Prosecutors said Donna Huckabee and Wayne Johnston organized a sophisticated shoplifting ring, but the pair’s defense attorneys argued Tuesday that their clients were simply too drugged-up and dim-witted to be organized about anything.

A Superior Court Judge sentenced Huckabee and Johnston to nearly five years in prison Tuesday. The couple pleaded guilty last month to a staggering list of charges involving theft, kidnapping their grandchild and assaulting and intimidating their daughter-in-law.

Authorities said Huckabee, 43, and Johnston, 44, operated a ring that included about a half-dozen people who employed a complex scheme for swiping merchandise from local retailers. First, they paid for a TV, appliance or computer. Then they handed the receipt off to an accomplice. The accomplice plucked an identical item from a store’s shelf and presented the receipt if he or she was confronted on the way out. Now the ring members had two of the same item. They returned one to the store, again showing the receipt, and sold the other for drug money, authorities said.

“The system was rather sophisticated,” Deputy prosecutor Mike Nguyen said Tuesday.

But attorney John Hays, who represented Huckabee, said his client is “a person of very limited education and very limited mental capacity.”

Attorney Sam Wardle, who represented Johnston, noted that the prosecutor’s office had characterized his client as the “brains and muscle” of the operation. But after reviewing security camera footage of the shoplifting ring in action, he said, “I didn’t see any muscle being used. I didn’t see any brains used either.”

The pair, Wardle said, had “just been feeding their meth addiction.”

Judge Stephen Warning agreed, saying, “I don’t think there’s any question that this whole circumstance rose out of a group of brains melted or partially melted by drugs.”

Authorities said the ring used the scam at Wal-Mart stores in Longview and St. Helens as well as the Longview Fred Meyer. In addition, Hubckabee and her daughter in-law, AhmieJo Wiensch, were accused of tucking two GPS units into a baby stroller at Radio Shack in Longview and leaving without paying for them. In October, authorities said, Johnston and Huckabee, who had been living at a Longview motel, briefly held Wiensch’s 1-year-old girl hostage after Wiensch told them she no longer wanted to help them get drug money. Police said the incident involved a struggle over the child near the Longview YMCA. Huckabee and Johnston later placed phone calls to Wiensch trying to influence her testimony, the prosecutor’s office said.

In all, Huckabee pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree organized retail theft, three counts of making a false statement to a public servant, second-degree burglary, second-degree trafficking in stolen property, second-degree theft, tampering with a witness, fourth-degree assault (domestic violence) and two counts of violating a protection order.

Johnston pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary, four counts of second degree organized retail theft, first-degree trafficking in stolen property, tampering with a witness, third-degree assault (domestic violence), making a false statement to a public servant and two counts of violating a protection order.

Many others in the ring have been sentenced or face theft-related charges. Wiensch, 22, of Longview, was sentenced earlier this year to 33 months. Aron Vough, 20, of Kelso, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 17 months. Ernesto Hernandez, 21, of Kelso, pleaded guilty and faces less than a year in jail when he is sentenced. Charges are pending against Nicholas Gooding, 21, of Castle Rock. Authorities are still trying to track down Justin Johnston.

Related articles:

Winlock couple suspected of running retail theft ring  (Feb. 7)

Case against couple accused of kidnapping proceeds  (Oct. 13, 2008)

Two accused of holding baby for drug money  (Oct. 12, 2008)