PORT ANGELES ¬– The judge with Rhonda Marchi’s fate in his hands gave himself the option Thursday of putting her in prison for more than 20 years for the attempted murder of her daughter on Christmas night 2006.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams decided Thursday to factor in then-10-year-old McKenna’s vulnerability and the trust she put in her mother.
Marchi’s sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. April 30.
A jury deliberated for about four hours March 18 before convicting Marchi of first-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault of a child.
Marchi, now 44, gave her daughter prescription-drug laced grape juice. She told authorities she also tried to kill herself, writing in a suicide letter that she wanted to protect McKenna from her father and wanted to “take her to Heaven with me.”
Marchi told authorities she and McKenna passed out after drinking the juice, and that Marchi woke up about four hours later and called emergency personnel.
Position of trust
Marchi “used her position of trust to facilitate a crime,” Williams said.
Williams still may decide not to use that to give her a longer sentence and may keep her sentence closer to the minimum 15 years, county Deputy Prosecutor Ann Lundwall said.
Both Marchi and her daughter were treated at Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles after Marchi called 9-1-1.
Doctors said the girl, now 12, would probably have died without emergency attention.
But Lundwall said Marchi put her daughter in that position.
“It’s hard to imagine a greater position of trust than between a parent and a child,” Lundwall argued before Williams.
But county Public Defender Harry Gasnick said McKenna’s trust and vulnerability were no greater than that in any child-parent relationship and that those factors did not warrant an exceptional sentence.
“Her actions were motivated by a misguided attempt to protect her child,” Gasnick said, adding they were influenced by her mental disorders.
Dr. Stephen Melson of Seattle testified Marchi had a long history of anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder and borderline depressive order.
Marchi said the only thing she remembered from Christmas 2006 was picking up her daughter at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Melson said.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladaily news.com.
