WENATCHEE — James Lawrence Jackson-Smith, the Michigan man who assaulted a Wenatchee hotel worker by strangulation in May 2021, was sentenced Wednesday to nearly 18 years in prison.
Jurors convicted Jackson-Smith Dec. 17 of first-degree assault and kidnapping, but acquitted him on a related count of attempted first-degree murder.
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Chelan County Superior Court Judge Kristin Ferrera questioned whether the 33-year-old Jackson-Smith could be rehabilitated as she assigned him 215 months in prison, or just under 18 years.
“At this point, because I don’t know if rehabilitation is possible — I hope so — but all I can do at this point is protect the public from you for as long as possible,” Ferrera told Jackson-Smith at sentencing.
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He must also spend three years on Department of Corrections supervision once released, and have no contact with the woman who fought back and survived his attack for 80 years.
The convicted man, who was raised in Cle Elum, was visiting Wenatchee for a family memorial service when he committed the May 20 assault. He summoned a female employee to his room at the Wenatchee Super 8, complaining of a clogged toilet. When she began the work, Jackson-Smith seized the 23-year-old woman in a chokehold from behind, and continued trying to strangle her for several minutes until she successfully broke free.
At trial, Jackson-Smith testified that the woman attacked him first, and he struggled with her in self-defense. In jail phone calls introduced at the trial, he spoke of wishing the woman dead, and in court tried to characterize the statement as a joke. He also admitted using misogynistic slurs during the hotel encounter.
Jackson-Smith “expressed no concern for the victim at all,” Ferrera said. “Rather, at trial he expressed the desire that the victim be killed by somebody else — that he just wished that she was killed by somebody driving by and hitting her on the street. It’s very troubling to the court that he has expressed such extreme hatred for the victim in this case.”
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The survivor of the attack spoke briefly at the sentencing, calling the attack “the worst day of my life,” but said she will now put all thoughts of Jackson-Smith behind her. Deputy prosecutor Julia Hartnell called the survivor “a hero. She fought for her life and she won.”
Jackson-Smith’s conviction made him subject to a standard sentencing range of 168 months, or 14 years, up to the 215 month figure. His defense attorney, Jesse G. Collins, said his client suffered abuse as a child and has struggled with depression, and argued for the lower end of the sentencing range.
“I would challenge the state or the court or anybody to tell me what an additional four years is going to do for Mr. Smith’s rehabilitation,” he said.
Asked for his own statement before sentence, Jackson-Smith said: “I always believed the best way to deal with my situation was just to rise above it. I tried over and over again to be more than what was expected of me, to overcome every obstacle, thinking that my suffering somehow had some sort of silver lining right around the bend. Now I just wish that at times my life was in danger, they should’ve just f___ing killed me and got it over with. Seems like that’s all I can expect in my life.”
As an employee in his father’s Washington logging company, Jackson-Smith was one of many lumber operators featured on the History Channel show “Ax Men,” which aired for several seasons starting in 2008.
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