SANDPOINT — A Washington state man pleaded guilty Friday to stabbing a cab driver to death in Bonner County in 2017.

Jacob Corban Coleman faces a minimum fixed term of 20 years and a maximum fixed term of 40 years in prison when he’s sentenced in 1st District Court in January of next year. The sentence also includes an indeterminate life sentence.

The state and the defense are seeking to bind the court to the plea agreement, which would essentially guarantee that the proposed sentence would be imposed by the court. Coleman would be free to rescind his guilty plea if the court declines to bind itself to the agreement, although Buchanan admitted it was likely that she would agree to the terms of the plea agreement.

“At this point, the court sees no reason why I would not agree to be bound by that,” Buchanan said.

Coleman, a 21-year-old from Puyallup, hailed a ride from cab driver Gagandeep Singh at Spokane International Airport on Aug. 28, 2017. He directed Singh, a 22-year-old from Spokane Valley, to a destination in Hope, but had Singh stop at the Walmart in Ponderay, where Coleman purchased a hunting knife, according to court documents and pretrial testimony in the case. After passing through Hope and doubling back on Highway 200 at Clark Fork, Singh’s minivan taxicab stopped in Kootenai, where Singh was repeatedly stabbed.

Coleman, who was 18 at the time of the killing, told Bonner County sheriff’s investigators he vacillated between suicidal and homicidal urges en route to Bonner County. Singh asked Coleman if he should contact the young man’s family, which sent Coleman into a rage that culminated in a rage that left Singh with more than 20 stab wounds, according to testimony in the case.

Coleman neither summoned help nor rendered aid as Singh bled to death inside the cab, which factored into Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall’s decision to seek the death penalty.

Coleman’s defense counsel, led by capital case attorney R. Keith Roark, argued Coleman should be spared the ultimate punishment due to his age and because Idaho’s lethal-injection methods amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

The plea agreement in Coleman’s case ended the pursuit of the death penalty in exchange for a plea of guilt to first-degree murder.

A dozen of Singh’s family members and friends quietly filled the courthouse gallery as a soft-spoken Coleman politely and at times haltingly answered Buchanan’s questions about his rights and the ones he was giving up as a result of his guilty plea. When it came to the particulars of the crime, Coleman stated the following:

“I, Jacob Corban Coleman, do hereby plead guilty to the crimes presented before me by the state of Idaho,” Coleman said.

The defense waived a presentence investigation in the case because a significant amount of testimony and evidence on Coleman’s mental health is expected to be presented when he is sentenced.

“We’ll have far more information than is normally provided in the presentence investigation,” Roark said.

Marshall did not object to the waiver.

“The information that’s going to be presented is going to be far more extensive than anything a presentence investigator could come up with,” said Marshall.

Coleman remains held at the Bonner County Jail while the case is pending. A two-day sentencing hearing is scheduled to commence on Jan. 3, 2019.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee