Police ruse illegal, lawyer says

An elaborate trick used by Seattle police to make an arrest in the long-unsolved slaying of a 13-year-old girl has the suspect's attorney asking a judge to dismiss the murder charge.

John Athan's attorney argued yesterday that detectives invaded the man's privacy, violated his rights and broke laws with their creative effort to solve the 1982 murder of Kristen Sumstad.

Athan was arrested in New Jersey in May, after police tricked him into sending a sample of his DNA to Seattle and concluded that it matched evidence found on Sumstad's body more than 20 years ago.

They did it by sending Athan a letter -- written on the letterhead of a made-up law firm -- saying he might be eligible for some money in a phony class-action lawsuit over parking tickets.

All he needed to do was reply -- and seal the envelope with a little saliva.

In King County Superior Court, defense attorney John Muenster said it was not only illegal for the detectives to pretend to be lawyers, but also for investigators to open mail that Athan had intended for someone else.

He urged Judge Sharon Armstrong to either throw out the DNA evidence or dismiss the case. Her decision could come next week.

"Once you let something like this through, it cannot be stopped," Muenster said. "It's imperative that the court draw the line on this behavior."

But King County prosecutors argued that the higher courts have approved of various kinds of police trickery time and again, finding that it's sometimes a necessary part of detective work.

Deputy Prosecutor Steve Fogg said police often pose as people doing things that would be illegal for ordinary citizens, such as buying drugs or agreeing to engage in prostitution, to make arrests.

"There are times when police are allowed to break the law," Fogg said. "In this case, what happened -- no more, no less -- is a ruse."

He also argued that while people may expect their letters to remain private, that expectation doesn't apply to the envelope they put it in to send through the mail.

Armstrong asked the attorneys about hypothetical ways that police may and may not gather evidence, and both sides agreed that police could lawfully grab a coffee cup from a suspect's restaurant table to swab it for DNA.

They agreed that police could not pretend to be defense lawyers to ask a suspect about a crime.

Athan's first-degree murder trial is set to begin with jury selection Nov. 17.

Sumstad's body was found Nov. 12, 1982, in a cardboard television box behind a TV store in Magnolia. A bathrobe belt was tied around her neck. She had been beaten and strangled.

Prosecutors say Athan, then 14, was seen pushing a large box on a hand truck just four blocks from where the girl's body was found. When police asked him about it, he said he'd been stealing firewood from his neighbors.

Muenster contends that although DNA may show there was sexual intercourse, there is no evidence to show that Athan killed the girl.

P-I reporter Tracy Johnson can be reached at 206-467-5942 or tracyjohnson@seattlepi.com

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