Kurtis S. Robinson: McDevitt should resign from clemency board

By Kurtis S. Robinson

Everyone deserves redemption, and I believe it is our uniquely American responsibility to remove barriers that keep people from a second chance. Oftentimes these barriers manifest as people, cogs in an unjust system who use their power to keep things exactly the way they are, furthering their own advantages and harming the communities who need the most support.

Spokane lawyer James McDevitt, chair of the state Clemency and Pardons Board, serves as one such example. He and I have crossed paths on several issues on several occasions, and from my perspective, he represents one of many protectors of the status quo holding leadership positions in criminal justice reform committees where he shouldn’t. He resigned from the police leadership advisory committee in 2016, after community members resurfaced his op-ed citing racist and factually misleading statistics. Shortly after, the chair of the committee Mary Ann Murphy resigned because McDevitt, who also served as the temporary law enforcement director, demonstrated a clear lack of leadership in his inability to even discuss racial bias.

Because of the biases he’s exhibited, McDevitt is not qualified to serve as chair of the state Clemency and Pardons Board – a committee charged with granting pardons and re-evaluating sentences for incarcerated individuals. Our incarceration system, which he oversees clemency for, disproportionately locks up people of color compared to their white counterparts. Like too many asked to do the work of criminal justice reform today, his fingerprints are all over the creation of the current inequitable and racist system. McDevitt serving leadership positions in criminal justice reform is the definition of having the fox guard the henhouse.

Over the years, I have worked with the Spokane Regional Law and Justice Commission and was appointed by the governor to the Criminal Justice Training Commission. Throughout my time, I watched institutional heads like McDevitt tug on the reins of power to censor community input, evade accountability, and maintain racial disparities across the criminal legal system.

McDevitt upholds this post-reconstruction adaptation of slavery proudly publishing his racist, archaic “tough on crime” ideas in order to keep families separated and withhold resources from Black and Brown communities. No matter what harm was exposed by community feedback sessions to rip the veil of the system’s inexcusable prejudice against us, people like McDevitt denied and undermined change at every level again and again.

As someone that experienced addiction, I know that people closest to the problem are closest to the solution. I was shocked and hurt showing up to these meetings, witnessing the level of unexamined but deliberate agreement that the status quo was going to be maintained even after public calls for change. When you exclude community input from these processes, you deliberately act against the will of the people and those most impacted. It is dehumanizing.

When I became president of the Spokane NAACP in 2017, I joined those rooms – speaking up and advocating on behalf of my community. I was met repeatedly with displays of inaction by McDevitt and his peers. He makes a show of soliciting community input to look like he’s engaging, then consequently ignores us so he doesn’t have to be accountable. McDevitt suppresses community voices in important discussions and decisions about criminal legal reform, blocking any steps toward meaningful change.

True integrity invites transparency and seeks out accountability. This is a lesson McDevitt clearly seems to have missed during his time in the military and at Gonzaga Law School. Governor Inslee should pay attention to what happened here in our community when McDevitt was embarrassed out of his role on the PLAC and should demand McDevitt’s immediate resignation from the clemency and pardons board. McDevitt should no longer have the power of mercy as he has clearly demonstrated he will only ever make the same choices that brought us to this unjust place already.

To get to the future our kids deserve, we must ensure our leaders act with integrity and with an eye toward justice for all. Removing McDevitt will not change the structure that allowed him to rise to his position. However, it is a crucial next step in the long march towards justice. After that, it is up to the legislature in the next session to expand the clemency and pardons board to include community voices most impacted by the criminal legal system. Reform requires new ideas and new perspectives. It is not enough to passively invite community input; we must be given real, meaningful power. We need leaders with the courage to be accountable to us.

Kurtis S. Robinson is the current Spokane NAACP first vice president and the political action chair for the NAACP Alaska Oregon Washington State-Area Conference. He serves as a Smart Justice Spokane executive committee member, Better Health Together board member, and on the board for Just Lead Washington. He is also executive director for Revive Center for Returning Citizens/ I Did the Time and was a wildland firefighter for more than 11 years, having worked with Washington Department of Natural Resources and Spokane District 10.