PORT TOWNSEND — A state Supreme Court justice who heard cases on a wide range of issues, including the McCleary decision and the unconstitutional ruling for the death penalty, will retire at the end of March.
Justice Charles Wiggins, 72, of Bainbridge Island also spent time as a judge pro tem in the mid-1990s in both Jefferson and King counties.
While he was in Jefferson County, Wiggins said he handled mostly family law and property line cases with just one criminal case.
“I just love going there,” Wiggins said of Port Townsend. “For one thing, the people there are just wonderful. The people who work in the courthouse and the clerk’s office, and the judges they have had and do have, it’s a joy to go up there.
“For another thing, the courthouse is so spectacular,” he said. “I can’t help but think about Atticus Finch and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ when I go in that courtroom.”
Wiggins, who is in the middle of his second six-year term in the highest court in the state, spent a majority of his career in appellate courts, particularly Division II in Tacoma.
But he’s served in Olympia since 2010, when he was elected in a race against incumbent Richard Sanders and was re-elected in 2016.
Wiggins has offered opinions on the McCleary case, a lawsuit filed in 2007 by plaintiffs that included its namesake, Stephanie McCleary of the Chimacum School District.
McCleary said the state wasn’t doing enough to fund basic education, and the courts agreed — all the way to the state Supreme Court.
“Those were tough years,” Wiggins said. “We were trying to force the Legislature to add $6 billion to $7 billion to the education budget.
“Those were years we felt somewhat under attack.”
Wiggins said McCleary brought the case along with another family particularly because she recognized a pattern in state funding.
“When she was a child going to school, there was a similar shortfall in education funding, and someone had to sue the state to bring funding up to par, right around 1980,” Wiggins said.
“By the time the funding came through, she had graduated from high school and did not get the benefit of that.”
When McCleary filed the lawsuit in 2007, she had two children in Chimacum schools, Wiggins said.
“By the time the case finished, her younger son had graduated from high school,” he said. “It was a poignant ending she could certainly look to with pride.”
Legislators struggled through several sessions — even special sessions beyond the prescribed length of time in Olympia — to come up with solutions, and the high court rejected them several times, telling lawmakers they weren’t doing enough to fully fund basic education.
“All nine of us were very proud of McCleary,” Wiggins said.
The justice said he played a backstage role in striking down the death penalty as the law was written, finding it arbitrary and racially biased. The court took that action in 2018, four years after Gov. Jay Inslee declared a moratorium on capital punishment in the state. A bill now before the Legislature would make the court’s ruling permanent.
The death penalty statute had a provision that it would be the responsibility of the state Supreme Court to have a final look at each case and determine whether it was working fairly, Wiggins said.
Judges in cases where capital punishment could be imposed were required to file reports, which were compiled in a database, Wiggins said.
“Over the years, that database grew to be quite large,” he said. “A few years ago, there were 350-400 of those reports.
“What do you do with massive data like that?”
Recently retired Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst worked to put the reports on a grid that allowed for the analysis of many factors, Wiggins said.
“I looked at that and thought it’s kind a of a close question whether the death penalty was being unfairly applied, and the reason it was close in my mind is that you had to find statistical significance in those numbers,” he said.
His concurring opinion suggested a team of statisticians take a closer look, and further evaluation revealed what Wiggins called a significant outcome.
“It was pretty clear that, yes, the chances of this being merely a coincidence would be about 10 percent, and the chances there was bias were about 90 percent,” he said.
Wiggins also is known for his contribution to a website, www.votingforjudges.org, that presents information about all judicial races statewide.
He said Paul Fjelstad, an attorney in Silverdale, compiles data from endorsements and surveys from several bar associations — all publicly available — and puts it together in one location.
“There’s always the open question about whether it’s better to have elected judges or appointed,” Wiggins said.
“The plus is, this is a democracy. We’ve got the opportunity to vote for judges, the third branch of the government — the judiciary branch — and that’s important.”
Wiggins said he’s now been through two statewide elections, and that’s enough. He plans to spend more time with his wife, Nancy, and his two adult children.
“I’m finding it more difficult to stay up with the job,” he said. “I’m slowing down in my abilities. I just think it’s not really right for me to remain there just to serve out time if I’m not really giving it 100 percent, and that was a major driver for me.
“It’s time to hang up the robes, so to speak.”
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Jefferson County Managing Editor Brian McLean can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 6, or at bmclean@peninsuladailynews.com.
