Long history, long sentence

An Olympia man with a history that a prosecutor called "horrendous" was sentenced to more than 50 years in prison this week for his leadership of a cocaine ring and for arranging the murder of a police informant.

Damien D. Harris, 34, will serve consecutive sentences totaling 609 months for his Nov. 5 convictions on charges of leading organized crime and first-degree solicitation to commit murder.

Sentences on the remaining six drug-related charges that he also was convicted of will be served concurrently with the two most serious offenses.

With the eight convictions, Harris has a total of 19 felony convictions on his record as an adult, court records show.

“The only periods of time that Mr. Harris appears to be crime-free is when he has been locked up in a state correctional facility,” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Scott Jackson wrote in his sentencing memorandum to the court.

Jackson wrote that Harris was a “prolific distributor” of crack cocaine in Thurston County who set up a “sophisticated operation to obtain powder cocaine, have it rocked up, stored in a stash house, and then ultimately distributed on the streets.” Harris bolstered his reputation on the streets through fear and intimidation, Jackson wrote.

Law enforcement set up an elaborate net to nab Harris, including the use of a police informant identified in court records by a number: 702. Harris’ transactions with the informant were the basis for some of the charges against him. Lt. Loreli Thompson, the task force’s supervisor, has said the investigation was “very complex” and required hundreds of hours of detective work.

Authorities’ investigation also focused on Adrian L. Morris, 31, Harris’ associate. Morris pleaded guilty in August to money-laundering and three drug charges. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

After Harris learned the identity of the informant, whom he knew as “Cyrus,” he arranged to have him killed. He sent a letter to an associate, who was working as an informant as part of a plea agreement, offering him $5,000 to do the job.

Harris’ attorney, Gregory Smith, attempted to reduce the sentence by about half. He argued that the solicitation for the informant’s murder was conditioned on the informant changing his story to authorities. He also argued that Harris’ enterprise was not “particularly well-entrenched or sophisticated.”

“As a model of violations for leading organized crimes this is not of the egregious kind,” he wrote in his sentencing memorandum.

Harris waived his right to a jury trial and elected to have Thurston County Superior Court Judge Christine Pomeroy hear the evidence and reach a verdict. She also handed down the sentence Thursday.

Pomeroy rejected the defense’s motions for a new trial before the sentencing.

Christian Hill: 360-754-5427

chill@theolympian.com