Judicial Ruminations
Lately it seems a lot of people are out after justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Clearly unhappy with recent SCOTUS decisions, they seem to have decided the institution itself needs to be remade in an image they would prefer. The devil take the plain language of the Constitution creating it as the third branch of our government. Latest screeds by assertedly intelligent antagonists focus on — who else? — conservative jurists receiving expensive gifts.
These complainers had no comeback to a Senator’s detailing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s extravagant free travel, or a million-dollar donation from an organization with business before the court upon which she sat. Of course not: she is a liberal icon.
Sauce for the liberal goose is not sauce for the conservative gander.
I did actually see one pundit allude to SCOTUS as nine “philosopher-kings” with more unchecked power than any other branch of government. He did not credit this system of oligarchy to its original proponent and student of governance of republics, Plato. Whose arguments must have influenced the Founding Fathers, intellectuals and deep thinkers, when they added SCOTUS as the third leg of the Consitutional stool.
The naysayers of today have the sheer effrontery to compare SCOTUS unfavorably with the mish-mash of state supreme-court systems. Alleging these state systems to be superior for insulating judges from partisanship. They go far too far. Assuming I suppose no one will actually look at those state systems.
It put me in mind of the Washington State Supreme Court, and a particular justice whose partisan elevation reeked of corruption back in the seventies. I was unable to publish the whole story of his corruption before his elevation. When I fictionalized it this century, not one whiff of scandal adhered to this guy, now dead, His accolades ran pages and pages.
Fiction, edited from Newspaper Gypsey:
Cold Comfort
Buck…was hired by a Seattle outdoor news company that published eight weekly newspapers about fishing and hunting, covering eight western states. The work was almost laughably simple after his daily newspapering days. All he had to do was get a few quotes from each source, grind out a page or two of copy, and move on to the next. No requirement for follow-up calls to corroborate assertions the fish were biting or deer-hunting was good.
The only difficulty was…he had to learn the nomenclature: Chink for pheasant, slab for big fish, kegged-up for salmon stacking up to run upriver, plunking and mooching for ways to fish for them; skiff for a powdering of snow. What would have been an eight-point buck in Pennsylvania was a four-point, Western count. Always say “thanks much” instead of thank you very much; always say “you bet,” instead of you’re welcome.
Then he wound up doing a series of articles on an Oregon lake endangered by a vast recreational land development…worked the whole story long-distance, which was nothing new; he’d done some of his best daily-newspaper investigations the same way. He found official corruption surrounding acquisition of the development site which reached clear to the Oregon governor’s office…
So in 1976 his publisher asked Buck to talk to a pro-gun Washington State senator who had a real problem with the inner workings of state politics…Senator Buckminster Graben was a young King County Republican, grateful for Buck’s call. He was getting hate mail from constituents, protesting an anti-gun Senate bill that bore his name as prime sponsor.
“I just want to set the record straight for sportsmen,” he told Buck, “because a lot of them worked for my election. I led the floor fight against the bill, and I voted against it in the Senate, but it passed anyway and now it’s in the House Judiciary Committee with my name on it. For an NRA member and target shooter like me, it’s darned embarrassing.”
“What would the bill do if it becomes law?” Buck said.
“It would ban firearms and all weapons from the grounds of the State Legislature in Olympia,” Graben said. “It’s gun control. It means that if a hunter is near Olympia and wants to visit his representative and has a rifle in his pickup, he stands to get thrown in jail for a year. A fisherman with a fillet knife in his tackle box could be arrested.”
“That sounds pretty extreme,” Buck said. “So how come this bill has your name on it as prime sponsor?”
It was really very simple, Graben said, once you understand the way politics operate in the state capital. He did in fact sponsor a senate bill by the same number. But not this senate bill. Graben explained he was a strong advocate of mandatory sentencing in certain cases of violent crime. A big hot-button issue was leniency toward violent felons by judiciary and parole boards. mGraben had already sponsored a successful measure to spell out heavy mandatory sentencing for convicted rapists.
The bill in question started life as a measure to extend that form of legislatively mandated sentencing to a number of violent crimes, irreducible by judges or parole boards. Examples were kidnapping, armed robbery, and first-degree assault. “But the senators on the Judiciary Committee didn’t think much of my bill. They had it bottled up for keeps,” he said.
“What does that have to do with guns on the capitol grounds?”
“Not one blessed thing. But right about then there was some difficulty about a man carrying a 9mm automatic on the capital campus. Suddenly a very powerful Judiciary Committee senator was very concerned about weapons on campus. But it was too late to introduce new legislation. So this senator took my bottled-up bill,” Graben said bitterly, “stripped out all my language, and wrote language banning weapons on the campus. The term for that is scalping.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Senator Samuel Jest is the one who had the problem with the man with the pistol,” Graben said. “Can you help me out here?”
Buck found the phone number for Jest’s Olympia office and called. He was surprised when a secretary put him right through to the man himself. “I’m simply supporting legislative approval of an administrative code already in effect,” Jest insisted. “It was written into Washington Administrative Code back in the Black Panther days.”
In the 1960s, Black Panthers carried rifles and shotguns onto state-capital grounds as part of demonstrations. It made a lot of white people nervous. Jest said an administrative gun ban was rushed into effect because of the Panthers, and had been sitting on the books unnoticed ever since.
“It has the full force of law,” he said smoothly. “But in this case, the Thurston County prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s office said they would feel better about the rule if it were a legislative matter.”
Buck rolled his eyes. Jest obviously thought he had slept through ninth-grade civics class. Administrative code could only be written to support legislation already in place, not the other way around. To call an unsupported administrative rule a law was to say the administration had the authority to write laws. But in America, writing laws is reserved to the legislative branch. No wonder the county prosecutor refused to prosecute the gun-toter under an unsupported administrative rule; any reasonably competent defense attorney would eat his lunch.
“I understand that you, personally, had some problem with a man with a gun on campus.”
“He was in my office, yes. You need to talk to the State Patrol about that.”
It took a couple of phone calls to work his way through to the Patrol’s campus-security detail. The salty old colonel in charge said his troopers escorted one of Jest’s interns from the capital grounds after the senator requested it.
“Wait. He was one of Jest’s interns?”
“Yep. I sent over a captain to ask the intern to accompany him to our trailer. Campus security has a trailer on the grounds…The young man came along quietly. He was very polite and soft-spoken.” The colonel chuckled. “Then while he was here, he happened to mention he was armed.”
“Jest didn’t call because of the gun in the first place?”
“Nope.”
“Then why?”
“You’ll have to ask him about that,” the colonel dodged. “Anyway, the young man produced a Photostat of his concealed-weapons permit for inspection. He then took a Browning Hi-Power 9 mm automatic, very gingerly, from his shoulder holster. He cleared the clip, showed that the chamber was empty, and handed it over. His possession of the pistol was perfectly legal, but it did give us a start, I can tell you. We took him to the Thurston County Jail at the senator’s request, but no charges were filed against him.”
“So where is this intern now?”
“You’ll have to ask the senator.”
Buck was smelling runaround, but he called Jest back. “I understand now this was one of your interns, and you asked the Patrol to remove him from your office.”
“Well…yes.”
“But you didn’t know he was armed.”
“…Now I know, and it scares hell out of me. Now — don’t get me wrong. This young man was doing an outstanding job for this office,” Jest said. “Then, out of nowhere, I received an irrationally worded note from him, dropped through my mail slot about three minutes to eight that morning. Not delivered in person. The note itself scared hell out of me.”
“What did the note say?”
“Well…I would like to keep that confidential.”
“You called the cops on him. What scared you so bad?”
They danced back and forth and finally Jest agreed to read the note over the phone if Buck wouldn’t publish it. Buck said okay, with his fingers crossed. In another lifetime he would have demanded to see the physical note. But he wasn’t a daily hard-news reporter anymore, and this story was getting far afield from vindicating Graben to his constituents.
The words quoted by the senator were a surprise. But none of them amounted to what sounded like an honest-to-God threat. Only a paranoid — or a man with guilty knowledge — would read it that way. Buck reserved comment. “So where is this intern now? Back at work?”
“Oh, no! Someone arranged a mental-health hearing for him, and he was sent to a mental hospital for as long as they could legally hold him, which the hearing decreed was ninety days.”
“Which court?” Buck said.
“You know…I don’t remember.”
Runaround, runaround; Buck called the Patrol colonel back. “So this intern of Jest’s,” Buck said, “was upset because one of the governor’s senior staff men — who happens to be married — was hitting on his intern girlfriend. He wanted his boss to do something about it.”
“That was the gist of his note, yes,” the colonel said cautiously. “I suppose the senator told you that…The part about the threat?”
“He didn’t read me anything about a threat.” Buck quoted from his notes. “You have a different note?”
“…no. That’s the one.” The colonel was speaking more and more slowly.
“Is that how you read it? A valid threat?”
A beat. “That’s how Senator Jest read it. Our job is campus security.”
“’Or there will be consequences,’ the note supposedly said. ‘Consequences’ could mean calling the daily newspapers. This asshole in the governor’s office is middle-aged and married. That’d be consequence enough.”
“For me, it sure would be.” The colonel laughed, enjoying his own wit. “But the senator was worried about the gun.”
“The gun he didn’t even know about until after the fact,” Buck said. “Why do I smell the odor of mendacity here?”
The colonel chuckled. “Fancy word, there. Say, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Who does this kid know?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean, who does this kid know? Jest is the biggest Republican dog in the Senate. He assured the Patrol the young man is a nobody. By which I mean,” he added hastily, “No politicians in his family, no big campaign contributors, no newspaper people, nothing like that. The Thurston County Prosecutor is a Democrat, so we figured he was just yanking Jest’s chain about not prosecuting under the old Black Panther rule. Did they call you?”
“That would explain things, would it?”
“But of course you’re not going to tell me your source.”
“You know the drill,” Buck said. “But it’s very candid of you to admit the kind of closed-door discussions about how far to push a situation like this, based on who the victim knows. Of course Jest probably wouldn’t appreciate seeing your quote in my story.”
“Hey now,” the colonel said, alarmed. “That was a question, not a quote!”
“C’mon, Colonel. You know anything you say to a reporter is a quote.”
“I’m getting too old for this,” the colonel grumbled. “I should have said off the record. Don’t suppose I could make a post-facto request?”
Buck found himself liking the old state cop. “Relax, Colonel, I’m not going to bust your chops for being candid. The only thing that earns me would be a statewide memo on your teletype, warning the whole Patrol never to trust me again.”
“Sounds like you’ve been around the block a few times, buddy.” He sounded approving.
“I’ll trade you candor for candor,” Buck said. “Jest picked the wrong senator to scalp a bill from — a member of the NRA who owes his seat to gun-owners.”
“Simple as that.” The colonel sounded relieved. “That explains the call my chief got from National Rifle Association headquarters, asking if the Patrol is adopting an anti-gun stance. Not a constituency the Patrol wants to offend, I promise you. I wondered where all the heat was coming from.”
“SoI ask you again,” Buck said. “Where is this intern now? Jest said he was committed to a mental facility. Which one?”
“Western State,” the colonel said promptly.
“Were you or anyone from the Patrol involved in that commitment proceeding?”
“No, sir!” Very crisply. The truth this time, or a solid improvable lie.
“Do you happen to know which court held the commitment proceedings?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
Buck told him he would call back with any more questions and briefed his managing editor: “There’s more to this story. I can smell it. They dumped this guy in a mental hospital on behalf of this chief-of-staff asshole who was hitting on his girlfriend. I can bring this whole sordid thing right home to the governor’s office. That’s where it belongs.”
The editor chuckled. “Down, Fido! You’ve done the job the publisher wanted done: cleared Graben. Write what you got. Put in all that crap that makes Jest look stupid and craven. I never liked that SOB…We may even sample into his district, rub his nose in it. Or into Olympia, to remind the legislature not to mess with pro-gun guys.”
“But I just hate to think of that kid locked up in a rubber room so some political asshole can try to get in his girlfriend’s pants. C’mon, let me close the loop on these assholes.”
“You’ve already got the Oregon governor’s scalp on that Gulf Oil recreational development, Buck. His interference protecting the development was a clear conflict of interest. What this skirt-chaser is doing sucks, but it’s not our issue past what you’ve already got. Got any friends at the Times or P-I you can call to hand off the governor’s-office connection?”
“I could. But as soon as the issue of the kid having a Browning under his arm comes up, their eyes will glaze over. They’re all antigun. Anybody who owns a gun should have their heads shrunk the way they figure things.”
“Well, there you have it. Write up what you got, let it run, be sure to give Graben some good quotes to take the heat off him, and lean on Jest hard.” Buck did as he was told, since he had no choice. But he hated letting a really solid story slip away just as he was beginning to crack it open.
From time to time, a reminder would drag the memory back unbidden — for instance when the governor elevated the powerful aide who lusted after the intern’s girlfriend to the state Supreme Court to fill out an unexpired term. But Buck was long gone from the outdoor newspaper then, and working in another state.
========
In 1996, Buck hadn’t been a newspaperman for twenty years. He was back in Washington, working for his third state agency as a public information officer, having decided security of a civil-service job was better for raising children than the life of a newspaper gypsy. He now was the civilian spokesman for the State Patrol. Patrol employees, active and retired, formed a large close-knit clan all its own, including elected sheriffs and appointed agency directors, retired troopers. One director was a salty old Patrol colonel Buck questioned twenty years ago for a news story about a legislative intern confined to a mental hospital on a senior senator’s say-so.
Buck had turned himself into a consummate bureaucrat in the years since the old Patrol colonel knew him as a reporter. He helped organize the first free holiday cab rides home for over-imbibers (the cab companies paid by federal bucks). He pushed for, and got, a computer program linked to new Patrol breathalyzers statewide. Every Monday the Liquor Control Board’s enforcement division received a list of liquor licensees that had put drunks behind the wheel the preceding week. He sometimes thought he was turning into Big Brother.
Given his angst about that, it was pleasant the old colonel still thought of him as a hard-nosed newsman. At one of the endless string of retiree luncheons and promotion-ceremonies and funerals, Buck happened to mention he was impressed by the colonel’s immediately recognizing him as the reporter on a two-decade-old story. It had been their sole previous contact, and that only by phone.
“Aw, I’m like old cops everywhere,” the colonel said. “I never forget loose threads. I never was satisfied it was just Sen. Graben who turned you loose on us.”
“How come?” Buck said.
“When your story hit in Olympia, you never saw such backing and filling. They snatched the young man out of Western State and shipped him to the Eastern Washington mental facility at Medical Lake so he could be near his folks until they got him out of there. They’re Eastern Washingtonians.”
The young man in question had been a political intern of the judiciary- committee chairman, and objected to his boss about the governor’s senior staff aide hitting on his intern girlfriend.
Buck was gratified his story, weak as it had been, was given credit for the move. “His folks used to run a fishing resort over there. I used to call them weekly for trout-fishing updates.”
The old colonel smacked his forehead. “Hell! They were some of your newspaper’s people. Of course you came after us like gangbusters. That Sam Jest was an idiot.”
Buck had to smile if the old man thought the long-ago effort was Buck’s idea of going gangbusters. He vividly remembered his frustration not being able to force the story home to the governor’s office where it belonged. The publisher called a halt after Buck’s story cleared Graben of any responsibility for the bill with his name still on it. “I don’t like loose ends any more than old cops,” Buck said. “Did you really try to get the county prosecutor to charge the kid with carrying a firearm on campus under that administrative code?”
“I cringed when I read Jest’s quotes in your story back then,” the colonel said. “Anybody in the know would recognize a bald-faced lie when they read it. That old Black Panther code was just so much 1960s political theater. Dust in the wind. It had no legal standing in the seventies.”
Buck laughed. “Did you just say dust in the wind?”
“Always liked that song. My inner hippy.” The old colonel smiled.
“You actually read my story back then?”
“It was required reading. A copy was routed around to us all by the chief. We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“The other shoe being the governor’s man sniffing after a young skirt, and her boyfriend being removed from the equation to give him a clear shot,” Buck said.
“I knew you knew,” the colonel said.
“My main job was to protect Senator Graben from his angry supporters.” Buck heard the defensiveness in his voice.
“And get the boy closer to his parents, yes I understand that now.” The colonel wagged his head. “Me and the other guys at the Patrol sure hated to see that nice polite young man shipped off to a mental hospital. He had committed no illegal act, been charged with no crime, and was never adjudged mentally ill.”
“Wait,” said Buck. “How could there be a court-ordered commitment without a judgment of mental illness?”
The old man snorted. “See? I knew you had it, when you pressed me back then about which court ordered the commitment. There was no court hearing and you knew it. That’s why I got so careful there.”
“Somebody ordered him into the mental ward.” But for a bad moment he wondered if even that had been true. He had been pulled off the story with far too much left dangling.
“The commitment order was issued by the director of Western State.”
“Tell me you’re kidding,” Buck said. “That director is a political appointee of the governor. Whose key staff aide was after the kid’s girlfriend.”
The old colonel patted Buck’s shoulder. “You don’t have to play cagey all these years later, Buck. I knew you knew the score.”
“The governor’s skirt-chasing top man,” Buck said slowly, “asked the political appointee to rid him of the troublesome intern. After their pet senator, Jest, couldn’t get him put in jail for carrying a gun because he was legally licensed to carry it.”
“I doubt there was ever any memo of that conversation,” the colonel said. “That’s why you didn’t report it back then, huh — no smoking gun?”
“Maybe there should have been,” Buck said grimly. “The Browning under that kid’s arm that got Jest all upset. Then we wouldn’t have a sexual predator on the state supreme court.”
“Now, now, Buck. We didn’t have sexual harassment back then.”
“Right. What was it then?”
“Ah don’t take on so, Buck. Believe me, you put your thumb on the scales plenty. As soon as you descended on us, they shipped the young man away from the Western State gulag and everybody started ducking and weaving.”
Buck blinked. “You like colorful phrases,” he said. “But you’re right: mental commitment for somebody the administration sees as a trouble-maker is like a damn Russian gulag story. But with Republicans instead of Communists.”
“Once your story hit, everybody wanted shut of the whole business,” the colonel chuckled. “But the state’s lawyers were afraid for the hospital to just turn him loose immediately. They said that would constitute an admission of error and wrongful imprisonment. That a civil attorney for the family could beat the state’s head in. Major taxpayer dollars down the drain, especially after discovery established that a non-doctor ordered the commitment.”
“Goddamn it!” Buck didn’t feel like a bureaucrat now, he felt like an enraged reporter. “It could have been a hell of a story.”
“They’d have paid a big settlement to prevent going to trial, you bet,” the colonel said. “Attorney General said the best they could do to contain the damage was ship him near his parents, make nice to everybody, go through the motions of an evaluation, and kick him loose. At least the young man didn’t do the full ninety days. He might have been crazy after that.”
“Not much of a result,” Buck said.
“But better than none,” the old man said. “Oh — and the Western State guy who committed the young man? He resigned within a month and went elsewhere. Probably just coincidence. Then again it could have been the price the AG charged for carrying the governor’s water.” He chuckled again.
“But the lecherous married asshole who caused it all sits on the high bench, judging everybody else,” Buck said bitterly.
“The way of the world, Buck, the way of the world. You did all you could do. He still has to stand for election, like all the other justices. Believe me when I tell you that his handlers gave him a thorough talking-to about keeping it zipped when he was appointed to fill out that first term.”
“Leopards don’t change their spots.”
“H’mm. Maybe. But think about this, Buck: every election cycle, Hizzoner may still be waiting for that other shoe to drop. There’s no statute of limitations on a guilty conscience, Buck. From all I hear,” the colonel said, “he now leads a very circumspect life.”
