Judge denies probation, sends dealer to prison

COEUR d’ALENE — Jon J. Wallace thinks he can do probation again, and stay clean.

But 1st District Judge Lansing Haynes didn’t agree Wednesday when he sentenced Wallace to a 10-year prison term for selling heroin and methamphetamines to a police informant.

Wallace, 56, whose prison record started in California with a burglary conviction as an 18-year-old, has been through the system many times, including several drug convictions and two prison terms, the latest, a five-year prison term for aggravated assault in Kootenai County, Haynes said.

The two latest counts, both felony delivery of a controlled substance charges, were too severe to allow Wallace a probationary term, Haynes said.

“You were a drug dealer,” Haynes told Wallace after rejecting sentencing recommendations from both the state and the public defender’s office. “You were selling drugs to people.”

Wallace, stooped with tightly-cropped white hair, has been in the Kootenai County jail since November. He told Haynes he wasn’t trafficking drugs, but was selling from his own stash. He sold his house, he told Haynes, to pay for rehabilitation, and had a bed available at a local facility. Through his public defender, he asked the court to allow him a last chance at rehab and probation.

His last trek to prison, he said, was a result of finding his girlfriend using drugs with neighbors at their house on Wallace Avenue when he returned after being gone six weeks driving long haul for a trucking company. He was sober and flipped out when he walked into a party at his house.

“I don’t think I’m a bad person, I just make mistakes.” Wallace said looking through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, heavily tattooed arms poking from his prison pajamas. “I know I have recovery in me.”

Deputy prosecutor Rebecca Perez recommended a 10-year prison term for Wallace as a deterrent, and asked that the court retain jurisdiction allowing Wallace to attend treatment, and possibly probation.

Haynes acknowledged that Wallace seemed a good and respectful man. He rejected, however, the attorney’s recommendations and instead imposed a fixed four-year prison term with six years indeterminate for both felonies that would run concurrently.

“With this kind of conduct and this kind of record,” Haynes said. “Society isn’t protected.”