Less than five years after being resentenced for the 1989 bludgeoning and rape of 85-year-old Ann Presler at her Port Orchard house, a state appellate court sent the last juvenile in Washington sentenced to death back to Kitsap County to be sentenced for the fourth time.
Michael Furman, now 51, was 17 at the time he killed Presler. He is currently serving a sentence of 48 years to life — handed down in 2018, the third time he was sentenced — making him eligible for release at age 65.
The appellate court ruled that sentence amounted to a “de facto” life sentence, which it said is unconstitutional.
However, among the tangle of juvenile justice decisions that have been handed down in the last decade, an unrelated September decision by the state Supreme Court “repudiates” the 2021 appellate decision that ordered another resentencing for Furman, according to the Kitsap County prosecutor.
That Supreme Court decision, Prosecutor Chad Enright argued earlier this month, upheld a sentence of 61 years to life for another 17-year-old convicted of murder and allows the Kitsap County Superior Court judge on the case to decline to sentence Furman again.
The next hearing on Furman’s case is scheduled for February 24.
Though Presler’s murder was 33 years ago, each resentencing has drawn Presler’s family back into the heartbreak and horror of her death, having to again attend hearings, sit in the same room as Presler’s killer and relive the anguish.
Jule Presler-Keller, Presler’s granddaughter, said the family is hoping the judge will uphold the current sentence but due to the history of the case they are not hopeful.
“It’s long past the time for the courts to stop this nonsense and do what’s right for my grandmother and our family,” Presler-Keller wrote in an email to the Kitsap Sun.
“I’m stunned by their strength at this point,” Enright said. “I don’t want to see other families have to go through this. I want this to be the last time they have to go through this.”
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Furman’s attorney, public defender Steve Lewis, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
In 1989, Furman was a troubled teen living about a half mile from Presler. He told a Kitsap County sheriff’s detective that on April 27, 1989 he had gone door-to-door looking for odd jobs until Presler hired him for $10 to clean the windows at her Brasch Road house.
Furman started working but during a conversation over cleaning products — Presler had run out of Windex — Furman said he attacked Presler, sexually assaulted her, stole a small amount of cash and fled.
At trial, Furman testified he used meth and marijuana before the attack and told a Kitsap County sheriff’s detective he didn’t necessarily want Presler to die but he didn’t want to leave a witness to identify him.
“I realized if I didn’t, she was gonna say something. I was going to get in a lot of trouble,” Furman told the detective, according to court documents. “I had to kill her.”
Convicted of aggravated first-degree murder, Furman was originally sentenced to death. He appealed and in 1993 his life was spared by the state Supreme Court, which at the same time abolished capital punishment for juveniles.
Instead of death, Furman received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
In 2018 Furman was sent back to Kitsap County Superior Court to be sentenced again, his third.
This trip back to Port Orchard followed a landmark juvenile justice decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 that ruled mandatory life sentences for youths violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
The court found in Miller vs. Alabama, in light of recent brain development research, that juveniles are different from adults for the purpose of sentencing. The court found mandatory life sentences don’t allow judges to take into consideration mitigating factors of youth, such as impulsive decision-making and the chance of rehabilitation, along with other factors such as abusive and dysfunctional home environments over which a youth has little control.
During his third sentencing, this time in front of Judge Sally Olsen, Furman testified to the anger he felt as a juvenile and the abuse and neglect he suffered, including being coerced by his step-mother to kill a litter of puppies the family could not feed and trying to protect his sisters from being molested by his sex offender father.
“I am responsible for what I did,” Furman said. “I will live with the regret and shame for the rest of my life.”
Olsen reduced Furman’s sentence to a minimum of 48 years, noting the hardships of his youth and rehabilitation while in prison, but said the minimum sentence of 25 years to life his attorney requested was not appropriate given the seriousness of Presler’s death, calling Furman’s actions deliberate, cruel and intentional.
Olsen noted that Furman had not made a convincing case that his crime was a result of his youth, noting he made efforts to conceal his crime and killed Presler to keep himself out of trouble.
“The degree of responsibility he was capable of exercising in this instance was quite high, despite his general diminished capacity for self-control and judgment as a juvenile,” Olsen found.
Furman appealed that decision, and last year, the Division II Court of Appeals found that Furman’s sentence of 48 years to life amounted to a “de facto life sentence.”
The judges on the case wrote the state Supreme Court had held that a 46-year minimum sentence was “de facto life” and found that “such a sentence is categorically prohibited under our state constitution.”
In light of that ruling, the appellate court found Furman’s 48-year minimum sentence would also be unconstitutional and sent the case back to Olsen.
Then, in September, as attorneys were preparing for an Nov. 4 hearing on Furman’s resentencing, the state Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Tonelli Anderson.
Anderson was convicted in King County of two counts of first-degree murder committed when he was 17, and planned to murder cocaine dealers in a rip-off. The state’s high court upheld Anderson’s 61-year minimum sentence, finding his crimes did not reflect his youth.
In a 5-4 split decision, justices found that an interpretation of a previous ruling in the case of Timothy Haag, convicted of murder in Cowlitz County — the same ruling which appellate judges relied on to order Furman’s fourth sentencing — was flawed.
“We determined that a particular juvenile offender could not receive such a harsh punishment because his crime reflected youthful immaturity, impetuosity and failure to appreciate risks and consequences,” the majority found. “But when, as here, a juvenile offender’s crimes do not reflect those mitigating qualities of youth, Washington’s constitution does not bar a de facto (life without parole) sentence.”
