A six-time felon was given one second chance after another before he ended up killing a Phoenix cop
It’s a rotten shame that overworked prosecutors, overcrowded court dockets and the costs associated with criminal trials have made plea bargaining the rule rather than the exception.
COP KILLER GIVEN TOO MANY SECOND CHANCES
by Laurie Roberts
The Arizona Republic
March 8, 2014
By my count, the state of Arizona gave William Ray Thornton a dozen or more second chances to overcome his rotten start in life.
The final one came in January, when he was released from prison four and one-half months early.
On Monday, the 28-year-old six-time felon killed a Phoenix police detective and wounded a second one in a gunfight in northwest Phoenix. This, as they were attempting to apprehend him for shooting a man last week. (The victim has since died.)
It was a familiar scenario for a guy who spent most of his life committing crimes then getting deals from a criminal justice system that seemed more attuned to pushing plea bargains than keeping a career criminal off the streets.
“He has been afforded the sanctions of fines, probation, intensive probation and prison; yet he continues to engage in illegal behavior,” a presentence investigator wrote in 2012, when Thornton was given yet another plea bargain – his fifth.
For all of his crimes, William Ray Thornton never once went to trial, never once was prosecuted to the full extent of the law. While it made sense to cut him a few breaks early on, you have to wonder how many second chances a guy gets.
Court records paint a dismal picture. Thornton grew up in a dysfunctional family, with an abusive father and a mentally ill mother. At 7, he watched his father stab his mother and later CPS shuttled him between group homes and his mother.
At 9, he was smoking marijuana and by 12, he was into cocaine. He had 15 referrals to the juvenile justice system and was found delinquent seven times, landing on probation, intensive probation and twice in detention, where he got 16 months of drug treatment.
He came into the adult system at age 15, after beating up a fellow inmate at the Adobe Mountain School, the state’s juvenile prison. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office gave him a plea deal, reducing the charge to attempted aggravated assault, and a judge gave him three months in jail and three years’ adult intensive probation in February 2001.
By September 2001, he had violated his probation and a few weeks later was arrested on a drug charge after admitting to smoking marijuana laced with cocaine every day.
A presentence investigator noted that at 16 he had a “lengthy escalating criminal history.”
“Time spent in custody has not made an impression,” the investigator wrote. “Apparently, he is not going to change his behaviors. It is clear he has not taken the orders of the court seriously.”
So naturally prosecutors gave him another deal. He spent four months in prison for violating his probation in the assault case and got a year’s probation for the drug conviction.
He left prison in February 2002 and by July had violated his probation again. So a judge doubled his probation, to two years.
In February 2003, he robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. Once again, prosecutors offered a deal, reducing the charge to attempted armed robbery, with no more than 6.5 years in prison. This, even though the crime called for up to 16 years, given his prior record. He also got a meaningless year for violating probation (again). The sentence ran concurrently with his 6.5-year term.
Thornton earned his G.E.D. while in prison and was paroled in December 2008.
In April 2009, while still on parole, he stole his stepfather’s truck to go on a drug run. When police initiated a traffic stop, he fled and crashed into a wall. He would later tell police that he ran because he didn’t want to go back to prison.
He was charged with car theft and unlawful flight and again prosecutors offered a deal. This time, they dropped the unlawful flight count and charged the car theft as if he’d had only one prior felony conviction rather than three, in order to reduce the sentencing range.
In June 2009, Thornton was sentenced to 2.25 years in prison.
“It’s is hoped that this lengthy time in prison will finally impress upon him a need to remain law abiding and that his ongoing criminal behaviors will not be tolerated,” a presentence investigator wrote.
In April 2012, just three months after getting out of prison, he was arrested yet again, this time for drug possession and for resisting arrest as he tried to conceal a baggie of methamphetamine.
Once again, prosecutors offered a deal and Thornton got two years in prison.
“It is hoped,” a presentence investigator wrote, “that a period of incarceration will allow the defendant time to reflect on his behavior.”
Thornton was released on Jan. 9, nearly five months early. And on Monday, his second chances finally came to end but at a cost that is just too damn high.
Detective John Hobbs is survived by a wife and three children.
The oldest is just 10 years old.
1 comment:
I am confident he did reflect. He thought "The clowns running the system are a bunch of chumps and I will scam them successfully AGAIN." Then he did so.
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