A vanishing species

ZILLAH, Wash. – Debbie Mendoza leaned over to pet the dog she just ruled dangerous.

Mendoza, the judge at Zillah Municipal Court, smiled and let Raja, a female pit bull, lick her hand. “She’s so happy,” she told the dog’s owner. “Take care.”

Less than 10 minutes earlier, the judge had declared Raja a threat to Zillah residents because she snarled and growled at a neighbor. She ordered the owner, a 23-year-old woman, to remove the dog from the city limits.

It was only the 10th bench trial of Mendoza’s 13-year career as one of three nonattorney judges in Washington state’s court system.

“Lay judges,” as they are known, are a throwback to an era of small-town justice when rural lawyers were hard to come by. For years, cities with a population under 5,000 were allowed to hire them.

In 2002, however, the Legislature began requiring all courts to hire attorneys as judges. Exempted from the rule are tribal courts and lay judges who were allowed to remain under a grandfather clause.

Today, that leaves Mendoza in Zillah (population 2,635); Municipal Court Judge William Nix in North Bonneville, Skamania County (population 593); and Municipal Court Judge Marlynn Markley in the Whitman County town of Uniontown (population 345).

All three work part time. When they leave or retire, attorneys will take their places as judges.

Unlike other municipal and superior court judges, Washington’s three lay judges have no law degrees and haven’t passed the state bar.

They have passed a six-hour, open-book qualifying exam and attended the same weeklong training as attorney-judges from the state Administrator of the Courts in Olympia. Mendoza also takes continuing education classes, as do many other judges around the state.

She believes lay judges are just as qualified as attorney judges and if anything, her “lay” status gives her an edge when handling cases in this Central Washington community.

“I bring common sense to the bench,” she said. “I don’t see a whole lot of that with attorneys.”

Last April, Mendoza was reprimanded by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for regularly failing to advise defendants of their rights, including their right to an attorney; failing to properly accept guilty pleas; failing to record all hearings, and failing to use qualified court interpreters. In a reprimand issued in April, the commission blamed her “insufficient judicial training, rather than any lack of will to be conscientious.”

Mendoza said it was the only time she’s been investigated by the judicial commission and that the shortcomings have been fixed.

After earning an associate’s degree as a legal secretary from Yakima Business College, Mendoza landed her first job as a clerk for Yakima County District Court in 1980. Six years later, she started working as the administrator for Sunnyside Municipal Court.

Her predecessor, Zillah Municipal Court Judge Joe Dennis, also a lay judge, had encouraged Mendoza to take the exam so she could work as a judge. Mendoza passed the judicial exam and filled in occasionally for Dennis. In 1996, after he died, she was hired to take his place.

She has no aspirations to attend law school now, mostly because she’s happy doing what she is doing. “I think about it, but it’s not really a goal of mine,” Mendoza said. “An attorney is not something I want to be.”