District Court Judge Richard Plans Retirement Balanced Justice With Defendants’ Futures During 14 Years On Bench

Defendants likely won’t forget his name.

After 14 years, District Court Judge Richard J. Richard will retire at the end of the year.

Colleagues describe the 68-year-old as even-tempered, fair and legitimately concerned with both defendants’ futures and doling out justice.

And he can always tell a good joke.

“He’s very easy going, but at the same time, he’s very professional,” said County Prosecutor Jim Sweetser.

“I’d characterize him as workmanlike. He has a docket and has to get through the cases. He’s courteous, he listens, he doesn’t cut people off. He doesn’t have a big ego.”

County commissioners will accept resumes for Richard’s seat starting late this week or next. Commissioner John Roskelley said he expects “quite a few candidates.”

Richard originally got his job the same way. In 1983, commissioners appointed him to fill a vacancy. He ran for the seat in 1984, won, and has remained since.

Before that, he worked as an attorney in the Tanksley, Richard, Padden and Derr law firm. He specialized in real estate and family law cases.

Judge Sara B. Derr works with him now, and worked with him briefly back then. “He was always concerned about trying to make life better for defendants,” she said. “A lot couldn’t read.”

Often, he told defendants to get a GED or would recommend that they take a reading course while in jail.

He believed that “if they bettered themselves they could get out of this spiral and get out of jail,” Derr said.

Richard agrees. “Sometimes, you just feel you’ve made a difference really straightening somebody out,” he said in his easy, soft-spoken way. “Sometimes it’s a spark enough to change their lives. That’s what being a judge is really about.”

The judge said he rarely sees a face before him many times. But there are a few “frequent flyers” that he has always tried to ground.

“That probably makes me feel better than anything else.”

That doesn’t mean Richard is a pushover, Sweetser said. Instead, especially in cases of repeat drunken driving, he can be tough.

“He had a good, balanced approach. He recognized the responsibility of his position. He always had the community’s interest in mind.”

In those repeat cases, he would impose high bail and stiff sentences. “Sometimes the defense attorneys didn’t like that,” Sweetser said.

Richard was born in Spokane but grew up in Chewelah. He moved to Spokane with his mother after high school, attending Gonzaga University. He graduated in 1951.

He took a couple of years off from school then returned to GU to study law. He graduated in 1956, “back when it was $300” a year.

Richard said he’ll likely serve as a pro-tem judge in the future. His full-time occupation, though, will be genealogy.

That’s the big reason he’s retiring. Richard is part Potawatomi Indian, a tribe from the Great Lakes area. He became extremely interested in his family history last year, when his two grandsons in the Marine Corps asked him about their Indian heritage. “I’m proud of that,” he said.

But he didn’t know enough about it to tell his grandsons much. So he’s surfing the Internet and looking up old records to find out.

That’s only the start, though. He said that’s not how birth, marriage and death records are looked up. “You have to go to the hometowns,” he said. He plans to do it.

But he’ll still miss that big, black chair.

“It’s been fun. I really enjoy being a judge.”

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