On Friday Noble was sentenced to 8 months in jail, though he will be able to get out of jail during working hours as a condition of his sentence (a friend has offered him a sales job at a massage therapy store he owns), after pleading guilty to one count of vehicular assault (this is essentially a DUI in which a person is injured).
The Washington Attorney General's office handled the case, as would be expected when a King County elected official is accused of the crime, and requested a 9 month sentence for Noble. Noble's Seattle traffic lawyer asked for a three month sentence, with work release. The judge split the baby, in essence, giving more jail time but allowing for the work release.
As a DUI lawyer generally, I think Noble's attorney did the best he possibly could. With the amount of publicity that centered on the case and the lack of sympathy given to Noble (he admitted to being an alcoholic of over 20 years), it would have been difficult to do any better than was done. In many cases like this, as a traffic attorney the focus is on negotiating the best deal possible. Here, the best deal was getting one of the vehicular assault charges dropped and having the opportunity to argue for work release with no objection from the prosecution.
Hopefully in the end Noble will be able to complete his sentence, get some treatment, and get his life in order. He appeared to feel pretty bad about his actions, so maybe this was the event that will get his life turned around. Stick around the Traffic Attorney Seattle Blog to stay up to date on traffic law!
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