PORT ANGELES — An attorney for Lauryn Last said that her client rejects a plea offer that would have netted the teenager no additional jail time in the death of her infant son.
The rejection of the offer, which Last’s attorneys have not announced to the Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, would set the stage for Last’s June 7 Superior Court trial on a charge of second-degree murder.
“We will reject the offer at this point,” Suzanne Hayden of the Clallam County Public Defender’s Office said Friday.
“We are basically not doing anything about it.
“It’s a great offer. If she was guilty, it would be an absolute slam dunk — she would take it.
“But that’s not the case.”
Under the offer from the county Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Last, now 17, would have pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in county Juvenile Court and been sentenced to 15 to 36 weeks in prison with credit for time served.
That would have meant she would have no more time in custody, since she had already served that much time in juvenile detention in Clallam County.
Last was in custody after being charged in January 2009 with first-degree murder, a charge the county Prosecuting Attorney’s office later reduced to second-degree murder, the maximum sentence for which is 181âÑ3 years.
She is now living with a relative on her own recognizance.
Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly said Friday that if Suzanne Hayden and her husband, John Hayden, who also is representing Last, allow the May 3 deadline for accepting the plea to lapse, or if they outright reject the offer, the case will proceed to adult court and Last will tried for second-degree murder.
At a status hearing on Friday, Judge Ken Williams set a hearing date of May 11-12 to determine the admissability of statements Last made to police after the infant boy’s body was discovered Jan. 5, 2009, wrapped in a garbage bag inside a 30-ton trash container at a Tacoma-area landfill.
Authorities said the infant’s body was put in a garbage container outside Last’s Port Angeles home.
Different versions
According to court records, Port Angeles police and the Prosecuting Attorney’s office are presenting two different versions of what happened on Dec. 30, 2008, when Last, then 16, gave birth to the child while sitting on a toilet at 3 a.m. in a Port Angeles house occupied by several juveniles and five adult males, including her father.
Police interviewed Last shortly after her arrest in January 2009.
“Lauryn Last put her baby face-down into a toilet and allowed it to drown for several minutes until it died,” Detective Jesse Winfield said in a statement contained in court records.
That differs from the account of Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Troberg, who said the following in his March 11 motion to obtain defense reports related to the participation of a Montgomery, Ala., forensic pathologist:
“The state alleges that the defendant gave birth to her son into a toilet, wherein the baby drowned face down without any attempt by the defendant to rescue him nor to offer any assistance.”
In a statement Last gave after she was advised of her right to an attorney, “she acknowledged hearing him ‘gurgling’ in the toilet,'” Troberg wrote.
Visiting Jefferson County Superior Court Judge Craddock Verser on March 19 denied the motion to produce reports from the pathologist.
Troberg subsequently filed an appeal with the state Court of Appeals that will be heard on May 19. The account in the appeal more explicitly diverges from Winfield’s account, saying Last “allowed the baby to drown.”
Troberg said Friday he could not discuss the seemingly contradictory accounts for fear of compromising Last’s right to an impartial trial, adding the issue may be resolved at the May 11 hearing.
“I’d point out that on May 11, we will simply go into her statements in detail,” he said.
Whether the infant was allowed to drown or was forcibly drowned is not an issue for Last’s lawyers.
Hayden: Infant stillborn
Suzanne Hayden said Friday the autopsy results will prove that the infant was not alive when born.
“The sound [Last] heard wasn’t the baby gurgling but the water around the baby in the toilet,” the attorney said.
The attorney also said that:
• Statements Last made to the authorities are suspect because Last had been taking pain medication for what she thought were cramps from her period.
“The police officers decided what happened and got her to say what they wanted her to say,” she said.
Last had been given Pamprin, marijuana, methadone and Valium before she talked to authorities.
• Last was raped at age 15.
The infant’s father, Gregory Greenway, 37, of Pueblo, Colo., is in a Colorado prison serving four years for criminal attempt to commit sexual assault on a child for assaulting Last in 2008.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.