JUDGE WITH A COMMON TOUCH CALLS INQUESTS FLAWED, FIXABLE

It was not a judgelike thing to do, bringing flowers from her garden.
Roses, no less. And then giving them, in a carefully arranged bouquet, to
the dead man's mother. The judge wanted to say she was sorry.

The dead man, Shawn Maxwell, was 31 and had been living in his car in the
University District. On Feb. 18 of this year, he was stopped for speeding,
then led Seattle police on a zigzagging chase, first by car and then on
foot. He carried a sword.

Cornered in a back yard, he raised the sword and dared officers to shoot
him. They did, four times.

In September, the dead man's mother, Lisa Maxwell, traveled from her home
in Savannah, Ga., to attend the inquest on whether the shooting had been
justified. In her early 70s, speckled with gray, she wept quietly through
the testimony.

The inquest took place on the third floor of the King County Courthouse, in
Room E-301, known by local lawyers and vagrants alike as Judge Darcy
Goodman's courtroom.

Maxwell's family wept throughout the inquest. Two police officers, one on
the witness stand, broke down crying. Goodman herself at one point called a
recess to collect herself.

"My crying," she said later, "wouldn't have helped."

When the jury left to deliberate what everybody in the courtroom saw as a
foregone conclusion - that the officers were justified in shooting Maxwell
- - Goodman invited Lisa Maxwell and the family's lawyer, Lem Howell, into
her private chambers.

It was Sept. 11, the first anniversary of the cataclysmic terror attack on
the United States. Grief was already in the air.

In a voice softer than the one she uses for pronouncements, Goodman told
the mother how sorry she was for the loss of her son, and handed her the
bouquet of roses.

Lisa Maxwell, eyes red and swollen, was speechless. After a pause, she
hugged the judge.

Howell, a veteran of police inquests, said he'd never seen a judge do that,
calling it "a very human thing."

If supporters and even critics are to be believed, Goodman has been doing
"human things" throughout her 20 years as a King County District Court
judge, even in the thick of the most controversial of court proceedings:
police inquests.

Goodman retires from the bench today, ready, at age 53, to move on to
something else. What that will be, even she claims not to know.

As she prepared to step down, Goodman took time to offer some closing
thoughts on the inquest process, one she believes is flawed but fixable if
the powers that be have the will and wherewithal.

She has presided over at least eight inquests, including some of the
highest-profile cases in the past two decades. Attorneys on both sides give
Goodman the highest marks for fairness. If anyone knows the lowdown on
inquests, they say, it is the judge turning in her key card this afternoon
for the last time.

Skip The Praise

If left to her own inclinations, Goodman would never have become a judge.
That meant running for election, election meant campaigning, campaigning
meant speeches, and that meant singing her own praises, for which she has a
deep aversion.

"Darcy does not at all like calling attention to herself," said Tom
Leavitt, her husband of almost 27 years.

Persuaded by Leavitt and others to run in 1986, Goodman was a shoo-in. She
had been a part-time District Court judge for four years and was carried to
office by her reputation as a sharp mind, an even-tempered arbiter and a
steadfast advocate for the hapless and troubled. Those closest to Goodman
describe her as someone with the heart of a social worker.

Most striking to people who've been in her courtroom is her apparent lack
of any sense of self-importance. Absent is a hint of imperial air, though
she carries herself with a quiet, upright dignity, as someone who abides by
an inner compass.

When vagrants and thugs on the street exclaim, "Hi, Judge Goodman!," she
says she feels a twinge. In her mind, she's not Judge Goodman but simply
Darcy: wife, mother of two, surrogate mother of a nephew whose parents were
killed by a drunken driver, unrepentant knitter, news junkie, aspiring
gardener.

She'll stop and ask how the drug-treatment is going. Or whether they've
kept up with counseling. She'll ask about the kids.

"It's almost inevitable you'll see ego in some judges," said Anne Bremner,
an attorney who has had many dealings in Goodman's courtroom. "I've never
seen her intemperate or act as if she's been slighted. She's one judge I've
never seen act out of ego."

Her "perfect judicial temperament," as her husband calls it, may also be
what makes her, to some, bland. Or as one critic put it, "undynamic."

She will never win contests in rhetoric, nor will she captivate a crowd. In
terms of wattage, at least in a public sense, she does not light up the
room, but more, takes up a corner and emits an understated authority.

She's no wimp. She maintains control of the courtroom, peering above
bifocals that cling precariously to her nose. Her authority in part comes
from the spareness of her words. When she does speak, people listen.

Local defense and prosecuting attorneys give her the highest ratings in
annual bar polls. This year, the Washington Women Lawyers organization
named her judge of the year.

Along with the years and honors came increases in salary, which began at
$54,000 and ended at $116,000, still in the lower-middle range in the world
of judges.

No fewer than a dozen times, she's been approached to run for a Superior
Court post, which would have meant higher pay and status.

But that would have distanced Goodman from the people she wanted most to
help. District Court deals mostly with misdemeanor offenders: prostitutes,
drunken drivers, vandals, petty thieves - people who, in Goodman's view,
stand a better chance of being rehabilitated.

"I am optimistic, even stupidly optimistic at times," Goodman said. "I have
a strong faith in the goodness of people, and in their ability to get a
hold of their lives and change it."

She feels less optimism about the prospect of change for the police-inquest
process.

Goodman's first inquest involved the death of a 41-year-old Seattle man
named Erdman Bascomb. It was February 1988. Seattle was embroiled in a new
type of drug war, a no-holds-barred guerrilla battle involving street gangs
such as the Crips and the Bloods.

Street violence was climbing toward an all-time high, and drug raids became
a main part of police strategy.

One cold night, officers burst into Bascomb's apartment in Rainier Valley
expecting, as in a previous raid, to find a stash of cocaine. Bascomb,
sitting on his couch, allegedly pointed something at the intruders.

A young officer named Robert Lisoski, believing Bascomb had a gun, shot him
in the chest, killing him. No drugs were found. The object in Bascomb's
hand turned out to be a TV remote control.

The African-American community rose up with a roar. The victim's brother,
Paul Bascomb, said at the time: "Blacks are the target-practice community."

Bascomb was black. Shawn Maxwell was black. Most of the victims in
Goodman's inquests have been black.

African Americans make up about 10 percent of the city's population but
nearly one-third of the 35 people killed by Seattle police in the past two
decades.

An inquest takes place every time a person dies at the hands of police.
It's meant as a public airing of what happened. A jury of six citizens then
decides whether the use of deadly force was justified. Prosecutors, based
largely on the inquest, decide whether to press charges.

Inquest juries almost never decide against police. No law-enforcement
officer in Washington has ever been prosecuted for an unjustifiable killing
while on duty.

In other words, police, as in the Bascomb and Maxwell cases, are almost
always cleared.

Said attorney Howell, who has represented the families of numerous victims
of police shootings: "What the juries will find is a given."

Goodman called what happened to Bascomb "so very sad" and "tragic," but
ultimately, she agreed with the jury's findings. She has generally agreed
with juries in the inquests over which she's presided.

But such findings shouldn't be seen as victories for police, she said. For
the officers, in the court of public opinion, it is a no-win situation.

"Nobody is happy," Goodman said. "The family, of course, is horribly
heartbroken. The police are heartbroken. Everybody at an inquest is
heartbroken, and that doesn't change when the jury comes back."

Right now, many in the African-American community believe the process is
rigged in favor of police. Goodman would not concede the system is rigged,
but she more than implied it.

Is there any way to change that? Goodman thinks so.

The way inquests are set up, prosecutors represent the court. They handle
the proceedings, ask the questions and present findings. These attorneys
are supposed to be impartial. But because they come from the prosecutor's
office, which works closely with the police department, they often know the
officers involved.

"So at recess, of course, these prosecutors are chatting with the officers
and the officers' attorneys," Goodman says. "Because they all know each
other. They've worked together. It can't feel very good to the victim's
family who are in the courtroom and seeing this."

Does this add to the perception the process is skewed?

"Yes," Goodman said, "I think it could."

Does the problem go beyond just an appearance of partiality?

Relationships Can Interfere

"The prosecutors try to be impartial, and they do an excellent job,"
Goodman said. "But they work with these officers over the years, so it
could be difficult to then ask, 'Did you overstep your bounds?' When you
have a relationship with somebody, you know them, you work with them, it's
hard not to take their point of view."

Goodman believes there is a simple fix. Instead of using prosecuting
attorneys to handle the inquests, the court should use independent
attorneys named by the Washington State Bar Association. That would not
only appear more impartial, but would in essence be more impartial.

The idea is simple in concept only. Carrying it out, she said, would mean
spending more money, which King County does not have, or at least doesn't
have the political will to have. And the forces that be - the county
prosecutor, the law-enforcement community and the powerful Seattle Police
Guild - would most likely oppose such a change, as they have in the past.

Many officers already see the inquest as a vehicle to condemn them; an
independent attorney would be one more disadvantage.

Goodman also advocates independent investigations of police shootings. Now,
police investigate themselves, a situation one critic has described as "one
cousin talking to another cousin."

Goodman believes this change, too, would be hard to bring about, for want
of money and political will.

Speak When It's Quiet

Nobody is talking about the issue right now. Goodman thinks this is exactly
when the issue should be discussed, during the calm between storms.

Right after a shooting, she said, is the worst time to talk because
emotions are too high. That is, of course, exactly what will happen: There
will be a shooting, a protest, a call for change, and then a long,
desultory silence until the next shooting.

In the dusty back corner of Goodman's courtroom chamber sits a scale of
justice given to her when she was first sworn in. It's 2 feet tall and made
of burnished brass. Goodman said it was a wonderful gift, so fitting
because she believes so much in the law, even using the word "love" to
describe her respect.

But it's funny. Even though she has fiddled with it over the years, she
can't make the scales balance. It always tips to one side. It's flawed. She
has never been able to make it perfect.

When she clears out her desk and chambers today, she will take the scale
with her.

A whole new life chapter awaits her. Maybe Goodman, the attorney, the
social worker, the gardener with her roses, the stupidly optimistic fixer
of broken things, will in her next manifestation fiddle with it some more.