Spokane asks court to reconsider DUI ruling

The city of Spokane is asking a state appeals court to reconsider a recent ruling that threatens the authority of Spokane’s municipal courts, including the convictions of more than 100 jail inmates.

In a motion filed late Tuesday, the city is asking the Washington Court of Appeals in Spokane to clarify its Nov. 8 ruling, or at least determine whether it’s broadly retroactive to cover misdemeanor convictions and arrests since 1995.

The ruling tossed out the DUI convictions of two Spokane men, Lawrence Rothwell and Henry Smith, saying the Spokane County District Court judge who convicted them, Patricia Connolly Walker, was not elected solely by city voters as the Legislature intended, violating the voting rights of city residents.

Walker is a district court judge elected to her position in 2002 in a countywide election. The appeals court ruling challenges an agreement between the city and county to assign District Court judges to preside over the city’s municipal court caseload.

If the court’s ruling stands, it has far-reaching impacts, the city’s motion says.

“It currently affects more than one hundred inmates being held, pending appeals, past fines, show cause hearings for probation violations (and) felony cases that have a municipal conviction as a predicate offense, and has far-reaching impacts,” possibly including the validity of no-contact orders issued in domestic violence cases, the motion says.

Meanwhile, the city public defender’s office has filed motions for the expedited release of about three dozen inmates in the Spokane County Jail or Geiger Corrections Center based on the appeals court ruling. Those motions will be heard Friday.

Last November, the Washington Supreme Court sided with the city in a three-year political battle to separate its municipal courts from the county district court system – a move resisted by the county.

But in its new motion, the city asked the appeals court to rule that Walker legitimately holds her office and to affirm the convictions of Rothwell and Smith.

“Alternatively, the City asks the Court to clarify the Rothwell opinion as to its retroactive effect, and if so to allow the parties (to) prepare an adequate record and briefing on that issue,” said Assistant City Prosecutor Michelle Szambelan in her motion.

Breean Beggs of the Center for Justice, the lawyer who won the Rothwell appeal, said in a recent hearing on the city’s emergency motion to stay the ruling that he agreed with city lawyers that the issue of retroactivity had not been briefed in the original appeal.