Teen pleads guilty in Lincoln City slaying
NEWPORT, Ore. (AP) — An 18-year-old Portland-area man has pleaded guilty in the June 2011 slaying of a Tigard man in Lincoln City.
The district attorney's office said Monday that Joseph Anthony Marsala was sentenced on Friday to 23 years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and other charges.
Authorities say Marsala, another teenager and 49-year-old Darrin Dow of Tigard went to the coast together last year.
Marsala was accused of hitting Dow in the head with a garden tool, stabbing him in the stomach and neck with a knife, and taking his Cadillac Escalade, credit cards and money. Police say the second teenager reported the attack.
The district attorney's office says the pleas followed a two-day settlement conference.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
Thats all you get for murder 23 years..that some how does not sound right, keep prisions empty by enforcing
eye for an eye law, you kill you get killed simple. to simple for the law makers=)
The News Guard of Lincoln City, published, "
She said the defense should have the right to inspect the home for signs of drug use in order to combat prosecutors' "presumption" that Marsala supplied the drugs and that they were ingested before he, Dow and another young male went to the Reef Avenue home.
"[F]orensic evidence of self-defense; drug use; and other sexual activity are critical to Defendant's theory of the case (he was targeted by a predatory older male for sexual abuse)," she wrote." Based on what this young man wrote on his face book page, I suppose this is a possible motive. My Point, this is another failure of the Criminal Justice system. The victim should have never been around this young man.  Does this excuse the action of Marsala, No, not on the face of. If he acted in self defense against a sexual predator, I could possibly understand the outcome. I suspect that the Defense had prepared it's case well enough that the District Attorney felt he had to offer a deal. At any rate it is all a failure of the criminal justice system. "Presumtions are many, and those that may be overcome by other evidence." Marsala obviously had some issues in his life or he would not have been hanging around these type of people. He will have some time to think about his actions.