Three people with Pierce County connections are among 10 people who had convictions erased or sentences reduced by Gov. Chris Gregoire during her final days in office.
The three were:
• Ethan Corbett Durden, who led a group that burglarized the homes of Pierce County drug dealers at gunpoint in 1997, believing the victims wouldn’t call police.
Among those in the group was Jacob Korum, who at one point was sentenced to 100 years for his role in the holdups. The sentence later was reduced to 141/2 years.
Durden was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He has participated in drug and alcohol counseling and has written letters urging young people to avoid the mistakes he made. His sentence will end in September 2015 if he complies with the conditions.
• David W. Reed, who was convicted of breaking into an auto-wrecking yard in 1964, when he was 19. He retired after 20 years as a Pierce County Fire District firefighter in 1996, and later moved to Oklahoma, which requires a full pardon before felons from other states can be allowed to have guns.
• Gary Gray, who broke into a Kitsap County apartment and stole $50 in 1982, when he was 20, and he was convicted of possessing a stolen motorbike in Pierce County the next year.
He moved to Alaska and worked in the fishing industry before working his way up to senior captain in the Unalaska Fire Department. Gray and his wife recently returned to Washington state. He hopes to become a fire investigator, but such positions require law enforcement and firearms training.
Among others getting pardons or commuted sentences were:
• John Ray Stewart, a three-strikes offender serving a sentence of life without release who exposed a murder plot against a King County deputy prosecutor.
• Scott Adam Spong, who served six months in work release after firing a gun after being jumped by a group of young men at a Thurston County fast-food restaurant, even though the beating had stopped. He went on to serve five years in the U.S. Army, including 15 months in Iraq.
• Diana Vandenberg-Hansen, who stole $7,000 from the Edmonds bank where she worked as a teller in 2003.
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