By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — A city man convicted in a double homicide resulting from a barroom brawl in 2000 was unfairly denied an opportunity to present his case for sentence reduction to a lower court, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

In a brief ruling on Oct. 14, the high court said a Superior Court judge improperly denied Parrish Chase’s motion for sentence reduction without a hearing, even though Chase had asked for one. Such hearings are mandatory unless the court explicitly cites “truly exceptional considerations,” the high court said.
“In the instant case,” the high court said, “the motion justice did not articulate, and the record does not reveal, any truly exceptional considerations that would have excused him from providing (the) defendant with a hearing.”
A grand jury indicted Chase, now 42, on two counts of first-degree murder in the July 27, 2000 stabbing deaths of William Sencabaugh, 36, and Robert S. Bishop, 27, at the former Port Arthur Café on Rathbun Street. The bar reopened under another name after the incident.
On Sept. 30, 2004, however, Bishop was allowed to plead to the lesser charges of manslaughter because his defense lawyer and state prosecutors agreed that he suffered “diminished capacity” at the time of the incident due to the effects of alcohol and prescription drugs.
Associate Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause sentenced Chase to 60 years at the ACI, with 30 to serve and the balance suspended, with probation.
Witnesses told police that on the night of the incident, Chase got into a fight with Sencabaugh after a bartender at the Port Arthur shut him off. Sencabaugh and several companions escorted Chase from the bar.
An ex-Marine, Chase returned to the bar about 30 minutes later with what police described as a large military knife. He repeatedly slashed Sencabaugh while Bishop, a bouncer from Providence who was playing pool in the bar, saw the attack and rushed over to help. Bishop was stabbed in the chest as he struggled to restrain Chase.
Chase was still clutching the knife when police arrested him about a block away, lying in the street.
During the sentencing hearing, prosecutors said experts for the state and defense were in agreement on Chase’s condition at the time of the attacks. Citing the effects of alcohol and drugs, they said doctors believed Chase was incapable of the planning and premeditation necessary to prove first-degree murder.
In addition to alcohol, Chase was under the influence of a cocktail of medications at the time of the attacks, including Prozac, Vicodin, Xanax, Effexor and Elavil, prosecutors said.
The Supreme Court remanded the case to the Superior Court for a hearing on Chase’s motion for sentence reduction, but a date has not yet been set.