Hatfield U.S. Courthouse.jpg
The Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse sits in downtown Portland.
(Bryan Denson/The Oregonian)
A man who scrubbed blood off a carport on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and helped hide a corpse from police got another chance Monday to save his own life - along with a sharp warning.
U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown confronted the riddle of 21-year-old Christopher Taylor Arthur who stood before her for sentencing. In 2013, she had found him guilty of being an accessory after the fact in the brutal slaying of Faron Kalama. He now faced up to 15 years in prison for that crime and for failing to appear in court.
Christopher Taylor Arthur
For his part, Arthur had owned up to a crime he'd only reluctantly taken part in, and he pushed "all in" to help government prosecutors make the case against the two women behind Kalama's killing, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig J. Gabriel. He sought a 6 1/2-year prison term for Arthur.
Daniel L. Feiner, Arthur's lawyer, had written a lengthy memo for the judge, pointing out that he was a decent young man, 18 years old at the time he used hydrogen peroxide to scrub down a bloody crime scene. His parents had given him no instruction on how to make it in the world as an adult.
The judge asked Arthur if he had anything to say for himself.
"I feel dumb," he began, and he acknowledged he thought his crimes through.
Brown pointed out that Arthur's crimes were extremely serious, especially in the context of the killers' brutality. But she noted that he was a "really fragile person" bent by the will of other people in "a very destructive community," where he had repeatedly been abused as a child.
In Brown's mind, Arthur wasn't yet an adult. Now she was taking what she described as perhaps a "historic" departure from federal sentencing guidelines to achieve justice and give Arthur a chance to grow up outside the bars of a federal prison.
But she issued a warning that failure is not an option: "You'll be throwing away your life."
Brown ordered him to be released from jail, where he had spent the last 22 months, credit for time served. She ordered him into 5 years of probation, intensive drug and alcohol treatment, and time in a halfway house. She also ordered him to complete his high school equivalency in one year.
"You've got a chance now," Brown said, "and you can make the most of it."
-- Bryan Denson
503-294-7614; @Bryan_Denson