News brief: Man will return to court after bad advice from lawyer

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS  – A defendant in Lewis County Superior Court won his appeal of a denial of his attempt to withdraw a guilty plea because his lawyer wrongly told him the crime was not a strike offense.

A panel of three judges in the Washington State Court of Appeals on Friday agreed that Brad C. Brower ought to have been allowed to withdraw his May 2009 Alford plea to attempted indecent liberties.

Both the defense attorney and the prosecutor were mistaken about the classification of the crime, according to the opinion. Neither attorney was named in the opinion.

Brower was initially charged in March 2009 with two counts of attempted second-degree rape, or, in the alternative indecent liberties with forcible compulsion, according to the opinion.

Brower argued he would not have entered the plea had he known it was a strike offense.

The appeals court reversed the trial court’s denial of the motion to withdraw the plea and remanded for further proceedings.

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