Miguel Gaitan, who was convicted of the slaughter of an Outlook family of four, has been released from prison.
Gaitan, 46, was initially sentenced to four consecutive life-without-parole sentences for aggravated first-degree murder for the 1993 killings. He was resentenced last year to four concurrent 25-year sentences. Gaitan had already served 30 years when he was resentenced.
His release from prison was announced Tuesday.
Gaitan, who was 14 at the time he and an accomplice beat and stabbed the Skelton family to death in their home, was resentenced after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that life-without-parole sentences were unconstitutional for juvenile suspects.
At a Feb. 5, 2024, hearing, Yakima County Superior Court Judge Kevin Naught resentenced Gaitan to the lesser sentences, noting that it was not justice for the "senseless annihilation" of a family.
"I find (the agreement) is justice for Miguel Gaitan. It is not justice for Michael Skelton," Naught said when he imposed the new sentence. "It is not justice for Lynn Skelton, who worked at a grocery store to support her family. It is not justice for Jason Skelton. It is not justice for Bryan Skelton, a 6-year-old who was crying for mercy, and you tucked him in bed before killing him."
Gaitan and Joel Ramos, who was also 14 at the time, forced their way into the Skelton family's Liberty Road home March 24, 1993, where Gaitan ambushed Michael Skelton, who was disabled from an industrial accident and needed a cane to walk. He was stabbed 17 times.
Lynn Skelton, his wife, was killed while taking a shower. Her autopsy determined she took 10 blows to the head and had 53 stab wounds, some of them defensive wounds as she fought off Gaitan.
Jason Skelton, 12, and a classmate of the killers, was bludgeoned and stabbed multiple times.
Ramos and Gaitan killed 6-year-old Bryan Skelton, who was hiding under his bedsheets, stabbing him and beating him with a log from the woodstove.
"The biggest impact I saw was what it did to the sheriff's detectives and deputies who responded," Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Brusic, who was a deputy prosecutor at the time, said at Gaitan's resentencing hearing. "It was devastating. It changed several lives."
Dan Pacholke, former secretary of the state Department of Corrections and a prison consultant, testified at Gaitan's resentencing that the younger Gaitan was subjected to a much harsher prison experience then he would have if he had committed the crime today. Gaitan spent the first three years of his prison sentence in solitary confinement for his own protection, and when he was released into the prison's general population, he fell in with a prison gang for protection.
In contrast, an offender like Gaitan would have spent the first few years in a juvenile rehabilitation facility before being moved into prison.
As a lifer, Gaitan was denied some of the programs in prison that work toward reforming people, Pacholke said, such as education and job training. But he said Gaitan was able, on his own, to earn his GED and to take jobs in the kitchen, a dog training program and the visiting room.
Gaitan, Pacholke said, renounced gang life and was transferred to the Twin Rivers Unit and the Monroe Correctional Center, a unit for inmates who would be vulnerable in general population and had not had a major rule violation in 10 years.
Jacob Schmitt, who served time with Gaitan at Twin Rivers, told Naught that he would take Gaitan into his own home and work with him on his re-entry into society.
While released, Gaitan will remain under the supervision of the state Department of Corrections.
Ramos entered a plea agreement and was sentenced to four consecutive 20-year-to-life sentences after pleading guilty to four first-degree murder charges, which were extended to a minimum of 85 years in 2013. Ramos has since been released from prison.
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