County: To avoid jail fees, obey law

Spokane County’s latest defense of its defunct jail-fee policy is to suggest that residents can avoid future fees by obeying the law.

But attorneys for the man challenging the policy say the argument is absurd, noting the fee was taken from everyone booked into the jail – even those who were arrested by mistake or later cleared of wrongdoing. They are seeking a federal judge’s approval to certify the case as a class-action suit. If approved, the county may be forced to locate and pay back a total of about $1 million in fees and interest to inmates booked into jail from May 2004 to last summer.

“For their argument to work, they are assuming that everyone who is arrested is guilty of engaging in criminal conduct,” said Breean Beggs of the Center for Justice. “That’s factually incorrect. Even law enforcement would agree with that. And that undercuts our constitutional presumption that people are innocent until proven guilty.”

The latest arguments follow a decision last August by U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle to void the state law that many counties had been using to charge inmates as much as $100 in jail fees. Spokane County had been charging $89.12 per inmate and used the $760,000 collected under the program to help offset the cost of jail operations.

Van Sickle ruled that law was unconstitutional because it deprived inmates of money without due process. Van Sickle also said the law was so legally flawed that it couldn’t be fixed by changing policies or procedures.

The county disagreed and hired Frank Conklin, former dean of Gonzaga University School of Law, at $220 an hour to argue on its behalf.

After Van Sickle ruled last year, Spokane County stopped collecting the fees and Conklin and Deputy Spokane County Prosecutor Jim Kaufman filed a request asking the judge to reconsider his ruling because the county already paid the fee back to the man who brought the suit.

“We are just saying that Van Sickle doesn’t have jurisdiction” to find the law unconstitutional, Conklin said of the judge’s ruling. The county is seeking to have Van Sickle “dismiss the thing, get it over with. That’s the basis of the motion.”

The legal battle began in June 2005 when the Center for Justice, a public-interest law firm in Spokane, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Shawn Huss. Jailers took $39 out of Huss’ wallet on Oct. 31, 2004, when Huss was arrested on a domestic violence charge that was dismissed the next day.

However, jailers didn’t tell Huss why they took his money or that he could get his money back if charges were dropped. The county did not return his money until months later when Huss threatened legal action, Beggs said.

Prior to filing the suit on behalf of Huss, Beggs said he wrote letters to counties throughout the state outlining the constitutional problems with the law that allowed counties to take jail fees. Beggs also promised in the letter not to seek a refund of all fees if the counties agreed to stop taking the jail fees, he said.

Upon receipt of the letter, Stevens, Chelan, Whitman, Benton and Pend Oreille counties ceased the practice.

But Pierce, Franklin, Snohomish, Thurston, Whatcom and Spokane counties refused to heed Beggs’ advice and continued taking the fees.

All counties have since stopped collecting money after Van Sickle’s ruling. The Center for Justice has since filed a similar lawsuit against Pierce County, Beggs said.

“We are looking at suits against a few of the other counties that didn’t take us up on our offer to stop the process when they had a chance,” Beggs said.

In the local case, Conklin and Kaufman also filed a motion last week requesting that Van Sickle deny the request to certify the case as a class-action suit, which essentially would make most jail inmates who had money seized a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“In the instant case, (Huss) and his class members can readily avoid having to pay jail fees in the future by conducting their activities within the law and not engaging in criminal conduct again,” Conklin wrote in his court filing.

Beggs said that legal argument falls on its face because it could be used to justify anything.

“That’s the same as arguing that you don’t have to worry about excessive conduct by police if you don’t engage in criminal conduct,” Beggs said. “But that doesn’t address people who are frivolously arrested, like our client.”