A deep knife wound in a woman\u2019s armpit could just have easily wounded an artery that would have ended her life, Juneau District Attorney James Scott said in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolute sheer dumb luck\u201d is what Scott said allowed 36-year-old Robert Paul Jr. to walk away with just a one-year prison sentence instead of a lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would be arguing about whether he should be in jail (up to) 99 years,\u201d Scott said Tuesday in Juneau Superior Court during Paul\u2019s change of plea and sentencing hearing.<\/p>\n
Paul pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault for injuring his 33-year-old girlfriend in an attack on Telephone Hill Park Feb. 4, an act that caught the attention of two bystanders who then intervened and kept Paul away from the woman until police arrived.<\/p>\n
Police said the woman was treated for scratches, bruises and the knife wound at Bartlett Regional Hospital that same day. Scott said she did not appear in court for Paul\u2019s hearing Tuesday because she was travelling. An update on her injuries was not provided.<\/p>\n
Judge Philip Pallenberg accepted the agreement Scott and Assistant Public Defender Eve Soutiere presented, which gives Paul the maximum prison sentence for the class A misdemeanor. By taking the plea deal, Paul avoided trial on the more serious charges of second- and third-degree assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that this is an acceptable and fitting sentence,\u201d Scott said during Tuesday\u2019s change of plea and sentencing hearing. He added that a felony trial would have created too many problems for the state. All the parties involved \u2014 including witnesses \u2014 were intoxicated at the time, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Witnesses) who when they were re-interviewed didn\u2019t remember when they were first interviewed,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n
The victim was also drinking the evening of the attack, according to a police complaint. Scott said the victim told officers she could not remember the moment the knife cut her because it was just a \u201cblur.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police complaint alleged witnesses saw Paul sitting on top of the 33-year-old woman, punching and striking her.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Scott told Judge Pallenberg he wouldn\u2019t be surprised to see Paul again in court, given his past.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Paul has a singularly terrible misdemeanor history,\u201d Scott said, listing just a few of the disorderly conduct charges on Paul\u2019s record in the last year alone. Paul\u2019s criminal history includes more than two dozen criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and various other charges dating back to 2000, according to online court records.<\/p>\n
Soutiere said her client, who could be heard holding back tears after Scott recounted the events of that evening, does not remember the incident the same way it was reported to police. Instead, Soutiere said Paul told her that he remembers people trying to attack him for money they thought he owed them and he took his knife out in defense. He doesn\u2019t remember trying to hurt his girlfriend, Soutiere said.<\/p>\n
Soutiere told the judge Paul has gone several stretches of years without committing alcohol-involved offenses and he has the potential to get past this one after he serves his jail time.<\/p>\n
Scott called Paul \u201cthe luckiest man in the world\u201d for not killing the woman and suggested Paul use the time to be thankful each day he did not cause her greater harm.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Paula Ann Solis at 523-2272 or paula.solis@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A deep knife wound in a woman\u2019s armpit could just have easily wounded an artery that would have ended her life, Juneau District Attorney James Scott said in court. \u201cAbsolute sheer dumb luck\u201d is what Scott said allowed 36-year-old Robert Paul Jr. to walk away with just a one-year prison sentence instead of a lifetime. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17205"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}