Man Convicted of Child Rape in Chelan County Must be Resentenced

A man convicted in Chelan County of raping a child will have to be resentenced, even though his appeal failed.

A Washington appeals court has upheld Jeremey Pedersen's conviction last year's of raping his girlfriend's six-year-old daughter back in 2012.

But Peterson's sentence was lengthened, based on a prior conviction for possession of a controlled substance.

The state Supreme Court did away with controlled substance convictions earlier this year, and the appeals court now says Pedersen must be resentenced.

In its decision released Tuesday, the court affirmed Pedersen's 2020 conviction in a case where he turned down a court-appointed lawyer and represented himself before a Chelan County jury.

A 2014 drug possession crime contributed to the calculation of his sentence, which was lengthened from the normal range of 240-to-318 months, to 342 months or 28 and a half years.

The appeal court in Spokane voided that sentence.

Petersen's charges of first degree child molestation and first degree child rape came after a 12-year-old girl told her grandmother in 2018 that she was raped by her mother's boyfriend six years earlier.