Man will serve prison time for Boise stabbing last year. What the judge ruled
A man who stabbed another man in Boise last summer will spend at least 15 years in prison. And depending on his future behavior, he could end up living behind bars for the rest of his life.
A jury found Ryan McCabe, 42, guilty of aggravated battery, use of a deadly weapon in commission of a felony and being a persistent violator after a May trial.
At a sentencing hearing in the 4th Judicial District, Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Tamera Kelly stressed his long and violent criminal history. She said the community needed to be protected from him.
Public Defender Donald Neil Price agreed that McCabe deserved a “lengthy sentence” but stressed mitigating factors in his past in arguing for a lighter prison term than prosecutors wanted.
On July 14, 2022, Ryan McCabe and Solomon Christensen got into a fight. McCabe stabbed Christiansen, whom Boise police found in a parking lot around 2 a.m., according to previous reporting by the Idaho Statesman. Christiansen was “covered head to toe in blood,” Kelly said. He needed over 60 staples and undergo surgery, she said, and was left with scarring.
After the incident, McCabe fled to California, Kelly said. Police arrested him there in October, according to previous Statesman reporting.
Kelly said the stabbing fit into a pattern of violent criminal behavior perpetrated by McCabe with little provocation. That history includes assaulting someone with a beer bottle in 2001 and shooting someone in 2011, she said.
“Just about every 10 years, the defendant puts someone in the community at risk of death by his choices to use a weapon and to engage in a physical attack upon another person,” she said. She asked 4th District Judge James Cawthon to give McCabe 15 years in prison and an indeterminate sentence of life to keep the community safe from him. During an indeterminate sentence, someone could be in prison or on parole depending on their conduct.
“We understand that a lengthy prison sentence is warranted in this case,” said Price, McCabe’s defense lawyer.
But Price tried to provide context for his client’s actions. McCabe had a good childhood, he said, but when his parents separated, McCabe started acting out and was put in foster care. He spent most of his life in California’s juvenile correctional and adult prison systems.
McCabe was assaulted in 2019, in an incident he did not report, and was left with a serious head injury, Price said. At the time the stabbing occurred, he had recently relocated to Idaho from California to be close to family and make a fresh start for himself.
Price asked Cawthon for a sentence of 20 years, with seven years fixed. But Cawthon said he was concerned about McCabe’s criminal background.
“There is a clear threat to life in your history,” he said to McCabe. And he said there was a pattern: McCabe’s crimes “often stop when you’re incarcerated and they begin again when you get out.”
He gave McCabe a fixed sentence of 15 years in prison and an indeterminate life sentence, as prosecutors requested. He also ordered him not to contact Christensen for 30 years.
“The court’s primary focus under the law is protection of the community,” he said.
