Wahkiakum Superior Court

January 18 and 24, 2011

Michael Sullivan, judge

A jury acquitted a Skamokawa man of a charge of malicious mischief/domestic violence after a three-day trial last week.

James Derek Cheeks was charged with 1. tampering with a witness/domestic violence, 2. malicious mischief/domestic violence, and 3. interfering with the reporting of domestic violence after an incident last May.

In a pre-trial hearing before the jury trial started last Monday, the first charge was dismissed, leaving him charged with two counts for the jury trial. At the close of jury trial testimony, the instructions to the jury said to proceed to producing a verdict on the third charge only if Cheeks were found guilty of the second charge. So when the jury found him innocent of the malicious mischief charge, the third charge was dropped.

State versus Clayton R. Olsen, 40: The defendant entered not-guilty pleas to charges of intimidating a judge and three counts of harassment/threats to do bodily harm; a trial was scheduled for March 21.

The state claims that Olsen stopped a vehicle traveling up Columbia Street in Cathlamet on January 9, entered the vehicle, left it, and then pounded on a window. Officers responded to that report and arrested him for an outstanding district court warrant of arrest. Further, officers say, that while being booked into jail, Olsen threatened to harm the district court judge and witnesses who reported the incident involving the vehicle.

State versus Rick Charles Mueller, 19, and David Wayne Stillwell: The two defendants were charged with taking a motor vehicle without permission, and the court issued warrants of arrest for them. The state says that a woman reported January 14 that her son and another man, the two defendants, took her car without permission. After she had reported the incident, her son returned and told her the vehicle was out of gas in a Longview parking lot. An investigating officer was unable to locate the two men.

State Kent Dewey Dunn, 48, Cathlamet: The defendant was charged with two counts of second degree assault with a firearm. He pled innocent, and a jury trial was scheduled for March 28. The state claims that Dunn harassed tenants living in a mobile home near Cathlamet; that he fought with a man who was at the home, and that he fired a gunshot into the air as the man and another man were attempting to leave the scene.