Associated Press
TACOMA - Despite pleas from her husband, her daughter and her former pastor, a Gig Harbor woman on Friday was sentenced to 18 years in prison for hiring a hit man to kill her son-in-law.
Jacqueline Ray's family pleaded with Pierce County Judge Stanley Rumbaugh for mercy at Friday's hearing, saying that for decades, the respiratory therapist volunteered her time with both the Girl and Boy Scouts, fed the homeless and served on the local search-and-rescue team.
"I ask for mercy, your honor. I ask for grace," said the Rev. Edmond Holle Plaehn, who was Ray's pastor at Peace Lutheran Church in Tacoma. "I ask for the lightest sentence possible."
But Rumbaugh was not in a merciful mood and gave Ray a sentence 13 years higher than her lawyers asked, The Tacoma News Tribune reported.
The judge sentenced Ray, who pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder, to 18 years, four months in prison. Prosecutors contended Ray paid Luis Barker $12,000 to kill Leon Baucham Jr. in July 2012. She then lured Baucham to her house, where Barker was waiting. He shot Baucham to death before dumping his body in a remote area near her house.
Rumbaugh acknowledged Ray's past contributions to her family and the community, but he said her actions during the summer of 2012 were not deserving of leniency.
"Where was mercy when Leon Baucham lay dying on Jackie Ray's doorstep?" Rumbaugh said. "There was no mercy for Leon Baucham."
After her arrest, Ray told detectives she was trying to protect her daughter from Baucham, whom she said was physically abusive.
Bryan Hershman, Ray's attorney, reiterated those claims Friday, saying his client feared Baucham might kill her daughter.
"This is not some irrational person," Hershman said. "It is a mother worried about the salvation of her daughter."
Baucham's wife, Umeko Baucham, testified that she'd loved her husband very much but that he was abusive.
Her mother made "a horrible choice," Umeko Baucham said, but she is not an evil person.
"She was trying to protect me," she said. "I love her very much."
At a hearing in January, Baucham's family said they saw no history or patterns of abuse in the couple's relationship, only an isolated incident where Baucham hit his wife after learning she might be having an affair.
