03/24/2006

Associated Press

A man who insisted he was wrongly convicted of killing a young woman in Spokane has been given a maximum prison term of 45 years and eight months, and he also faces two rape trials.

Before being sentenced Thursday in Spokane County Superior Court, Brian William Frawley, 25, complained about the anger voiced by relatives of the late Margaret Cordova, 20. He maintained that he couldn't show remorse for a crime he didn't commit.

Judge Neal Q. Rielly, however, noted that DNA evidence figured strongly in the conviction of Frawley on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Cordova in January 2004. Prosecutors said he raped and killed her, then dumped her body to be eaten by animals.

Frawley gave investigators a number of accounts, in the end asserting that he and Cordova had consensual sex and that he neither raped nor killed her.

He also faces two rape trials involving other women in Spokane with the first scheduled to begin July 17, and in addition he has been charged in Yakima County with fourth-degree assault and failure to register as a sex offender.

His criminal record includes a child rape conviction in Cowlitz County in 1998, when he was 16 years old.

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Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesmanreview.com