Seminars planned on how to lower legal financial obligations allowed by state law since 2018

A retired public defender has made it her mission to help people get sometimes crippling interest removed from their legal financial obligations after a Washington state law passed in 2018 allowing it.

Legal financial obligations, also known as LFOs, are the court costs and fees imposed when someone is sentenced for a crime. In Spokane County that’s usually $800 or $900 for a felony case, but it can be much higher in other counties.

Christine Carlisle, who now works part time with the Spokane public defenders office, said not many people are aware of the new law that allows for the removal of LFO interest and sometimes some of the fines as well.

“People may now petition the court to waive interest, completely, on fines, fees and debts that aren’t restitution,” she said. “Once you pay the restitution, you can petition to remove the restitution interest, at least part of it.”

The new law also allows for the removal of the original fines, but Carlisle said some counties aren’t doing that. “It’s kind of a tricky law,” she said. “They have to remove the interest. The court has the discretion to remove previously ordered fines, costs and fees. Here in Spokane they pretty much have been getting rid of them.”

The LFOs and the interest they accumulate can hold back people who want to leave their life of crime behind and reintegrate into society, Carlisle said. In some instances, people who don’t make regular payments can be declared in contempt of court and put in jail until they pay, she said.

Carlisle occasionally hosts workshops to teach people how to file to get their LFO interest waived. The next two are scheduled for July 31 and Aug. 21 at the Downtown Library, 906 W. Main. Both workshops start at 5 p.m.

She’s also at the Spokane Resource Center at 130 S. Arthur St. every Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon and at Northeast Community Center Community Court from 10 a.m. to noon each Tuesday.

She estimates she’s helped about 100 people. “Every client I’ve had is someone who is no longer committing crimes,” she said. “They’re working poor.”

The compounding interest used to accrue at 12 percent. If a person was in prison for several years, the amount they owed ballooned even before they were released, Carlisle said. She recalled one man she helped who had accumulated several LFOs.

“He never had the money to pay them,” she said. “He had almost $20,000 that was owed. The vast majority of it was interest that had accrued because he hadn’t been paying.”

Carlisle helped him get the amount reduced to a manageable number.

“He cried,” she said. “It really does help people. It gives them hope.”

Sara Smith-Cline has several felonies on her record, including identity theft, theft and drug charges. She accumulated legal costs and fees, but initially never thought about it.

“I was living a life of addiction and crime,” Smith-Cline said. “I never really cared. I wasn’t ready to be responsible.”

Smith-Cline, 38, was recently released after spending six years in federal prison. While there she made the decision to leave her old life behind, she said.

“I finally realized I didn’t want to live that life anymore,” she said.

She got a job in prison to pay $1,000 in federal court fees before she was released. She was disheartened to learn that she owed more than $11,000 in LFOs, but heard about the new law and asked for Carlisle’s help.

“She helped me get my fines down to $5,000,” she said. “I pay $100 every month.”

Smith-Cline, who has a job, said she also pays $100 a month for the cost of her supervision by the Department of Corrections and $100 as part of a relicensing program designed to get her driver’s license back.

“It helped me,” she said. “Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like that is a really good thing.”

Though Carlisle helps people file the required paperwork, people can do it themselves if they pick up a packet of forms at the Spokane Resource Center, from the Municipal Court clerk in the Public Safety Building or online at courts.wa.gov.

“You can actually do it yourself,” she said. “You don’t have to have a lawyer.”