"Alarm" and Terry Stop Court Ruling

If you are a member of the communist party, that is also a felony.

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Bear 45/70 wrote:

deanf wrote:

Oh relax. There are so many laws to try not to run afoul of, that all of us are probably (unconvicted) felons.

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Maybe you but not most of us. Now misdemeanors sure, but felonies take real stupidity and effort.

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Not really. It's a felony to point a laser pointer at a cop or a firefighter. It's also a felony to sell someone a tylenol and say that it's extacy, that'sa felony. If you are a member of the communist party, that is also a felony.

Not all felonies are violent felonies, not all felonies are commited intentionally, and some people change. You could have gotten busted selling drugs when you were 18, and now that you are 45, you still are a felon who can't own guns. So let's not be so fast to rush to judgement.

Personally, I've been arrested for a felony. It was a load of crap and the cop had no idea what he was talking about, so it was thrown out the next day, but that doesn't change the fact that I was wrongly accused of a felony.

The guy that accidentally shot me was convicted of a felony. It doesn't mater that it was an accident. It was criminal neglegence and he was convicted of assault. So now a guy that didn't know safe gun handling is a felon because of an accident. No effort necessary.

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I also was under them impression that felons not only can't carry or own firearms. So one of two things, a troll or a felon. Either shouldn't be here.

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Bear 45/70 wrote:

I also was under them impression that felons not only can't carry or own firearms. So one of two things, a troll or a felon. Either shouldn't be here.

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As I recall, the reason Casad was carrying those rifles down the street was because he was on his way to sell them.

As for the felon thing, I just don't get you, Bear. Just about every post you make expresses disdain or even outright contempt for, and distrust of, government, including law enforcement. So if you don't trust the government to do just about anything right, why does that distrust evaporate when it comes to what the government does to other people, like convicting them of felony offenses?

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Bear, I'm not disagreeing with you that he shouldn't have been in possession of them, but just to play devil's advocate here, I have a question for you:

What is a convicted felon, right after their conviction, supposed to do with their previously legally-owned firearms if they don't have any family nor anyone they trust to sell/store the firearms for them?

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expvideo wrote:

If you are a member of the communist party, that is also a felony.

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What? Where do you get this from?

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RCW 9.81.083
Communist party declared a subversive organization.

The Communist party is a subversive organization within the purview of chapter 9.81 RCW and membership in the Communist party is a subversive activity thereunder.

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RCW 9.81.030
Membership in subversive organization is felony — Penalty.

It is a class C felony for any person after June 1, 1951, to become, or after September 1, 1951, to remain a member of a subversive organization or a foreign subversive organization knowing the organization to be a subversive organization or foreign subversive organization. Any person upon a plea of guilty or upon conviction of violating this section shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both, at the discretion of the court.

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RCW 9.81.020
Subversive activities made felony — Penalty.

(1) It is a class B felony for any person knowingly and willfully to:

(a) Commit, attempt to commit, or aid in the commission of any act intended to overthrow, destroy or alter, or to assist in the overthrow, destruction or alteration of, the constitutional form of the government of the United States, or of the state of Washington or any political subdivision of either of them, by revolution, force or violence; or

(b) Advocate, abet, advise, or teach by any means any person to commit, attempt to commit, or assist in the commission of any such act under such circumstances as to constitute a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, or of the state of Washington or of any political subdivision of either of them; or

(c) Conspire with one or more persons to commit any such act; or

(d) Assist in the formation or participate in the management or to contribute to the support of any subversive organization or foreign subversive organization knowing the organization to be a subversive organization or a foreign subversive organization; or

(e) Destroy any books, records or files, or secrete any funds in this state of a subversive organization or a foreign subversive organization, knowing the organization to be such.

(2) Any person upon a plea of guilty or upon conviction of violating any of the provisions of this section shall be fined not more than ten thousand dollars, or imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both, at the discretion of the court.

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RCW 9A.16.050
Homicide -- By other person -- When justifiable.
Homicide is also justifiable when committed either:

(1) In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his presence or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished; or

(2) In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he is.

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Sometimes the letter of the law provides for stupid catch-22s, and there is no good answer.

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thebastidge wrote:

Sometimes the letter of the law provides for stupid catch-22s, and there is no good answer.

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But, but... that would imply the law is IMPERFECT!

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Read the post nitwit. Casad admitted to the cop that he wasa felon, hence no guns and he was breaking the law by having them.

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Not likely I would have been caught selling drugs at 18, I was in SE Asia on my first tour.

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Bear 45/70 wrote:

Read the post nitwit. Casad admitted to the cop that he wasa felon, hence no guns and he was breaking the law by having them.

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Not the answer to the question I was actually trying to pose. Yes, Casad admitted to the cops he had a felony conviction; since that sort of thing canbe reaidly checked by the cops, he'd have been foolish to deny it.

But my question to you is, given your expressed distrust of government, including (I presume) the criminal justice system, who would you hold it against someone that he had been convicted of a felony at some point in his life? Seems to me that in your book, that fact by itself should be no guarantee of actual wrongdoing.

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My .2 cents on this
I read this article and I feel that, if I drove down the street and saw him walking with to gun, I would not call the cops, but I would as a CCer may pull over to see what he was up to. Not that it's wrong to walk down the street with 2 rifles in a manner that is not aggressively. ( I have rode my bike at 18years old with a Shotgun on it, empty, and locked that is).

Now on the other hand if I saw a man with a pistol on his side, I may honk, give him the thumbs up a big smile and keep going.

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I decided to look up everything I could. Courts.wa.gov has a nice lookup product. Anyone decides to look it up, it would be Gregory Elijah Casad.

I don't know the history, but it looks like a bunch of cases criminal non-traffic.

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Two challengers seek to unseat Issaquah district-court judge
By Ashley Bach

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Thursday, September 7, 2006

After 14 years on the bench, King County District Court Judge Mary Ann Ottinger is fighting for her judicial life.

The Issaquah judge faces two opponents in this month's primary, her first election challenge since being appointed to the job in 1992. She's considered vulnerable after being censured twice in the past two years.

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct censured her in 2004 for a history of failing to inform some defendants of their rights. She promised to change, but additional violations led to another censure by the commission last spring and a 30-day suspension by the state Supreme Court.

In the Sept. 19 primary, Eastside voters will choose among Ottinger; Frank LaSalata, a substitute judge in King County District Court; and Richard Pope, a Bellevue attorney who is making his 10th attempt at elective office. The top two candidates move on to the Nov. 7 election, unless one person receives more than 50 percent of the vote.

Ottinger says she regrets not making all the necessary changes after her first censure, an omission that "cost me dearly" professionally, personally and financially. After the commission filed new charges against her last year, she fixed her courtroom practices, ensuring that she verbally notified all defendants about her findings of probable cause and about all their rights before they made a plea.

She said she was unfairly targeted and that other local judges who serve in crowded, busy courtrooms commit the same violations. The commission agreed that her mistakes were not unique, but said they were still unacceptable.

Another blow came last week when the King County Bar Association rated her "not qualified," which is unusual for a sitting judge. The Municipal League, on the other hand, rated her "very good."

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Judge has pattern of violating rights, complaint alleges

By Maureen O'Hagan

Seattle Times staff reporter








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King County District Court Judge Mary Ann Ottinger, in court in Issaquah in 2003




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Archive | District Court judge censured: Defendants not told of right to counsel


She was young and scared and, admittedly, foolish. But to this day, Sara Totten can't understand why she was ordered to spend more than a year in jail when her only crime was being a minor in possession of alcohol.

The punishment was later deemed out of line by another judge, and Totten was freed early.

The root of the problem, that judge wrote, was District Court Judge Mary Ann Ottinger, who sent Totten to jail without telling her she had certain rights, including the most basic: the right to a free lawyer.

In fact, Ottinger, who has been a district-court judge in King County since 1992, routinely violated defendants' rights, according to two complaints investigated by the Commission on Judicial Conduct. The first, which focused mainly on Totten, was resolved in June 2004 when the judge admitted her errors, was censured and promised to change.

The commission now says that Ottinger continued to show a "pattern or practice of violating criminal defendants' fundamental and constitutionally protected due process rights."

A month after disciplining Ottinger the first time, it began investigating new complaints that were strikingly similar to Totten's. That resulted in charges filed by the commission in June.


Mary Ann Ottinger

Age: 56

Experience: Admitted to the Washington State Bar in 1973. Trial lawyer specializing in medical-negligence law.

Judicial experience:

Appointed to the King County District Court bench in 1992. Has served mainly in the Issaquah court.

Ottinger, 56, declined to comment except through her lawyer, David Allen, who said the judge may have made occasional technical slip-ups, but she follows the Code of Judicial Conduct, which lays out ethical standards for judges. The real problem, he argues, is that some local governments aren't providing lawyers immediately to defendants in district and municipal court, and judges like Ottinger are unfairly being held responsible.

Jailed for an MIP

By the time Totten and Ottinger crossed paths, Ottinger had become a fixture in the Issaquah courthouse.

Ottinger presided over cases out of Issaquah, Sammamish, Snoqualmie and North Bend, among other cities. Government officials there were quite attached to her. In fact, when Ottinger was transferred to Redmond in 2003 in a reorganization of King County's district courts, those city governments fought vigorously to get her back.

Even before this, however, the Commission on Judicial Conduct was looking at Ottinger. In 2002, she was told of concerns about how she advised defendants of their rights. Ottinger said she would change her procedures, but the commission soon heard that she hadn't. The commission opened an investigation, and Totten's case became the centerpiece.

Totten's legal problems began in June 1999, when, at 17, she was caught drinking and registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.071 — lower than the legal limit for an adult but a crime for someone under 21.

By her first court hearing, in January 2000, she had turned 18. There was neither defense lawyer nor prosecutor there.

The hearing was over in minutes. Totten pleaded guilty. And Ottinger accepted the plea, even though defense lawyers say many judges won't let defendants plead guilty at their first court appearance without a lawyer. If they do, however, they're required to make sure the defendants know exactly what they're getting into.

Transcripts show Ottinger didn't tell Totten the rights she would be giving up if she pleaded guilty, nor the maximum sentence she could face.

She was sentenced to probation and ordered to enroll in treatment, attend Alcoholics Anonymous and get her General Educational Development (GED) diploma.

But at subsequent court hearings, the judge determined that Totten wasn't following the rules.

First, Ottinger sent Totten to jail for five days. Over several more hearings, she imposed an additional 20 days. At each of these hearings, Totten could have had a lawyer, but Ottinger never said that.

Finally in September 2001, Ottinger sent Totten to jail for nearly a year — making her total sentence 375 days, above the legal maximum for the crime, which is a year. Several defense lawyers said such a long term is highly unusual for a first offense.

Fellow inmates told Totten she had a right to a lawyer and helped her contact a public defender who not only got Totten out of jail about two months into her sentence but got her case dismissed as well.

The judge who released Totten called the violations of her rights "egregious."

In June 2004, the Commission on Judicial Conduct released the results of its investigation into the Totten case. As part of a settlement agreement, Ottinger admitted that she failed to protect Totten's rights, as well as the rights of numerous other defendants. "The nature of the violations cannot be overstated," the commission wrote in the agreement.

In addition, the commission found that she had provided behind-the-scenes legal help to cities in the dispute over her transfer, which she was prohibited from doing as a judge. The commission also said she treated her court staff poorly, an allegation Ottinger denied. The commission required that she attend judicial training and counseling to address her management practices.

Since 1982, an average of five judges have been disciplined each year; a handful of them were for violations similar to Ottinger's, according to commission records.

The right to a lawyer

While Totten still is angry, she concedes that she brought some of this on herself. Defense lawyers say that's what often happens when defendants go to court without a lawyer. Some defense attorneys see their job as part counselor; in Totten's case, that would have meant things like getting her into treatment and warning her what would happen if she failed.

Yet, according to Bob Boruchowitz, director of The Defender Association, a King County public-defense agency, defendants routinely don't get lawyers from the start.

"Every day in Washington courts, hundreds of people face criminal charges without lawyers and many of them plead guilty and go to jail, sometimes unaware they have a right to a lawyer," he wrote last year in Washington State Bar Association magazine.

To anyone who has heard the ubiquitous "right to a lawyer" speech on television cop shows, this might seem hard to believe.

Nonetheless, for years, many local governments across the state have not provided lawyers to poor defendants at their first court appearance in misdemeanor cases, which are under the purview of district and municipal courts.

(It's standard to get a lawyer at first appearance in Superior Court, which handles felonies. Misdemeanor defendants who qualify for public defenders get them at later hearings. In some jurisdictions, like King County, public defenders have long been provided from the start for in-custody defendants but not to those out of custody.)

Boruchowitz, who has studied the issue in depth, said many jurisdictions opt against footing the bill for lawyers at defendants' first appearance in district or municipal court. And few defendants can afford to come to court with their own attorney.

Arguably, the lack of lawyers wasn't causing serious harm in most cases because most defendants plead "not guilty" at their first appearance anyway, and are assigned lawyers later.

Nonetheless, the lack of lawyers is compounded by the fact that district and municipal courts are typically busy, making some judges feel rushed.

Ottinger cites this issue in her defense. She was put in the difficult position of handling a busy calendar, while protecting the rights of both defendants and victims, all without the assistance of a defense lawyer, said Allen.

"There's a tremendous crush of people in there," attorney Allen said. "She feels it's unfair if she only gets through half the calendar ... . She didn't do this from spite or nastiness."

The commission disagrees, saying her practices were "stand-alone unique and defective," a commission lawyer said during a deposition in the recent case.

Concerns about lawyerless defendants have recently come to a head. Part of the impetus was Boruchowitz, who highlighted the problem and prodded officials. But another factor was cases against Ottinger and two municipal-court judges who were recently disciplined for similar problems.

King County agreed earlier this year to provide defense lawyers for all defendants making their first appearance in district court. And since the new charges were filed, Ottinger has refused to hear cases for jurisdictions that do not provide defense lawyers immediately, Allen said.

Still, numerous jurisdictions, including Bellevue, Burien and Kenmore, don't provide counsel at misdemeanor arraignments, according to information provided by King County District Court Presiding Judge Corinna Harn.

New complaints

Now the commission alleges that Ottinger didn't adequately change her ways and continued to violate defendants' fundamental rights. The new complaint lists 12 examples of defendants who were allegedly denied their rights during the summer of 2004.

There is Ryan D. Carter, who pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level of 0.337 and appeared before Ottinger for a probation violation. According to the complaint, she didn't tell him he had a right to a lawyer, nor that he had a right to contest the allegations.

There is Jorge Vasquez-Ortiz, who was accused of domestic violence and was provided a Spanish interpreter in court. The transcript shows the judge told him some, but not all, of his rights, but it appears he didn't understand everything.

Vasquez-Ortiz said he wanted to plead guilty. When the judge asked whether he wanted to proceed without a lawyer, he asked, "Are they going to have an attorney here for me?"

Yes, but "not today," she said.

She didn't tell him the consequences of his plea, including the possible sentence, or concerns like possible deportation. This violated his constitutional rights, the complaint said.

Allen countered that there are other factors that should be taken into account. In the case of Vasquez-Ortiz, for example, the interpreter certified that the defendant understood what was going on, only later filing a declaration stating that Vasquez-Ortiz had been confused.

Barrie Althoff, who was executive director of the Commission on Judicial Conduct when the recent complaint was filed, explained it this way.

"It's the judge's obligation to make sure the person gets a fair hearing. If there's some doubt, the judge has a remedy to that."

The commission has scheduled a December hearing on the complaint. If Ottinger is found to have committed the violations, she could face discipline ranging from admonishment, which is a written caution to the judge, to removal.

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com

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