Defenders Worry Maurice Clemmons Killings Will Trample Civil Rights

Is this man alone enough to change the state constitution.

Shocking tragedies consistently get an airing during the state's legislative sessions. These events are often tear-filled and heartbreaking and this week's testimony on the murder of four officers in a Lakewood coffee shop by Maurice Clemmons was no exception.

Exploring questions about how a tragedy happened, and if it could have been prevented, is something governments are supposed to do. Where it gets tricky is trying to separate emotion from good law making. And in the wake of the Lakewood shootings, several bills in Olympia are vying for support, all designed to give judges more leeway in denying bail to offenders they think might be violent.

It's hard not to let feelings take over when Melanie Burwell, sister-in-law to slain Lakewood police officer Greg Richards, tearfully describes the experience of finding out Richards had been killed. Her nephew, she says, kept calling his dad's cell phone, trying to get him to pick up.

"My sister believes that one man alone did not kill her husband and his friends," Burwell told law makers on Monday. She argued that thanks to rules for bail in the state, Clemmons, "someone violent, someone they had been warned about" was able to post bail on a second-degree child rape charge, get a gun and kill her brother-in-law.

Legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, are responding, trying to make bail harder to come by in this state. Currently, under the Washington State Constitution, a judge can only deny bail if someone is accused of a capital crime.

The most far reaching bill would allow a judge to deny bail to any defendant with a prior felony conviction whose sentence was commuted or pardoned.

The problem, according to attorney Amy Muth, of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is the potential to trample civil rights with legislation like this. Legislators need to consider "the desire to protect the community versus the presumption of innocence," she says.

Muth worries that if such a law passed, a judge could deny bail to someone with, for instance, a couple of felony pot convictions.

But even a more moderate bill, which would allow judges to deny bail for any crime that carries a mandatory life sentence, has opposition. Both the American Civil Liberties Union and criminal rights advocate LeRoi Brashears have expressed concerns that making bail more subjective to a judge's discretion would exacerbate the racial inequalities that exist in jails and prison populations.

Voter approval is required for any constitutional change. So it's not just legislators who will have to weigh Burwell's pain against the "innocent until proven guilty" foundation of our justice system.