ADELE FERGUSON - Voting on state’s top judges can require research

ONE OF THE TOUGHEST votes people will make as they plough through the candidates this year is when they reach the judges.

The votes fall off here because people would rather withhold a vote than find out later that they voted wrong, that is, for someone on the wrong side of what the voter believes. Ask first? Doesn’t work. Most judicial candidates fend off questions about their beliefs by saying a case involving that issue might come before them. I ask everyone I interview where they stand on the death penalty since I will never vote for opponents.

They all say they will obey the law (which allows the death penalty) but I even heard that from a judge who spent his career supporting road blocks to it being carried out. But let’s get down to business here. There are three openings on the State Supreme Court which will be decided in the Aug. 17 primary for any candidate who gets more than 50 percent of the vote.

Chief Justice Barbara Madsen is unopposed so she’s in. Justice Richard Sanders has two opponents, former Court of Appeals Judge Charlie Wiggins and Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff. I supported Sanders when he was first elected years ago and the Seattle media and some bar members were out to sink him, but he lost me when he stood up at a fancy dinner in Washington,, D.C., in 2008 and shouted “Tyrant” at the speaker, Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey. I like manners in my judges. I don’t know Chushcoff but I have interviewed Wiggins in the past and found him to be knowledgeable and reasonable.

BUT NOW WE get to Jim Johnson. I don’t know his opponent, Tacoma attorney Stan Rumbaugh, but I have known Johnson for many years, mostly through my association with the Washington Association of Property Owners. He was their lawyer or adviser, I’m not sure which, but he helped draft material strengthening property rights.

Jim doesn’t need any good words from me to help him, not when he has such top drawer support as Slade Gorton, State Auditor Brian Sonntag, Atty. Gen. Rob McKenna, former Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and the Washington Council of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs.

Jim wrote a fascinating opinion on a case involving gun rights that was in court last spring. A 17-year old was pulled over in his car by an officer who found a gun under the seat. The trial court found him guilty of possession of a firearm under a law limiting such possession for those under 18. On appeal, Johnson concurred with the majority that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms but dissented with the finding that the youth was guilty of unlawful possession because he was under 18.

Youths have been permitted and even requested to bear arms since this country was born, wrote Johnson. The Journals of the Continental Congress identified “healthy, sound and able bodied men, not under 16 years of age” as preferred category for recruits.

HALF A MILLION boys aged 16 and younger fought in the Civil War which, according to historical records, could almost have been called the teenagers’ war. One 11-year-old earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. So did 65 other juvenile soldiers. Today, as early as their 17th birthdays, youths are allowed to take up arms and enlist with permission of their parents in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps or Coast Guard .

What are they fighting for?

“I remind the court,” wrote Johnson, “they fought for the right to bear arms, a right that unquestionably extended in its fullest form to those adolescents who took up arms to defend it. Gun rights are an inexorable birthright of American tradition.”

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)