United States v. Alexander Herbert Luscier, Jr.
Opinion
Opinion
Canby, J.
Luscier appeals from the sentence the district court imposed upon his pleas of guilty to two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1151 , 1153, and one count of second degree murder, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111 , 1151, 1153.
BACKGROUND
The offenses for which Luscier was convicted occurred on the Quinault Indian Reservation in Taholah, Washington. After an evening of heavy drinking and several hits of LSD, Luscier broke into the home of his aunt, Mary Slade. Slade, an eighty-three-year-old tribal elder who was unable to move about without the aid of a walker, was asleep in her bedroom. Luscier’s cousin, Kora Ward, was sleeping in an adjacent bedroom with her boyfriend, Anthony Juarez, and her infant son. Ward’s other child, a boy of eleven, was asleep on the living room couch.
Luscier went into his aunt’s bedroom and stabbed her to death with a sharpening steel. Awakened by Slade’s screams, Kora Ward saw Luscier approaching her bedroom. Luscier was still holding the sharpening steel, and he shouted for Ward to go into the bathroom, threatening to kill her children if she did not obey. Ward pushed the bedroom door shut before Luscier could enter the room. Juarez held it…