KINGWOOD — Drugs are killing people, and they nearly made a murderer of you, Preston Circuit Judge Steve Shaffer told Michael E. Valentine Thursday.
Valentine, 35, of Terra Alta, was indicted in October 2018 on charges of attempted first-degree murder and malicious assault. In June he entered an Alford Kennedy plea to voluntary manslaughter and unlawful assault. An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt but a recognition there may be enough evidence for a jury to convict.
He was accused of attacking a man with a baseball bat on Feb. 14, 2018, breaking the victim’s arm and facial bones, and refusing to allow the man to leave. He also threatened a woman.
“I just want to say I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” Valentine said in court Thursday. “It’s not the kind of person I am, and I feel remorse.”
Valentine’s attorney, Sam Hess, and the judge said the victim was lucky to have survived. But it was his client’s first violent offense, Hess said, and likely caused by his ingestion of a meth style drug.
It was the first time Valentine had taken meth, Hess said, and he has no memory of the day. Valentine was administered Narcan twice on the way to the hospital after his arrest, Hess noted. His prior adult offenses were thefts.
“This is his first violent offense, and I believe his drug use that day contributed,” Hess said.
The judge agreed and noted Valentine was on probation at the time of the attack and had juvenile charges of fourth-degree arson and threatening bodily harm to his brother.
“People do things on this methamphetamine that they wouldn’t do,” normally, Shaffer said. He thought a lot about the appropriate sentence, Shaffer said.
Two weeks ago, the judge said, he released a defendant on probation. “I don’t think it was three days later that young boy was dead because of drugs,” the judge said. “It tears me up what these drugs are doing to families, and there’s not a family exempt.”
Looking at Valentine’s family, who came to court to support him, he said any of them could have been the victim. How do you think Valentine would have felt about that, once sober, the judge asked.
Hess said Valentine has literacy issues and could receive the mental health and relapse prevention counseling he needs at Valley. His siblings are willing to give him a home and he has job skills, Hess said.
Part of his job is to protect the public, Shaffer said, and he wasn’t sure putting Valentine on probation would accomplish that, even though he thinks Preston’s probation officer would keep closer tabs on him than a parole officer.
He sentenced Valentine to the maximum of one-to-three years in prison on the manslaughter charge and one-to-five-years in prison, to be served consecutively.
With credit for the 541 days he has served in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail since his arrest, Valentine could be eligible for parole in six months.
If the state parole board grants Valentine his freedom, “that is them doing that,” Judge Shaffer said.
He ordered that the state provide any mental health and substance abuse treatment available in prison to Valentine.
