PORT ANGELES — Robert Gene Covarrubias, 28, on Thursday stuck with his plea that he is guilty of murdering 15-year-old Melissa Leigh Carter in 2004.
He agreed “absolutely” in Clallam County Superior Court with the prospect of spending at least the next 34 ½ years in prison as he set the stage for his sentencing at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Judge George L. Wood can sentence Covarrubias to 34 ½ years to life, and Covarrubias will be released only by decision of the state Indeterminate Sentence Review Board.
On Monday, Covarrubias had said he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he agreed to it while off of his medication for depression.
His decision has more to do with feeling comfortable with prison life and anxious about living in general society than with guilt, innocence or even remorse, suggested his lawyer, Karen Unger of Port Angeles, who was appointed to the case after attorney Ralph W. Anderson of Port Angeles withdrew from it Wednesday.
“He sees life in prison as something he knows,” Unger said. “He sees life on the outside as something he doesn’t know.
“That’s the motivation behind the change, pretty much.”
Arrested in 2005 for murdering Melissa Carter, Covarrubias had maintained his innocence for 4 ½ years, through his first murder trial in Port Angeles, at which he was found guilty, and through his appeal, which won him a new trial that was scheduled to start Sept. 21.
In April 2006, Covarrubias began serving a 34 ½-year sentence.
Covarrubias engaged in a one-on-one exchange with Wood after insisting he wanted to withdraw the motion to rescind his July 23 guilty plea, which was preceded by a July 15 confession to Port Angeles police that he raped and murdered Carter.
“I do not want to proceed with the motion,” he told Wood.
Reason doesn’t matter
“I want to be sentenced. It doesn’t matter what the reason.”
Wood agreed to withdraw Covarrubias’ motion to withdraw the guilty plea and set the date for sentencing.
“We’ll see where it goes from here,” Carla Carter, Melissa Carter’s mother, said after the hearing.
More than a half-dozen family members will attend the sentencing, and some will directly address Covarrubias in open court on the impact his actions had on their lives, Carla Carter said.
“I hope it follows through. It will be a wonderful thing.”
Melissa Carter’s father, Jim Madden of Brooks, Ore., also will attend, he said Thursday afternoon in a telephone interview.
“I have a statement to make,” he said.
“I just want to tell them about the person I knew. And of course, I’ll have a couple of parting words for Covarrubias. Short. Sweet.”
Anderson had argued Monday that the guilty plea should be withdrawn.
Covarrubias, according to court records a meth user at the time of his arrest, was in a “depressed” mental state when he confessed and when he pleaded guilty, and was not properly medicated, Anderson argued.
In his written motion, Anderson said Covarrubias had quit taking Wellbutrin, a drug for treating clinical depression, in the days leading up to his confession to Port Angeles police.
That confession lasted three hours and resulted in an 83-page transcript presented in court and which the Peninsula Daily News is seeking through state and federal public records laws.
Anderson noted that, in pleading guilty, Covarrubias had agreed to the more serious charge of murder with sexual motivation, or rape, without having Anderson pursue a motion to dismiss it.
Covarrubias also confessed to police without contacting Anderson, going so far as agreeing to be escorted to the murder scene with the police.
Mental state
“There is serious question as to his mental state at the time he chose to plead guilty,” Anderson said.
“An innocent person who pleads guilty for reasons related to his depression and hopelessness does not do so knowingly and intelligently.”
Anderson quit the case over unspecified “ethical issues,” he said in his motion for withdrawal.
Unger said Covarrubias told her during a 35-minute conversation Wednesday night that he wanted to plead guilty and be sentenced.
She said in a later interview that she was “led to believe” he was not taking medication.
“He wants to go to prison,” she said.
Covarrubias has served prison time for burglary, drug sales and theft.
He was released Dec. 6, 2004, and was living in an abandoned house when Carter was last seen Dec. 23, 2004.
That night, she and Covarrubias attended the same party at the now-closed Chinook Motel about a mile from where her body was found up an embankment next to the Port Angeles Waterfront Trail.
After staunchly maintaining his innocence — even writing “INNOCENT” on the back of his jail jumpsuit at his first sentencing in 2006 — he has since July 15 confessed, pleaded guilty, filed a motion to withdraw that plea and now insists he is guilty.
County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Drew Lauer, asserting Covarrubias might change his mind again, argued that Covarrubias should undergo a mental evaluation at Western State Hospital before Wood rules on the guilty plea.
“He does not want to go to Western State,” Unger said.
Wood said Anderson’s assertion that Covarrubias was depressed was all he had to indicate Covarrubias was mentally incompetent.
“At this point, the competency issue is not one that is before me,” Wood said, adding Covarrubias “knew exactly what he was doing” when he pleaded guilty.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
