Man convicted for role in 2012 abduction, killing of Lakewood man gets reduced sentence
One of eight people convicted in connection to the kidnapping and killing of a Lakewood man more than a decade ago had his punishment reduced by two years in a resentencing hearing.
Jeffrey Wayne Powell II was 31 years old when he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter for his part in the death of 51-year-old Dean Barker, whose body was found beaten, bound with duct tape and strangled outside a Graham home on Sept. 8, 2012.
Three other people pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the killing: Kenneth L. Bierd, Aileenah R. Horton and John Joseph Brown. Two people pleaded guilty to murder: Justin Mahaffey and Angela Marie King. One person, Joshua Benjamin Stevens, pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping and first-degree robbery, and William Randall Barry pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.
The eight received prison sentences ranging from 20 months to 28 years. Powell, who assaulted Barker and stole from him after he was abducted, was sentenced to 17 years in prison on March 14, 2014. At the time, prosecutors said there wasn’t direct evidence that Powell was present when Barker was killed.
In 2021, three of the defendants were resentenced after the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the state’s simple drug possession law was unconstitutional. The decision, State v. Blake, meant that offender scores changed for many people who were already incarcerated. Offender scores help determine someone’s standard sentencing range when they’ve been convicted of a crime, and without prior simple drug possession convictions on a defendant’s record, they would face a lower range of prison time at sentencing.
The ruling shaved a few years off of the three defendant’s punishments, including Mahaffey, who admitted to fatally strangling Barker. His sentence was reduced from 28 years to 25 years, and he remains incarcerated at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla.
Powell’s defense attorney from the Department of Assigned Counsel, Andrew Ricci, brought a motion in July arguing that Powell’s sentence was unconstitutional under the Blake decision and requested a 15-year sentence.
On Friday, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Sorensen agreed and ordered the shorter sentence. Powell, 42, appeared at the hearing remotely on Zoom, and he remains incarcerated at the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Eastern Washington.
During the hearing, Powell told the court that he hadn’t wasted the last 12 years sitting idle. He said he had continuously participated in programming through the Department of Corrections and earned a degree in social services. He added that he was trying to better himself to correct the mistakes he has made. His attorney noted in court filings that Powell is a certified peer counselor through the Washington State Healthcare Authority and has completed training that will help him join the workforce once released.
According to court records, the events that led up to Barker’s death occurred at Brown’s residence, a known drug house in Spanaway. There, Barker was bound and gagged with duct tape, he was assaulted, and his belongings and money were stolen. He was then loaded into an SUV, and King drove him, Mahaffey and Bierd to an unoccupied house in Graham, where Mahaffey strangled Barker to death.
Prosecutors wrote in court filings in 2014 that Powell participated in assaulting Barker and drove the victim’s Porche away from Brown’s house after he was abducted.
Several of the people involved in Barker’s death were angry with him the day he was killed, according to court records. In King’s guilty plea, she stated that Barry believed Barker had something to do with the temporary disappearance of his 2-year-old daughter, and Mahaffey told others at the Spanaway residence that Barker was a sex offender.
Prosecutors have said King also told people there that Barker had previously attempted to sexually assault her, but the state didn’t find evidence that any of those allegations about Barker were true.
