BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is both astonished and disappointed that King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg’s office yesterday announced a plea bargain with a two-time killer that involved dropping a serious gun charge, only weeks after helping pass a gun control measure that penalizes law-abiding firearms owners.
Yesterday, Satterberg’s office announced a guilty plea from Ja’Mari Alexander-Alan Jones in the murder of DeShawn Milliken at a Bellevue Square restaurant/bar, noting that a firearms charge was dropped as part of the deal that will send Jones to prison. Had the case gone to trial and Jones been convicted of murder and the firearms charge, he could have faced a much longer prison sentence, according to published reports.
“I am stunned that Dan Satterberg’s office cut this deal with the thug who had previously done time for the killing of Edward ‘Tuba Man’ McMichael in 2009,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “It is astonishing, not only for the severity of this second crime, but because Satterberg helped lead the campaign to pass Initiative 594, the new gun control law that treats law-abiding gun owners like criminals of Jones’ ilk.
“It is even more disappointing to me, personally,” he continued, “because I championed a Satterberg proposal two years ago that would have cracked down on exactly the kind of person Jones has become. When Jones shot Milliken, he was still a juvenile, a convicted felon and he was illegally in possession of a handgun. I testified on behalf of Satterberg’s plan in Olympia, when nobody from the gun control lobby showed up.
“Instead of throwing the book at Jones,” Gottlieb said, “Satterberg’s office dropped the gun charge. That’s outrageous, especially after Satterberg prominently campaigned for I-594, a measure that was touted as a means of keeping guns out of the wrong hands – people like Jones – when all it really seems to do is penalize and inconvenience law-abiding gun owners and criminalize perfectly legal activities.
“Satterberg should be offering some hasty ‘begging-your-pardons’ for this,” Gottlieb chided. “For a guy who just helped pass a poorly-written gun control measure that is supposed to disarm criminals, Satterberg shouldn’t celebrate too loudly over a plea deal that suggests he’s more interested in punishing good people for having guns than bad people who misuse them.”