A Seattle attorney is battling to keep the news media from seeing a deputy’s report from her June arrest on suspicion of drunken driving took a novel twist this week, baffling officials with the King County Sheriff’s Office.
Her attorney, Tyler Firkins, filed a motion Monday in King County District Court in Shoreline, seeking to use a rule that governs which records the court can release to bar the Sheriff’s Office from releasing the report. A Superior Court judge already has ruled the report can be released under the state Public Disclosure Act, a decision that she is appealing.
At issue in the new motion is a rule known as Administrative Rule for Courts of Limited Jurisdiction No. 9, or ARLJ 9, which exempts district-court officials from releasing police reports unless they have been admitted into evidence, incorporated into a court pleading or have been placed into public record. In district court, a police report isn’t considered evidence unless it is submitted as an exhibit during trial or a plea hearing, something that hasn’t happened in the the attorney’s case.
According to Firkins’ filing, she is seeking to have that rule extended to the Sheriff’s Office to prevent it from releasing the report.
“We release 17,000 case reports a year under the [state] public-disclosure statute and we’ve never heard this argument in the past,” said sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. John Urquhart.
The Sheriff’s Office and other law-enforcement agencies routinely release redacted police reports to members of the news media — often even before a suspect is charged with a crime — under the state’s Public Disclosure Act. However, under state law, law-enforcement agencies can withhold reports if releasing them would jeopardize an ongoing investigation — an exemption that doesn’t apply in a case that the Sheriff’s Office considers a straightforward DUI.
They did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday.
John Cobb, the King County deputy prosecutor who has been representing the Sheriff’s Office in the matter, has been out of town so he hasn’t seen Firkins’ latest filing.
But on Friday, the two attorneys “had a polite difference of opinion regarding the application of Rule 9 to state statute that requires the release of public records and police reports,” Cobb said by phone from Missoula, Mont.
Though he hasn’t formed an official opinion yet, Cobb said he can’t see how a District Court rule could trump the state’s Public Disclosure Act.
She was arrested early June 4 — her 52nd birthday — and later booked into the King County Jail on investigation of DUI. She has claimed in court records that she was the victim of a hit-and-run accident and suffered a head injury, producing symptoms that mimicked signs of intoxication.
During an interview earlier this month, she told a Times reporter that she had a few drinks at a dinner party earlier in the evening but said she was not drunk. She has also acknowledged that she refused to perform field-sobriety tests and submit to a breath test after she was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy.
According to a breathalyzer log from the State Patrol Crime Lab, she made five breath-test attempts before refusing to continue. As a result, her blood-alcohol content was not measured.
According to Cobb and the sheriff’s office, she didn’t mention a car accident or an injury at the time of her arrest and refused to answer routine medical questions when she was placed in a holding cell at the Kenmore precinct, according to Cobb and the Sheriff’s Office.
Last month, she filed a motion in King County Superior Court seeking to block the release of the police report, arguing that public knowledge of her purported head injury would cause her embarrassment and violate her privacy.
On Aug. 12, King County Superior Court Judge Laura Inveen ruled that the Sheriff’s Office could release the police report and some of the video footage related to her arrest to the news media.
Immediately after Inveen’s ruling, Firkins filed an appeal with the state Court of Appeals in Seattle. As a result, Inveen’s ruling was stayed until the issue could be heard by Court of Appeals Commissioner James Verellen.
Six days later, on Aug. 18, Kenmore City Prosecutor Sarah Roberts charged her with DUI.
Oral arguments before Verellen were originally scheduled for Tuesday afternoon but were canceled because Verellen transferred the case to the Court of Appeals division in Spokane. A new hearing date has not been scheduled.
The reason for the move to Spokane was not outlined in a letter from the Seattle appeals court to Firkins and Cobb. But it appears the venue was changed because friends of her’s have ties to the Seattle-based appellate court and there could be a potential conflict of interest.
In an interview with The Seattle Times earlier this month, she provided statements from friends who attended the June dinner party, including host Rosselle Pekelis, a retired judge who has served in King County Superior Court, the Court of Appeals in Seattle and the state Supreme Court. Another guest at the dinner party was federal Judge Carolyn Dimmick, on the bench in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Those statements were among the evidence presented to Inveen and are now part of the record being reviewed by the appeals court.