By Sara Jean Green
The Seattle Times
KING COUNTY, Wash. — Former King County Corrections Officer Gil Letrondo never again worked as a jail guard after he was beaten unconscious and his neck and chest were stomped by an inmate at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent nearly four years ago, a jury was told Wednesday morning.
The inmate accused of the attack, Seon Graham, is on trial at the King County Courthouse in Seattle, charged with first-degree assault for the attack on Letrondo in January 2011. He is also charged with four counts of custodial assault for injuries sustained by four other guards who struggled to control Graham in the aftermath.
Additionally, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Doyle told jurors he will be asking them to find that an unconscious Letrondo was a “vulnerable victim” and that Graham knew Letrondo was a law-enforcement officer performing his duties at the time of the assault — aggravators that, if proved, would increase Graham’s time behind bars.
If convicted, Graham is facing a potential prison sentence of 20 to 30 years.
Doyle said Graham attacked Letrondo with the intent to seriously hurt or kill him after threatening to do so two days earlier. But defense attorney John Ostermann said his client lost control of himself and impulsively attacked the guard “like a wild animal.”
“Seon Graham wasn’t calculating, he wasn’t intending to hurt these people,” but the stress of being in jail and Graham’s anger “boiled to the point he lost control of himself,” Ostermann said.
Though it wasn’t explicitly stated, it appears Ostermann’s strategy could be to raise doubt about Graham’s intent. In order to prove first-degree assault, prosecutors must convince jurors a defendant intended to — and did in fact — inflict great bodily harm.
According to court and jail records, Graham was booked into the county jail in Kent in July 2009 on a first-degree- robbery charge, accused of threatening a friend and two other people with a handgun over a $10 debt, then robbing them of $50. He was awaiting trial on that case — which is still pending — when he was accused of attacking Letrondo on Jan. 11, 2011.
Graham, 36, is also charged with second-degree assault in Pierce County Superior Court for allegedly strangling a fellow patient at Western State Hospital in August 2013, court records say. He is accused of committing that assault while at the hospital for a competency evaluation in connection with the alleged assault on Letrondo, according to the records.
Based on a photo shown to the jury on Wednesday, Graham appears to have shed about 100 pounds in the years since Letrondo was beaten.
“His physical appearance and build was much different than the man you see here today,” Doyle told jurors. Graham “was a strong and powerful man” — and he “was also an angry man,” Doyle said.
Court records show that Letrondo was 26 years older, 100 pounds lighter and four inches shorter than Graham.
Two days before the alleged attack, jail officers conducted a routine “protective sweep” of jail cells, and Letrondo found food inside the cell occupied by Graham, Doyle said. Graham, who was housed alone in his cell 23 hours a day, was notified by Letrondo that he would lose his hour outside his cell as punishment for the rule violation.
In response, Graham swore at Letrondo, then threatened to beat and kill him — threats Letrondo documented in a report written Jan. 10, 2011, Doyle said.
The next day, Letrondo entered the Nora East unit and was told by Officer Michael Wells that Graham was in the shower, Doyle said. The two men were standing at the guard’s station when Graham rushed Letrondo from behind and punched him on the left side of his face, he said.
Wells punched Graham in the face and used his radio to call for help as Graham again punched Letrondo in the head, causing the back of the officer’s head to strike a window, knocking him unconscious, Doyle said. As Letrondo lay motionless in a pool of blood on the floor, Graham used the full force of his body weight to stomp on him, said Doyle, who demonstrated by loudly slamming the sole of his shoe against the courtroom’s linoleum tiles.
When Letrondo regained consciousness, he was so confused “he didn’t know who the president was,” Doyle said, noting Letrondo has no memory of the attack.
Wells, he said, felt he “was in a fight for his life and it was a fight he was losing” to Graham before other officers came to his aid.
The trial is expected to wrap up around Thanksgiving.