interest,” Sund said on Friday afternoon, about an hour after finding out he was assigned to the case.
The body of a baby was found amid trash at a private dump in Graham, near Tacoma, on Monday about 2:10 p.m.
DNA test results to confirm the infant’s parentage won’t be available for a month or more, police have said.
Lauryn Last remains in custody in the Clallam County Juvenile Services Detention Facility with bail set at $500,000.
Police have said that the girl was impregnated by a man in his 30s in Colorado.
Hayden said that her client didn’t know she was in labor, and that she went into shock after giving birth on a toilet.
Charge said inappropriate
She called the infant’s death a horrible tragedy, and said that charging the girl with first-degree murder as an adult is inappropriate.
“This is an absolute tragedy with more and more details coming in all the time,” Hayden told the Peninsula Daily News on Wednesday.
“She would not have kept the baby. She would have given it up for adoption, but she did want this baby alive. That makes it all the more tragic. . . . She just lost a child and she is only 16 — a child herself.”
Lauryn Last moved from Pueblo, Colo., where her mother lives, to her father’s home in Port Angeles in October.
________
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
