Three Clark County judicial appointee applicants offered their opinions Monday about the judiciary’s role in addressing inequalities in the legal system, including a higher rate of the poor in the county jail and people who can’t afford to hire an attorney.
The comments from Senior Deputy Prosecutor Camara Banfield and private attorneys Denise Lukins and Bob Vukanovich were part of a Clark County Bar Association forum for judicial appointee applicants and were elicited by questions from the audience and from people who electronically submitted questions to the bar association.
The bar association also conducted a poll of its nearly 500 members about their first choice for Clark County’s next judge, whom Gov. Jay Inslee is scheduled to appoint next month.
“Obviously, the poll gives our community a voice, and it affects our community,” said bar association President Arin Dunn. It also gives voters and the governor information that they really wouldn’t obtain from any other source.”
Banfield, Lukins, Vukanovich, Chief Deputy Prosecutor John Fairgrieve and attorney Christopher Ramsay have applied for the position. Judge Barbara Johnson — Clark County’s first female Superior Court judge — is retiring from the position March 31 after 28 years on the bench. Her successor will be required to seek election in November to complete the last two years of her four-year term.
Self-represented litigants
Clark County Superior Court judges have said the court system is seeing an unprecedented number of people going to court without an attorney to fight civil legal battles. Local judges and attorneys say the trend often results in longer, more laborious court proceedings and sometimes an unequal playing field, particularly in legal battles in which one party has an attorney and another is self-represented.
In an electronically submitted question Monday, read by Dunn, someone asked the applicants what local court rule they would change or add to “assist litigants, for example, low income or (self-represented) litigants.”
Vukanovich said the majority of people going to court without an attorney are involved in family law cases. Particularly in child support modifications, he said self-represented litigants waste time and money on useless proceedings because the court rules don’t allow them to obtain crucial information on their own.
“Right now, when we have child support modification, one parent doesn’t know what the other parent is making, so they file a modification, and they go through discovery, and they realize … there really is nothing here, so it’s a waste of time,” he said.
Allowing parents to request each other’s tax returns would solve the problem, he said.
Banfield said local rules should provide incentives for attorneys to volunteer to help self-represented litigants.
“For example, in California, I believe, you actually get (continuing legal education) credits for doing volunteer work in the law,” she said. “I know it’s a problem that’s plaguing our civil (courts), and I would really hope we could all put our heads together to figure something out.”
Lukins said that in her civil practice, she has frequently interacted with self-represented litigants.
“I think, in general, they find the process very bewildering and confusing, and as a result, I think sometimes things go on longer than they maybe should, so what I would like to see in a perfect world is some sort of settlement conference in the civil (court) rules,” she said.
She said she envisions a court rule that would encourage self-represented litigants to participate in a settlement conference and “end the case in a timely manner instead of dragging it on longer than it needs to.”
Jail overcrowding
Longtime Vancouver attorney Ed Dunkerly said low-income defendants are overcrowding the jail as a result of unaffordable amounts of bail, set by the judge, even for non-violent crimes.
“One of my things is release of defendants and the application of that (court) rule,” said Dunkerly, who directed his question to Banfield. “I’ve seen how it’s changed in the last 35 years. … More and more, it’s almost like bail is the presumption. Do you see yourself applying (setting bail) or releasing more people on their own recognizance?”
Banfield admitted that many of people overcrowding the jail are there because they can’t afford to post bail.
“A lot of times we need to be looking at who are the people we are keeping in custody, people that are in poverty, or, quite frankly, some of the disenfranchised people in our community,” she said. “Automatically, they don’t have as much of a fight, and these are things we do need to look at.”
She suggested that her duties as a prosecutor don’t necessarily reflect how she would view bail as a judge.
“It is the prosecutor’s role to bring out the danger to the community and the likeliness of flight, so it’s important that both the defense and the state make their proper arguments, but the court really needs to look at what are the reasons that we are keeping these people in custody,” she said.
Vukanovich, who practices criminal defense and family law, said judges seem to be setting higher bail amounts every month.
He said criminal cases involving people with community ties and old or nonexistent criminal history “deserve a harder look and possibly supervised release especially (when) you talk to the jail and they keep telling us about how crowded it is and how people are sleeping on the floor.”
“Maybe there are people over there that don’t need to be over there and can be on supervised release,” he said.
Lukins said she doesn’t have experience as a criminal lawyer and would need to educate herself on setting bail amounts. However, she said a judge’s role “is to manage … limited resources wisely and effectively.”
Fairgrieve and Ramsay were unable to attend Monday’s forum because of scheduling conflicts. Fairgrieve, who was in Houston for a meeting of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, gave a written statement, which was distributed to forum attendees.
If he’s appointed, Fairgrieve wrote, he would strive to do three things: “First, to listen closely to and carefully consider the arguments of counsel. Second, to make my decisions on the facts and law that apply to each particular issue, not what I think the law should be. And third, to treat attorneys and their clients with dignity and respect.”
The county has 10 Superior Court judge positions. Superior courts are the highest state trial courts, hearing felony and larger civil matters. Superior Court judges are paid $156,363 per year, plus benefits.
