Did Franklin County violate constitutional rights? WA Supreme Court asked to rule

The Washington Supreme Court is being asked to decide if a Pasco man’s constitutional rights were violated after he spent months in jail waiting to be given an attorney.

It’s the first challenge in a higher court of how Franklin County has handled a five-month shortage of public defense attorneys, leaving dozens of poor suspects in limbo, sometimes for months in jail, to get a lawyer to help them.

Just last week, prosecutors were forced to drop charges against a bookkeeper accused of embezzling $522,000 from a farming operating.

Prosecutors dropped the theft charge against Brittany Rayann Adams the day before her attorney planned to argue that the case should be thrown out because a shortage of public defenders left her without a lawyer for three months.

Deputy Prosecutor Dave Corkrum said in court he wasn’t ready to respond to the motion. The charges could be refiled at a later date against Adams, who is not in jail.

On the same day, another attorney, Kathryn Russell Selk of Seattle, filed a request directly to the state Supreme Court to weigh in on the delays for her client.

Defense attorneys have argued those delays resulted in their clients’ constitutional right to a speedy trial being violated. Washington courts set a deadline for trials to begin with 60 days of arraignment if someone is jailed, or 90 days for suspects out of custody.

The problem in Franklin County started in March after officials had trouble replacing two public defense lawyers after their contracts ended. That left the county’s Office of Public Defense unable to provide attorneys immediately to some suspects.

Public Defense Manager Larry Zeigler focused on providing attorneys for people in jail and for suspects charged with violent crimes. At the time, Franklin County was averaging about 80 defendants who needed an attorney.

Adams was one of the defendants who lingered on the waiting list.

She was initially charged in late March and arraigned in May. She was finally appointed an attorney in mid-August after two new attorneys were hired as public defenders in Franklin County.

Before her charges were dropped, her new attorney, Joseph White, planned to argue last week that the delay was too long and violated her right to a speedy trial.

Defense attorney shortage

During the shortage, the Superior Court judges told the Herald in a joint statement that they were looking at every options to help with the problem.

They had the option to force the county to hire attorneys and pay them out of the county’s general fund.

County officials said the amount of money necessary would have been too much.

The judges also could have dismissed the cases or release suspects from jail to give the county more time to find defense attorneys before they had to hold a trial.

Judges declared the shortage an unforeseen emergency that warranted justification for delaying the cases.

It was a move the drew criticism from an attorney at a nonprofit which helps other attorneys.

Sheri Oertel, with the Washington Defender Association, said the move violated rights.

“Precedent is clear once the ... speedy trial right is violated, anything occurring beyond that doesn’t matter, the case must be dismissed,” Oertel told the Herald at the time.

Russell Selk will be the first attorney to bring one of the delayed cases to a higher court, and she is petitioning the Washington Supreme Court for a direct review.

Her client, Jose Manuel Flores Ramirez, sat in jail for months waiting for an attorney, and, finally became so fed up with waiting that he said he just wanted to plead guilty so he could get out of custody.

Assault guilty plea

Flores Ramirez’s case may be one of the most dramatic cases of suspects waiting for an attorney.

The 35-year-old was charged in connection with a May 2021 Pasco assault. He told detectives he hit a man with a metal pipe after his mother was insulted.

Prosecutors initially charged him in July 2021 with second-degree assault, but the charge was dismissed in January 2022. According to court documents, they were planning to file the case in District Court.

Prosecutors attempted to put Flores Ramirez into a diversion program, but he failed to complete the community service.

Then, prosecutors filed the charge again in February 2023. While an attorney stepped in to help him with entering a not guilty plea, one was never appointed to help him with his case.

When he failed to show up for his next hearing in March, a warrant was issued, and he was arrested. He remained in jail until early August without an attorney.

He finally pleaded guilty to third-degree assault in Franklin County Superior Court, and was sentenced to a month in jail. By then, he’d already served much longer and was released.

Russell Selk is challenging whether after the lengthy period without an attorney, the plea should have been accepted at all.

“He entered that plea only after being promised and deprived of appointed counsel for months despite his indigency, while speedy trial time came and went and while being brought to court several times in chains without any proof of necessity,” she wrote in her brief to the court.

Washington Supreme Court

Rather than taking the case through the Court of Appeals, Russell Selk is asking the Supreme Court to review it directly. She said this is a case of a fundamental and urgent issue with a broad impact.

“The issues presented involved the wholesale, systemic violation of the constitutional and rule-based pretrial rights of not just Mr. Flores Ramirez, but all the financially indigent accused in Franklin County,” she said in the petition to have state’s highest court accept the case.

She is looking for the Supreme Court to weigh in to send a message statewide. She noted that these shortages affect people without money and members of marginalized groups.

Even though Franklin County’s problems have gotten better, Russell Selk said the problems are likely to happen again.

“This court’s prompt and ultimate determination is needed to clearly and firmly set guardrails around the pretrial rights of the financially indigent criminally accused,” she said.

The Supreme Court gave the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office 14 days to respond.

The next step will be for the court to decide whether to accept the case or send it down to the Court of Appeals.

Those decisions are usually made during monthly department conferences, said Wendy Ferrell, an associate director with the administrative office of the courts. No date has been set for the court to make that decision.