Our View: A different tune
For nearly half a century, this day – May 1 – has been set aside as Law Day, a time to commemorate the system that keeps America free and just.
It’s a solemn topic, but not too solemn for the gasps and snorts that a story in today’s Spokesman-Review is likely to provoke.
It’s the story about Jewell C. Walker, a convicted child rapist who was arrested last summer after witnesses said he and two companions beat up and robbed a man who had been frequenting downtown watering holes. The alleged victim still had $306, which he had tucked in a pocket of the shorts that his assailants pulled away to get his dough.
They were charged with first-degree robbery, and Walker was scheduled to go on trial last Monday.
Not so fast.
Deputy prosecutor Deborah King had some doubts, due largely to the fact the victim refused to testify. She would have been willing to let Walker plead guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree theft – as his two co-defendants had – and walk away with no more jail time, but with his history of a sexual offense, such a plea would have required him to serve more jail time.
Rather than proceed with the original case, based on King’s remaining evidence, including the testimony of other witnesses, the lawyers switched on their imaginations.
In a setting where witnesses must swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the attorneys invented a story, and Superior Court Judge Ellen Kalama Clark gave it her blessing.
Walker pleaded guilty to illegally recording music without the owner’s consent.
Honest.
“There were no allegations of sound recordings or videos,” assistant public defender Tom Krzyminski told S-R reporter Thomas Clouse. “We were just being creative to get to the point we needed to get in sentencing.”
Wildly creative is more like it, but the lawyers and judge were satisfied that the fabrication met the requirements of what they call an “In Re Barr” plea.
That legalistic label derives from a 1984 Washington state Supreme Court ruling involving another sex offender who had been charged with first- and second-degree statutory rape. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to indecent liberties instead, but the statement he signed spelled out the elements of the original charge.
The defendant said that made his plea invalid. The Supreme Court said ha-ha.
Actually, the Supreme Court said a plea to a lesser, related charge isn’t invalid simply because that isn’t exactly what happened. Fast forward to last week in Clark’s courtroom.
Just how pirating music qualifies as a “lesser, related” charge to first-degree robbery is something of a mystery. It sounds more like a circumvention of the Legislature’s intent to make sex offenders face certain minimal consequences if they can’t keep their nose clean.
The lawyers and judge must have had their reasons.
“You know the guy did something,” Judge Clark told Clouse. “I could have rejected it. But you are still getting some accountability, no matter what it’s called.”
Happy Law Day, everyone.