PORT ANGELES — A woman who tried killing herself and her daughter was found guilty Thursday of first-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault of a child, the heaviest charges at the jury’s disposal.
Rhonda Marchi, 44, sat with her hands tightly clenched Thursday after the Clallam County jury reached its verdict three hours after closing arguments.
The attempted murder and assault charges each carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The standard sentence range for the attempted murder charge is 15 to 20 years, and for the first-degree assault of a child, about 7¬½ years to about 12 years, her lawyer, county Public Defender Harry Gasnick, said Thursday night.
Marchi could have been found guilty of second- or third-degree assault of a child.
Instead, she was found guilty of intentionally trying to kill her then-10-year-old daughter, McKenna, by giving her crushed prescription pills partially dissolved in grape juice and inducing her to drink it by saying it would cure her upset stomach.
Marchi will be released under the county’s electronic home monitoring program until her sentencing April 30.
, but will appear in court at 9 a.m. Wednesday for a hearing before Judge Ken Williams on whether aggravating circumstances surrounding the Dec. 25, 2006, attempted murder-suicide will increase her sentence beyond the standard range.
The county Prosecuting Attorney’s office is asserting those circumstances are McKenna’s vulnerability and Marchi’s violation of a position of trust.
Marchi has been on personal recognizance.
“The verdict that has been reached has been quite a shock to my client,” Public Defender Harry Gasnick told Williams as he made arrangements for her post-trial custody.
At a recess during closing arguments, a sometimes tearful Marchi read passages from the Bible.
Gasnick and Sequim lawyer Gary Sund said she had major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by instability, paranoia and difficulty forming relationships.
That paved the way for her deadly actions, Sund contended in his closing argument.
He described her as a former cheerleader whose mother was married six times and her father three times, setting the stage for her mental disorders and an inability to intentionally murder her child.
Several friends testified she refused to leave her house, turning down numerous invitations to Christmas dinner.
The jury wondered why her condition got to that point, Hampton said.
“I think they felt, Why didn’t she seek help or someone force her to get help if her life was that bad?”
Marchi contended that she was trying to save McKenna from her abusive father and wrote a detailed, page-and-a-half, typed suicide letter saying her only choice was “to take her to Heaven with me.”
But McKenna testified that her father never even spanked her, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ann Lundwall reminded the jury in her closing arguments.
Hampton said the jury also believed Lundwall’s assertion that the suicide letter, which Marchi wrote on her computer immediately after she gave her daughter the poison cocktail, seemed too long and well-crafted to be that of a woman in mental disarray.
“We talked about if a person was really trying to commit suicide and end it all, they would have made it a lot more brief,” Hampton said.
Standing before the jury and slowly and deeply inhaling and exhaling, Lundwall suggested that once Marchi realized McKenna was breathing heavily and not dying, Marchi herself overdosed ¬– though intentionally not with a fatal amount — to fake her own attempted suicide to cover up the botched attempt, then called police to make it look like she saved McKenna.
About four hours elapsed between Marchi giving McKenna the drugged-up drink and when she called 9-1-1.
Lundwall’s argument rang true with the jury.
“We didn’t think she was trying to save McKenna at the time,” Hampton said. “It was more like, this didn’t work out, I just need to make it look better.”
Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
