CRIME WATCH FOLLOWUP: Michael E. Maine pleads guilty to four charges

Just found this in a routine check of online court files today: Five months after he was arrested and charged, 39-year-old Michael E. Maine has pleaded guilty in a plea agreement. At a hearing last Friday, court documents say, he pleaded guilty to three drug charges and one count of attempted unlawful second-degree firearm possession. He originally was charged with four drug charges, three of which alleged he provided heroin last November to undercover police at his family’s Junction bar, the Corner Pocket; as a result of the plea agreement, one of those charges was dropped. The firearms charge was related to a handgun found in a safe in Maine’s home; he is not allowed to legally possess a gun because of felony convictions in the mid-’90s.

Maine is scheduled to be sentenced by King County Superior Court Judge Barbara Mack on May 19th. Court documents say prosecutors will recommend a sentence under the Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative that would involve three to six months of residential treatment, plus two years of community custody (probation). The Corner Pocket, meantime, has been closed since the night of Maine’s arrest; the state Liquor and Cannabis Board was planning to pursue permanent revocation of its license, and we are checking on the status of that situation.

26 Replies to "CRIME WATCH FOLLOWUP: Michael E. Maine pleads guilty to four charges"

  • Drugs are bad mkay May 2, 2017 (3:25 pm)

    Aside from losing the family business, this isn’t too bad of a (potential) punishment for Mike. No jail time…just probation and some treatment. I figured at minimum he would get a few months, what with 4 undercover buys and a weapon. Sounds like the courts are being lenient on the druggies.

  • wetone May 2, 2017 (4:48 pm)

      “Court documents say prosecutors will recommend a sentence under the Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative that would involve three to six months of residential treatment, plus two years of community custody (probation) ”

      So this is what prosecutors recommend for heroin dealers these days ? let alone a dealer with past felony convictions, and we wonder why we have a heroin epidemic. Why should police even waste tax dollars on a sting ? if there are basically zero repercussions ?    One gets in more trouble cutting a tree down on their own property hurting no one, than a drug dealer or criminal that  devastates others.        What a screwed up court system and government we have.

    • newnative May 2, 2017 (5:30 pm)

      Tell the victims of landslides that clearcutting trees on hillsides don’t harm anyone. 

    • Michael May 2, 2017 (8:39 pm)

      As I recall none of the tree cutters received probation or rehabilitation and they didn’t lose their family businesses.  I don’t think your argument that they were treated worse holds any water.  I would make the argument that endangering the public by hiring someone to commit a crime for the sole purpose of personal enrichment should at least result in some rehabilitation for anti-social behavior.

      The war on drugs has ravaged this country in many ways, including the extreme cost to taxpayers of keeping non-violent criminals in jail.  I’m happy that my tax dollars are not going to an ineffective punishment like jail time and instead will help a neighbor in need.

      The world might be a better place without drug dealers but it would also be better if we treated everyone with respect.  You have the choice to do your part in creating that better world.  Please choose to be a good neighbor.

    • Double Dub Resident May 3, 2017 (6:00 am)

      shouldn’t it be DDOSA Drug Dealing Offender Alt.

  • Ric May 2, 2017 (5:26 pm)

    Seeing as how the city is giving them nice,safe places to shoot up I guess it’s the new normal.

  • CrewJones May 2, 2017 (6:04 pm)

    Lock that dirtbag up and throw away the key. He will keep doing it over and over and over again.

    • Michael May 2, 2017 (8:42 pm)

      We tried that for decades, it didn’t work.  I’m happy he gets a chance to continue to contribute to society by finding work and continuing to support his family instead of leaving them to fend for themselves or live off the government.  He will have a much harder time re-offending with the additional scrutiny he will receive on probation.  This result makes more sense for everyone involved including you and me.

      • Eric1 May 2, 2017 (10:13 pm)

        I’m OK with giving second chances to drug addicts (although ones like Jessica try my patience) but drug dealers should be punished severely as they prey on the unfortunate.  Drug dealers should either choose maximum prison time or be injected with their stash.  

        .

        This guy is already a convicted felon which means that he isn’t the best citizen.  Convictions in the 90’s means he was in his teens to early twenties when he got caught.  Obviously he doesn’t learn so why would you expect him to benefit from “alternative sentencing”?  He has a firearm which he couldn’t have obtained legally (Class B Felony) and yet prosecutors let him off. That is an easy 10 years in prison that would keep the public safe. If probation actually resulted in ACTUAL additional scrutiny, the public would have a better opinion of its value as a crime deterrent.

        .

        I agree that the family of criminals generally get the shaft.  But what makes his family and the family business more important that the lives of addicts he has ruined?  How many of the addicts he supplied have screwed over their family and the general public over drugs?  And if he cared about his family, he wouldn’t deal drugs now would he?  He chose to be a bad neighbor and he should be in prison.

      • Swede7 May 3, 2017 (4:24 am)

        “I’m happy he gets a chance to continue to contribute to society by finding work and continuing to support his family…”

        Yeah, he’ll contribute to society by providing more drugs to the community, he’ll find work by becoming a heroin dealer again, and he’ll support his family with the money he makes from selling drugs. Lock him up! Maximum jail time.

      • Double Dub Resident May 3, 2017 (9:24 am)

        You’re not paying attention then. The extra scrutiny hasn’t stopped a lot of people from we offending 

      • Swede7 May 3, 2017 (6:17 pm)

        Michael, your opinions here almost sound as if you may be Michael E. Maine himself!

  • Anonymous May 2, 2017 (8:49 pm)

    I agree, with the heroin epidemic going on, make an example of the dealers. 

  • Marcus m May 2, 2017 (9:16 pm)

    The heroin dealers are publicly traded pharmaceutical corps

  • AFerr May 2, 2017 (10:34 pm)

    While I agree that it is important to find alternatives to prison and rehabilitation for folks with problems like drug addiction, we seem to be forgetting the full extent of the damage caused by people like Michael Maine. How many folks in West Seattle have been the victims of burglaries and car theft? There’s a very good chance that some of your property found its way into the Corner Pocket to be traded for drugs. While these offenses are not violent, they have a major impact on the community. Michael Maine facilitated this over and over again. How many victims do there have to be? Yes he needs help for his addiction and his problems but as a dealer he affected us all. How many calls for service from the police were connected to him? How about the shootings at his home? His mother lost the business. He didn’t. Another victim to add to the list… While jail time isn’t the most rehabilitative, it is a great deterrent and should be used in cases like Michael Maine’s.

    • Michael May 3, 2017 (8:57 am)

      If jail time is such a great deterrent why didn’t it deter Michael Maine from selling drugs?

      • Double Dub Resident May 3, 2017 (9:26 am)

        Because the penalties are so laxed. People, especially criminals act on the risk vs reward principle. If the risk is low and reward high criminals will tend to take their chances. Look at home burglary, car theft, car prowel, etc. To see that

  • For Kids Sake May 2, 2017 (11:42 pm)

    Holy Rosary, Seattle Lutheran, TheTilden School, Hope Lutheran all these schools and the children attending them are a block to two blocks away from this location. The children from those schools walk past that corner on their way to and from school. Penalty needs to be more severe! 

    • Michael May 3, 2017 (8:54 am)

      This is a logical fallacy.  Heroin hurts everyone, not only children.  By invoking them you appeal to emotion and undermine our ability to have a reasoned conversation.


      The penalty already removed him from the area.  How much more severe does it need to be?  Who pays for that more severe punishment?  Why is punishment favorable to a solution?


      When I was a kid the adults thought locking up all the drug users and dealers would be best for me.  Now I have inherited a world with unsustainable prison populations and a heroin epidemic that feeds into further crises such as homelessness.


      Harsh punishments didn’t work, it’s time to grow up and try something else.

      • Double Dub Resident May 3, 2017 (2:01 pm)

        The samplings from here about DOSA has shown abysmal results. 

        When I interned at an addiction treatment center that dealt with court appointed recovery, I saw patient, after patient after patient fall out of the program and back to court. 

        Bob Groeschell who ran the addiction program at Seattle Central told us in one of his classes that while he didn’t want to discourage anyone, that approx. 9 out of 10 people stop using drugs and /or alcohol on their own. 

        So this whole idea that if we just build more treatment centers and everyone is going to kick their addiction is naive. You can’t make people get clean and sober and through my experience from interning, I’ll wager that almost all the people going through the DOSA are doing so not to get better, but to escape jail time. 

        • Michael May 3, 2017 (8:16 pm)

          Here’s a link to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy’s most recent analysis of DOSA from a cost perspective: http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/1577/Wsipp_Washingtons-Residential-Drug-Offender-Sentencing-Alternative-Recidivism-Cost-Analysis_Report.pdf

          This is interesting because residential DOSA cost more than prison-based DOSA by about $500.00 per person.  I would expect the prison sentence to cost more but I suppose administering the residential program costs as much as running a prison.  This doesn’t seem to consider the costs and savings of having a person outside the prison system paying taxes and participating in the economy.

          It does appear that recidivism is lower for residential DOSA vs prison-based DOSA so that is encouraging.  I’d like to see the results compared to non-DOSA sentences as well.

          The cost breakdown raises a lot of questions about how we spend the tax money from legalizing drugs instead of prohibiting them.  I’m not arguing that we legalize heroin but this analysis seems to pre-date marijuana legalization in Washington so I wonder how that impacts the cost of residential DOSA if at all.

  • DirkDigs May 3, 2017 (9:08 am)

    The problem with drug offenders is that you cannot combat addiction with rational penalties. Addiction persists through sitting in a jail cell or cleaning up garbage on the side of the road. How do you fight it? Who the hell knows.

    I was looking out my office window this week and saw a group of small children walking down 3rd Ave on their way to the SAM. They were escorted by some teachers, but I couldn’t help to think that I wouldn’t want my child anywhere near 3rd Ave because of the sometimes violent drug addicts that roam up and down that street at all hours of the day.

    How embarrassing as a city that we have to feel hostage to these people. I don’t know what the solution is but after seeing those kids out there my emotional opinion is to round up the lot and throw them all in jail.

    • Hostsgetocrackheads May 3, 2017 (10:51 am)

      I feel ya! A couple of years ago, I took my 7 year old daughter, and her friend on the water taxi to see torchlight parade. We were having a wonderful time, until we crossed through occidental park. A drug addled woman approached us and started calling me a f##got. I tried to move us away from her, and she just followed us around screaming obscenities at us! I thought she was going to jump me. I did not want to engage with this woman in front of the kids, and it was almost impossible to lose the woman. We were all so shaken, it completely ruined our experience. Now, I hesitate to take my daughter many places in Seattle, as it’s just not worth it to subject her to these unpredictable junkies! It is indeed sad that we are hostage to the actions of these people. 

  • clean it up! May 3, 2017 (11:48 am)

    This WAS his second chance and he blew  it!   He had felonies in the 90s!   Who knows how many unreported felonies were in between.    We CAUGHT him red handed dealing heroin in his business, which is a regulated liquor establishment!

     For crying out loud – there should be no alternative sentencing here – this guy needs to do some time and then go through rehab after he pays for what he did to the rest of us.  Yes, the rest of us…those who have been victims of petty crime to feed the addicts he was dealing to.    Dealing heroin is a waterfall crime – there are plenty of lives affected by his actions and if we don’t nip it by making him pay a significant price personally, he’ll do it again.  We know this because he’s a REPEAT OFFENDER!  And he had a gun, knowing he shouldn’t own one!   He doesn’t care about abiding by the rules.  Let’s hand out a punishment this time, because going soft on this guy will not work.    I’ve got zero compassion for dealers.     Why the sting if all we are going to do is divert him to home custody and treatment?  

    • WSB May 3, 2017 (12:40 pm)

      To clarify further: (a) The sentence hasn’t yet been imposed – court documents always come with disclaimers that judges CAN do something different from the recommendations.

      (b) The recommendation also includes a suspended year of jail time. As we saw in the Jessica Detrick case recently, if you don’t comply with the DOSA requirements – assuming the DOSA sentence does happen – you can get remanded into custody (after two failures to comply, which followed months of residential treatment, she is now in state prison).

      (c) The recommendation also mentioned “credit for time served” but that didn’t amount to much – according to King County Jail Register records, Maine spent two separate days in jail last December, first one in connection with the original arrest, then less than a week later in connection with the gun allegation.

  • TM May 8, 2017 (10:57 am)

    A felon in possession of a firearm (the gun’s serial numbers had been removed), I hope Barbara Mack has the sense to send this guy to jail and not the residential treatment/probation…

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