A more than six year process of death, investigation, justice, and, ultimately, sadness filled King County Superior Court last week as Eric Sims was sentenced to 17 months in prison in the 2015 death of Madison Valley woman Devan Schmidt.

“His sentence is a crime against women,” Schmidt’s mother said during statements from the family read prior to Judge Johanna Bender’s 17-month decision, the maximum for a second degree assault conviction.

The court received 36 victim impact statements most criticizing the outcome of the case, the rest calling for the maximum sentence. Schmidt’s sister tried to hold back tears as she read and described receiving the phone call about Devan’s death.

Bender last month found reasonable doubt Sims, now 48, murdered and raped Schmidt, finding him guilty of only a second degree assault charge in a case marked by confounding evidence from a night of partying and heavy drug use and what the judge said was an incomplete investigation by police.

It took five years, a report by an independent investigator, and attention from a true crime series for Seattle Police to make an arrest in the case. Last summer, Sims was charged with second degree murder and pleaded not guilty. He was also later charged with second degree rape.

CHS reported here on the start of the trial in September some six years after police and prosecutors said the 29-year-old Madison Valley woman had been raped and murdered and after legal proceedings in the case were delayed by COVID-19 restrictions and the decision by Sims to waive his right to a jury and put his trial in the hands of the judge.

Bender found detectives failed to get warrants to collect evidence in other rooms of the house Schmidt shared with roommates, failed to properly document drug-related evidence collected from the victim’s boyfriend’s truck, and failed to gather key medical records related to Schmidt’s mental health before they were no longer available.

The bench trial was grueling. In addition to a massively lethal level of cocaine, plus non-lethal amounts of sleeping pills and prescription drugs found in Schmidt’s stomach, the medical examiner also found suspicious injuries to her face that indicated she had been struck, and hemorrhages to her throat where she had been choked. Schmidt, Bender ruled, suffered clear bodily harm in the moments before she died with bruising and abrasions to her body, and blunt force trauma to her face. But the judge said evidence of the victim’s mental health history and drug seeking behavior before her death left reasonable doubt that Schmidt’s lethal overdose was caused by Sims. The judge said the victim had ingested so much cocaine the night she died that the state crime lab’s equipment could not provide accurate measurement during the investigation.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Bender said the case had occupied her thoughts outside the courtroom and filled her head even as she went about things in life like taking a shower.

The sentencing hearing reduced the prosecutor to tears. “I’ve gone over in my mind how I failed,” Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Adrienne McCoy said, regaining her composure as she brought a motion forward from the family to strike many findings of fact from the court’s record after the unsuccessful prosecution. Bender said she would address the matter outside of the sentencing process. The case is one of the last McCoy will handle for the King County Prosecutor’s office after being named by Gov. Jay Inslee to join the court.

Sims, meanwhile, was also allowed to address the courtroom and said he wanted to express sympathy to Schmidt’s family who had already left the gallery by that time.

Defense attorney Thomas Olmstead thanked the judge, and praised McCoy’s prosecution while also asking the judge to consider options for allowing his client to go free that day, saying Sims “suffered a lot as a result of these charges” and had been held in solitary confinement for nearly 18 months. Under state law, any sentence of more than a year requires transfer to the state department of corrections, meaning Sims would need to undergo a multi-week process being transferred from King County Jail before his release.

With time already served following his 2020 arrest in the 2015 case, Sims will be free and ready to be released from prison likely before the end of the year, Bender said. He will remain under department of corrections supervision for 18 months and won’t be allowed to possess a firearm as a convicted felon. The judge also barred Sims from contacting Schmidt’s family for ten years, the maximum period allowed. “Make it a lifetime,” the judge advised Sims.

Olmstead, meanwhile, said the hearing was one of his final acts as a practicing attorney as he is set to begin his retirement in Colorado. His final filings in the case include notice that his client plans to appeal the assault conviction.

Schmidt arrived in Seattle in 2014 from her adopted home in Alaska to be with her boyfriend while he attended college. While she enjoyed the city, family said she planned to return to Alaska for snowboarding and hiking as soon as her boyfriend finished school. Schmidt worked in the service industry in Alaska and was a server for the Alaska Railroad. In Seattle, she worked for a downtown comedy club.

According to her obituary, Schmidt was once crowned Miss Shirland, Illinois and was described as a minimalist and an optimist. “A bright light in the darkest of rooms she will be remembered with a smile on her face.”

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