[1]Thomas L. Pleasant is sentenced today in Lewis County Superior Court.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – For the second time in his life, a former Centralia man has been sentenced to life in prison.
Thomas L. Pleasant, 50, went before a judge today in Lewis County Superior Court, having pleaded guilty last month to first-degree robbery and second-degree assault for what took place at the Chehalis Subway store late one night in the summer of 2008.
It was a third strike case with a mandatory punishment neither the prosecutor or defense attorney disputed.
Judge Richard Brosey agreed Pleasant’s 1989 conviction for first-degree robbery in Pierce County and a Colorado conviction for assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon counted as strikes one and two.
“You’re sentenced to the state Department of Corrections for the rest of your natural life, without the possibility of release or parole,” Brosey told the defendant.
Pleasant readily admitted to a string of robberies that summer, and by the end of 2008, was convicted of three first-degree robberies in Cowlitz County and sent off to prison for life, under the same persistent offender law.
Lewis County detectives interviewed him before he left and charges were filed in Lewis County for the July 16, 2008 holdup of the lone female employee at the shop in the Twin City Town Center. The charges were first-degree robbery and first-degree rape.
He admitted robbing her with a pellet gun that looked real, tying her up with an electrical cord and putting her in a walk-in cooler. When she was interviewed, she told of the same events, along with him asking her if she wanted to live and then with a gun to her back, raping her, according to court documents.
Pleasant denied the rape in 2008 and again today.
Lewis County Senior Prosecuting Attorney Will Halstead and Centralia defense attorney Don Blair struck a plea deal, agreeing the rape charge would be dismissed for “evidentiary reasons”.
Blair addressed the court this afternoon, and said his client’s DNA was not present, but other males’ DNA was. Judge Brosey said he understood the Chehalis Police Department no longer had the evidence for the case.
“We believe we would have prevailed on that count,” Blair said.
Pleasant accepted the judge’s offer to speak on his own behalf and told him he was willing to accept the consequences.
“It is what it is,” Pleasant said. “I don’t know why the person said what she said.
“I know I went in, I robbed her, tied her up and put her in the cooler; that was it.”
Halstead told the judge he’d met with the victim as recently as Monday, and believed she now understood why he amended the charges downward.
He read a letter from the victim, who was not named. “She’s adamant she was raped,” he said.
“To whom it may concern: I have to live with what happened to me every day
“I never asked to be robbed at gunpoint, raped and put in a cooler.”
She continued on how she would have liked to stand up to her attacker at trial, but that was taken from her.
“What does that say about the Lewis County court system,” Halstead read. “About the Chehalis Police Department?”
Chehalis Police Chief Glenn Schaffer this afternoon said the evidence was not lost, it was destroyed and he’s not sure exactly where along the line the case came apart.
The department keeps case evidence in a vault and periodically gets rid of or returns what they don’t need any longer, he said.
The department routinely checks with the prosecutor’s office before taking such actions though, according to Schaffer.
“We sent a note and the prosecutor’s office checked off on it,” he said.
Schaffer said he wasn’t certain at this point if his department erred in making the request, or if the prosecutor’s office erred in approving it.
“I’m not looking to place any blame, I don’t know,” he said.
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For background, read “Suspect from 2008 Subway robbery initiated reopening his case” from Monday March 7, 2016, here [2]