Bank robber gets a break from judge

<p>Confessed bank robber Christopher Wenmoth, who blames emotional fallout from a gambling addiction for the heist he pulled last summer in Montgomery Village, beat the odds in court on Friday.</p><p>A Sonoma County judge who’d earlier declared an intention to send Wenmoth to state prison announced that he’s been dissuaded by the compelling appeal for a lesser penalty that he received in writing from Wenmoth’s attorney.</p><p>“I think you did a very good job of presenting your case,” Judge Arthur Wick told lawyer Jim Loughborough, a deputy public defender.</p><p>Sentencing was postponed two weeks, but the judge’s change of mind does not mean that the 40-year-old Wenmoth won’t soon be locked in a cell. Wick said at Friday’s sentencing hearing that though he has reconsidered a prison sentence he will commit Wenmoth to county jail, and also will order him to perform community service.</p><p>The judge could have imposed a sentence Friday. But he said he first wants Wenmoth to write a letter to the U.S. Bank teller to whom he passed a note demanding money.</p><p>That letter is to include an apology from Wenmoth and an assurance that he means the woman no harm.</p><p>The teller testified earlier that when Wenmoth approached her window and handed her robbery note last July 23, she feared he might be carrying a weapon and might use it. Prosecutors who’ve sought prison time for Wenmoth have argued that the teller has suffered serious distress since the moment she was robbed.</p><p>In court Friday, Deputy District Attorney James Casey continued to press for a prison term for Wenmoth. Casey told Judge Wick that Wenmoth’s contention that he was driven to robbery by a cardroom gambling habit isn’t credible..</p><p>“Clearly, he didn’t rob the bank to get funds to pay off a gambling debt. He didn’t pay off one cent,” Casey said. Instead, he said, Wenmoth used the nearly $2,500 in stolen cash to bankroll a road trip to the Midwest.</p><p>“We think the whole gambling thing is a red herring, your honor,” Casey said. “This is a detailed, methodical, premeditated crime.”</p><p>Among the peculiarities of the Wenmoth case are that he made no attempt to disguise or cover his face when he walked into the bank branch. The photos that a security camera snapped of him were so clear he was easily identified.</p><p>Wenmoth apologized to the teller for robbing her, then used his own car to leave town with a woman friend bound for South Dakota. When a state trooper stopped him in Minnesota on July 31, he’d spent all the money.</p><p>Wenmoth spent nearly four months in jail before he was released on bail shortly before Thanksgiving. He pleaded no-contest to a bank robbery charge in December.</p><p>“I have come to believe that I robbed the bank because I subconsciously knew that it would force me to get help,” he wrote the judge.</p><p>His attorney, Loughborough, said after court Friday that as bank robberies go, his client’s was notably unsophisticated, unprofessional, unguarded, polite and apologetic.</p><p>“I don’t think anything could be served by putting him in prison,” the lawyer said.</p><p>The judge ordered Wenmoth back for sentencing on April 1.</p>