FELONS FREE AS COURTS BOG DOWN

Sometime in the next month, 25-year-old Frederick Snow, convicted of
attempting to rape a woman in Pierce County in 1998, will walk out of
prison a free man.

He was sentenced to serve a decade behind bars, but the state Appeals Court
has ruled that the Pierce County Superior Court that handed down the
sentence violated his right to a speedy trial.

Snow is only the latest of a series of Pierce County criminals to go free.
They include Bruce Eric Smith, who avoided a life sentence last year
because his right to a speedy trial was violated. Prosecutors say Smith
raped a woman in Pierce County last week, then led police on a car chase
that ended when he crashed into and killed motorist Russell Whitaker, 26.

Yet Smith's alleged new crimes and Snow's impending release are just
epilogues in Pierce County's yearslong struggle to deal with an overcrowded
court system that has resulted in at least a half-dozen felons going free.

Court officials say the past year has brought significant changes to
reverse the clogs and prevent future Snows and Smiths. But the damage has
been done from mistakes made the past five years, including a
misinterpretation of a 1999 Appeals Court ruling on speedy trials that let
a drug dealer go free - a ruling that was a first sign of troubles in the
Pierce County court system.

The prosecutor's office says Smith's release is a nightmare, the result of
a clogged court and a technicality they complain is unfair to the interests
of justice. The judge whose error led to Smith's release, but who has also
led the cleanup of the court system, said he and fellow judges never set
out to violate anyone's rights.

"I take an oath to follow the law, (and) that's what I always try to do,"
said Judge Terry Sebring. "And I followed the procedures that were
established by the judges, which we all thought was in compliance with the
case law."

But court officials also say that while a tragedy has come out of the
troubles, it's clear the system needed fixing.

"This has really prompted them to radically and drastically change the way
they handle the trial calendar," said John Hillman, a Pierce County deputy
appellate prosecutor who has been unsuccessfully fighting to keep felons
such as Snow and Smith behind bars. "But in fixing it, they've clearly
shown that they could have fixed it a long time ago."

The crash that killed Whitaker ignited a debate over the constitutional
right to a speedy trial.

Bruce Smith, who remains in jail after pleading not guilty this week to
felony murder, rape, burglary and assault, had two other felony
convictions, including rape, when he was convicted in 1999 of threatening a
woman with a gun and trying to run from police.

Records show that the circumstances that led to Smith's latest arrest
started years before he had even received the sentence that was supposed to
have meant life in prison without release.

Starting last February - about the same time Smith was freed by the Appeals
Court - backlogs have been reduced significantly under the watch of a
county judicial "czar," who was named to clean up the mess at the
courthouse. First it was Sebring; now it's Judge Frederick Fleming.

Five years ago, Sebring and Fleming were in the midst of the mess.

At least as early as 1997, Pierce County courts were jammed with trial
backlogs, suffering under the weight of more than 6,000 felonies a year and
only about 20 judges to hear the cases, not counting the civil cases.
Judges often heard 70 cases a day.

Criminal defendants have a right to a speedy trial. In Washington, that
means 60 days for someone being held in jail, and 90 days for anyone else.
Except in extreme circumstances, only the accused can waive that right.

In Pierce County, records show that judges and prosecutors got in the habit
of filing "emergency" continuances when the court ran out of time and
couldn't find a free courtroom and judge.

Court officials said it was unclear whether the rules about emergency
continuances applied to court congestion. Either way, the courts felt they
had no choice, and there hadn't been precedent specifically saying it was
wrong.

"I didn't believe I was granting anything in violation of the court rules,"
Sebring said.

In June 1997, a repeat offender named Lamar Warren was brought to court on
drug charges. It was the last day before his speedy-trial clock expired,
but no one could find a courtroom. Sebring set Warren's trial for July 9,
16 days late. He was convicted.

On Nov. 9, 1998, Frederick Snow, then 22, appeared for trial in Pierce
County Superior Court for allegedly trying to rape an 18-year-old woman at
his home. His original trial date had been Sept. 16, but his defense
lawyers sought five continuances. Judge Rudolph Tollefson couldn't find a
courtroom, so he bumped the case a week, past Snow's speedy-trial date.
Snow was convicted and sentenced to 10 years.

In February 1999, a jury found Smith guilty of terrorizing his girlfriend
with a gun, holding it to her head and threatening to kill her. His
speedy-trial date had expired the week before, but Sebring granted a
postponement, citing the "emergency-continuance" rule.

"I think you're about (continuance) number five that I granted this
afternoon for unavailability of courtrooms," Sebring told Smith, according
to the transcript of the hearing.

"That had been happening for quite a while," Sebring said yesterday. "They
were telling me there were no judges. And obviously, I can't do anything
about the fact that all the other judges were busy. I'm stuck with that
reality."

Five months later, in July 1999, the courts got a wake-up call regarding
emergency continuances. The state Appeals Court overturned Warren's drug
conviction, saying "court congestion is not 'good cause' to continue a
criminal trial beyond the prescribed time period."

Pierce County interpreted the ruling to mean emergency continuances could
still be used, but the court would have to be more thorough in recording
exactly which judges were busy, and why, Hillman recalls.

The court continued granting emergency continuances for a year or so,
records show. In 2000, according to a later study, the court postponed 24
trials, just 0.2 percent of the caseload, because courtrooms weren't available.

Then, in January 2001, the Smith case came crashing down.

The next month, the county commissioned an audit that found problems in the
way cases were scheduled and tried. The court czar was appointed. Judges
started rotating one judge to watch over continuances and scheduling. In a
pinch, civil-court judges have been ordered off their lawsuits to hear
criminal cases. Things got better.

But the overturned convictions started rolling in: The Snow case. A few
low-level drug convictions. A burglary case.

Last year, Warren sued the county for unlawful imprisonment for the time he
spent behind bars. A Pierce County judge tossed out the case last month.

In the Snow case, the higher-court judges wrote that the current
speedy-trial limits were created in the 1970s to speed up a foot- dragging
justice system. As a fundamental right, speedy trial was meant to prevent
courts from leaving people in jail with charges against them but no chance
for a day in court.

The rule still rankles those who have seen criminals go free.

"There's no consideration for the victims and the innocent community here,"
said Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald Horne, who finds it irritating that
defendants can get repeated delays without penalty. "The criminal-justice
system is not just for the defendant."

In King County, presiding Superior Court Judge Brian Gain says the
speedy-trial rule is rarely a problem. He said he couldn't remember a
single speedy-trial violation in more than 15 years.

"You just have to keep up on it and understand where your participants are
in their trial schedules," Gain said.