Marshall convicted of assault, facing up to 20 years

A Wrangell jury last week found 54-year-old Steve Marshall guilty of assaulting his former girlfriend in 2011, though the panel acquitted him of a more serious set of charges accusing him of sexual assault.

The twelve-member jury returned their verdict in the late afternoon of Saturday, June 8 after deliberation began on the previous day, lasting for nearly 12 hours.

Specifically, Marshall was found guilty of Assault in the First Degree and Assault in the Third Degree – charges that Judge William Carey said carry a possible sentence of between 7-to-20 years in an Alaska prison.

“It could go as high as twenty years,” Carey said after the trial concluded. “We won’t know what the sentence is until we get to the sentencing hearing, though.”

The sentence for Marshall will be handed down on August 20. Until that time Marshall will be held at Ketchikan Correctional Center without bail, where he has resided since his transfer out of Wrangell.

Marshall was convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Sonja Turner, on two separate occasions in 2011. In the most serious case Marshall faced, the First Degree Assault, he was found to have attacked Turner in the bedroom of their residence at Panhandle Trailer Court on Dec. 7, 2011.

Wrangell Police Department officer James Nelson arrested Marshall after Turner mouthed the words “help me,” to him during an initial contact at the couple’s home.

In testimony during the prosecution portion of the case, Nelson testified that he observed hair extensions belonging to her in the driveway of the home and that upon entering discovered that Turner had bruising on her face and neck. Nelson also said that Turner took him into the couple’s bedroom where she showed him marks in a wall that were allegedly made by a machete.

Turner testified in the case, though her recollection of events surrounding the alleged rape was foggy.

“I don’t know,” was an answer Turner repeated throughout questioning by prosecutor Jean Seaton and Marshall’s attorney, Michael Heiser.

Although Marshall admitted on the stand to “backhanding” Turner in what he claimed was self-defense, he vehemently denied an allegation of strangling her.

Marshall claimed that Turner became belligerently drunk at a party the two were attending and attacked him in the couple’s car and once they had arrived home.

The prosecution, however, was able to show during the testimony of WMC nurse Beth Kuehn that Turner exhibited signs of petechiae, or small, pinprick-size hemorrhaging on the face and possibly the roof of her mouth. Kuehn, along with an expert witness in forensic choking investigations, Dr. Angelia Trujillo, testified that they had seen such marks in past cases where a victim had been strangled.

Marshall was indicted twice by a grand jury on seven charges – once in 2011, and again in 2012 after the original grand jury indictment was found unconstitutional – including sexual assault and assault in the first degree, and was alleged to have raped, strangled and hit Turner, as well as having threatened her with a machete.

Neither the Marshall family, nor Heiser would comment on the case after the conclusion of the trial.