A former Aberdeen jail corrections worker was sentenced Monday to nine months in jail after being found guilty of first-degree custodial sexual misconduct.
According to court documents, Charles Andrew “Andy” Stocker, 51, was found guilty of having sexual contact with a female inmate at the Aberdeen City Jail while he was employed there. The verdict was handed down in June by Superior Court Judge Stephen E. Brown, who presided over a bench trial. The sentencing was Monday.
Stocker was taken into custody after sentencing and is serving his sentence in the county jail. His attorney Charles A. Johnston will file an appeal.
Stocker will be required to register as a sex offender and since he was found guilty of a felony, will no longer be able to legally possess firearms, according to Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Randy Trick.
The standard sentencing range for the offense is six months to a year in jail. Since Stocker had no prior criminal convictions, his attorney filed paperwork in Superior Court requesting a sentence of 90 days in jail converted to 240 hours of community service.
The document pointed to Stocker’s military service and his history as a peace and security officer, his lack of a criminal history and the ongoing support of friends and family.
The Prosecutor’s Office recommendation was nine months, to which the court agreed.
According to documents filed by the Prosecutor’s Office, the FBI “opened a two-pronged investigation of the Defendant,” the first, which led to charges and an acquittal, focused on alleged criminal assistance to drug dealers in the county, saying that while employed at the Aberdeen City Jail in 2016, Stocker would tip off known drug dealers about upcoming Drug Task Force operations. That investigation led to his arrest in February 2016 by the FBI, federal charges, a federal trial and, on March 14, 2018, an acquittal in U.S. District Court.
The second prong of the federal investigation, according to documents filed by the Prosecutor’s Office, “began as a civil rights matter based on documented accounts and information gathered by the FBI from women who were incarcerated in the Aberdeen City Jail while the defendant worked as a corrections officer.”
A little more than a month after the federal acquittal, the Grays Harbor County Prosecutor’s Office charged Stocker with three counts, but two were later dropped.
The count on which he was convicted involved a female inmate at the Aberdeen Jail who “was a resident at the Aberdeen City Jail for at least 12 occasions between April of 2010 and September of 2015,” according to the verdict entered by the Court.
The female inmate told investigators she “engaged in the sexual relationship so as to obtain future benefits from the Defendant to make her stay more comfortable,” according to the verdict entered by the Court.
The Superior Court Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law said in part, “The Court is satisfied with the credibility of (the victim); she had a sexual relationship with the Defendant beginning on or about the time she was first introduced to him in April of 2010, ending on or about Feb. 28, 2016, approximately when he was arrested by the FBI.”
The Court wrote in its verdict that it found “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the victim “reasonably believed the Defendant to have the ability to influence the conditions of her incarceration” while she was in the Aberdeen City Jail.
