Maple Falls man gets 40 years in prison for kidnapping, torturing another man

A Maple Falls man will spend the next four decades in prison for kidnapping, torturing and leaving another man to die on Sumas Mountain in November 2016.

Donald Lee Calvin, 63, was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison after a jury found him guilty on Oct. 25 of first-degree assault, first-degree kidnapping, three counts of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and one count of second-degree taking a motor vehicle without permission.

The jury also found Calvin guilty of special firearm enhancements and determined that he acted with deliberate cruelty to the victim.

Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Rob Olson admonished Calvin for his actions on November 30, 2016, when Calvin assaulted 44-year-old Jason Jones with a Taser and a gun, shackled him to a ladder and beat him with blunt objects because he suspected Jones had stolen money from him.

Calvin then put Jones in a car and told him he was taking him to the hospital, before leaving him to die on Sumas Mountain, according to court records and trial testimony.

“Though he escaped, you left him a bloody mess so badly injured it is amazing he survived,” Olson said before imposing Calvin’s decades-long sentence. “You are not your own enforcer, Mr. Calvin. You are not a criminal kingpin and Whatcom County is not your gangland territory.”

Throughout the trial, Calvin maintained his innocence, called his sentencing a “horrific injustice” and said that Jones had broken into his house repeatedly, including the night of the assault.

He said that when someone breaks into your home and is armed, you shoot them and “you do not let him leave.”

Calvin denied the pair were ever friends, claimed police treated Jones as a “pet” and that he was the real victim. He said that if Olson were to impose lengthy incarceration, it would be a death sentence for him, due to his age and failing health.

“This story did not unfold the way it was told,” Calvin said. “This is not fair.”

Whatcom County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brandon Waldron had asked for an exceptional sentence above the standard range due to the evidence presented at trial.

“The indifference the defendant showed toward the life of another person was extreme. I think the court’s aware that in many felony cases that resolve in Whatcom County Superior Court, the resolution is sort of geared with an eye toward rehabilitation. My position is that’s not the appropriate goal in this case. The goal in this case is accountability,” said Waldron during sentencing arguments.

“It’s a lengthy term of confinement and given the defendant’s age, there is a real substantial likelihood that he will be spending the rest of his life in prison. But there’s nothing about this case in my mind that merits a lesser sentence.”

Darrin Hall, Calvin’s public defense attorney, had asked a prison sentence of 13 ½ years, at the lower end of the range. Hall declined to comment on Calvin’s sentencing Wednesday.

Calvin has 30 days to file an appeal, which he has expressed interest in doing, and will be required to register as a kidnapping and felony firearm offender when released from prison.

“It was a just result,” Waldron said after the sentencing hearing. “He earned every day of that 40 years by committing such an unprovoked, violent attack. There’s a lot of work put into this case and I think it turned out the right way.”

The assault

According to court documents and trial testimony, around 10 a.m. on Nov. 30, Jones went to Calvin’s home in the 8100 block of Balfour Valley Drive after getting into an argument with his girlfriend earlier that morning. Everything appeared normal at first, until Jones said he saw a red dot on his chest, which he thought was from a Taser. The last thing he remembered was moving toward the door.

When Jones woke up, his hands and feet were shackled to a ladder and he was lying on his side on a plastic sheet on the floor of Calvin’s house.

Over the next 13 hours, Calvin beat him with a baseball bat, a metal pipe, stomped on his hands and face and injected him several times with an unknown substance that Calvin called “pain medication,” all while demanding information about a missing briefcase. At one point, Jones said, Calvin put a rifle to his head and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire.

Jones said the events made him believe he was going to die.

Around 11 p.m. that night, Calvin put Jones into the passenger seat of his car and told him they were going to the hospital. Jones said he soon realized they were on a logging road heading up Sumas Mountain. When Calvin stopped the car, Jones fled and fell down a nearby embankment, where he hid until Calvin left.

Jones said he later walked about a mile to a nearby friend’s house, who took him to the Kendall Fire Station. Jones was later taken to St. Joseph hospital and transferred to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle due to the extent of his injuries.

Jones suffered lacerations to his head, a large laceration on his wrist and hand that exposed bone, broken wrists, a skull fracture, an orbital fracture and kidney problems.

Jones has permanent damage in his hand from tendons that were cut during the ordeal, and still has several visible scars on the front and back of his head.

When detectives with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at Calvin’s residence, they found two firearms, four Tasers, blood spatter on the walls, living room carpet and a plastic sheet, a bloody rope and clothing in the washing machine, bloody leg and wrist irons, and a baseball bat, metal pipe and ladder — all with blood matching that of Jones on them.

Calvin was a convicted felon at the time and prohibited from having firearms.

Detectives also found Jones’ car about 30 feet down an embankment where Jones said he fled from Calvin.

At the time the search warrant was being executed on Dec. 1, 2016, Calvin called the sheriff’s office from the Seattle Amtrak station to report someone was breaking into his house. Calvin was then arrested without incident at the train station, where he was also being questioned for suspicious activity. He had a cooler in his possession that contained a 9mm pistol.