MOUNT VERNON, Wash. -- "Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore has pleaded not guilty to a new burglary charge, but declined to enter a plea Thursday to a plane-theft count for which he's already serving prison time.
The youthful thief led police on a two-year crime spree in stolen boats, cars and planes. He was arrested after he crashed a plane in the Bahamas in 2010, and got seven years in prison after pleading guilty to dozens of charges in three Washington counties.
Skagit County prosecutor Rich Weyrich declined to participate in the plea deal. He filed two new charges this month -- burglary, for breaking into the Anacortes Airport, and theft, for stealing a plane and flying it to San Juan County.
Weyrich didn't realize that Harris-Moore already pleaded guilty to the plane theft, and he criticized another prosecutor for not telling him about it.
Harris-Moore’s attorney, John Henry Browne, initially refused to enter a plea on the new charge. He also asked the judge for a gag order on the prosecutor due to a press release calling the previous plea deal a “surreptitious deal.”
Browne said Harris-Moore has lost 20 pounds while in prison. He also got his GED in two weeks while behind bars.
