(lively music) - [Presenter] This is a KSPS PBS election special.

A debate featuring candidates for Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney.

- Hello, and thank you for joining us.

I'm Kristi Gorenson.

KSPS is pleased to bring you this debate featuring the candidates running for Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney.

Let me introduce the candidates for the job.

Larry Haskell has served as Spokane County Prosecutor since 2015.

Prior to that, he worked as Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor from 1998 until 2012 prosecuting gun, drug, and gang crimes; and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 2012 to 2013, before serving as Deputy Prosecuting Attorney from mid-2013 through to 2014.

Debra Conklin served as Clallam County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney from 1983 to 1987; and served as a Senior Criminal Deputy for three years.

She has been a United Methodist Church pastor since 1997, currently at Liberty Park and St. Paul's United Methodist Church.

Welcome to you both, thanks for being here.

For this debate, the candidates will answer some questions from two Spokane journalists, Emma Epperly of "The Spokesman-Review," and Rebecca White from Spokane Public Radio.

Before we begin, I want to go over a few of the debate rules for our viewers.

These rules were agreed to by the candidates.

The panel will ask the same question to all the candidates, or they can direct the question to just one.

The panelist may request a follow-up to an answer.

Candidates will have one minute for answers.

Candidates will be allowed two rebuttals for the entire debate.

Rebuttal length will be limited to 30 seconds.

So let's begin.

A coin flip earlier determined that Mr. Haskell will take the first question and that will come from Rebecca.

- The County Prosecutor has a wide variety of responsibilities from personnel management, to setting policies that impact charging decisions.

How would you describe your leadership style?

- One of the things I learned early on as a lawyer, even as one of the deputy prosecutors in the office, is lawyers are very reluctant to be micromanaged.

So we do have a lot of guidelines via the statutes, the court rules, and the rules of professional conduct.

I set the tone as far as making sure that ethically we're always on the right side of things, and that they're following the statutory guidelines for charging decisions.

I also empower supervisors that supervise the various units and make sure that they are informed to what the policies are and what the goals are that, you know, that we're the ministers of justice and that justice is more important than convictions.

So, moreover than anything else, I have a little bit of a laissez faire.

I deal through the senior deputies and then also through the supervisors, give the attorneys the tools and let them do the work.

- Ms. Conklin?

- My leadership style is definitely a collaborative style.

I appreciate having a effective, talented team and working together and consulting together.

And so I, like Mr. Haskell, would give a whole lot of freedom to department leaders to do that leadership.

We also would have a fair amount of conversation to make sure our office is working together with similar goals and similar values.

So I would also consult around policies and procedures, making sure that we obviously follow the rules and the law.

But I believe that the office has a number of very experienced, very qualified people, and so working together, we can come up with the best policies, procedures, processes, and work for the office.

- Thank you.

Ms. Conklin, you'll take this next question from Emma.

- All right, Ms. Conklin, you renewed your law license to run against Mr. Haskell.

How are you gonna overcome being out of the legal field for so long?

- This question about being out of the legal field is turning out to be fascinating to me because although I have not been a member of the bar and have not practiced law, the fact is I haven't left the legal field.

I have stayed involved in many ways.

I follow the law.

Some of my very best friends are lawyers, and we have all kinds of interesting debates about, you know, recent Supreme Court decisions, recent things that have come out.

Part of my work in police oversight has involved staying up on the law enforcement and the law piece of that.

I'm actually a certified practitioner of oversight by the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.

And I've been doing that for almost a decade.

So I've stayed up on what's happening in the legal community and in the law.

I have admittedly not actually been in court practicing law, but the elected prosecutor doesn't necessarily handle those cases personally.

There are at least two prosecutors in the County currently who don't do criminal law at all.

They supervise the civil side and then they hire a very talented person to supervise the criminal side.

- All right, thank you.

Mr. Haskell.

- Talking about the law in a coffee room or in a church or in a meeting room, just isn't the same as practicing law.

There's a reason that people look at, regardless of the career field, years of experience that do matter.

It's hard to say that you can train lawyers, and one of the duties of a Prosecuting Attorney is to know how to do a trial, how to do it properly, how to lay foundations.

I have young lawyers that come in all the time that are brand new and they're seeking advice.

And I tell them, "If that door is open, you're welcome to come through it and I will help you deal with whatever problem it is."

There is simply no substitute for experience.

I appreciate what my opponent is saying, but it just doesn't ring with me, and I don't think it would ring with her credibility for members of the bar that have been members longer than she has.

And again, she hasn't been a member of the bar since 1987.

- All right.

Thank you, Mr. Haskell.

You'll take this next question from Rebecca.

- Mr. Haskell, criminal justice reform advocates say in order to be successful, reforms need buy-in from everyone in the criminal justice system.

What are some reforms you think may be Spokane might need?

- Well, there are many reforms that we've been working on since I've been in office, and we started out having this conversation when the SRLJC formed up, and that was really kind of in the beginning of 2014 when it got reestablished by the Board of County Commissioners and almost coincident with the Blueprint for Reform.

One of the requirements that I made when I was running that I wanted to see more evidence-based programs brought to us.

There's been criticism leveled that, well, why aren't you doing them?

Well, I'm not gonna be starting the programs.

There are service providers, there's organizations here locally.

There's also some state agencies that can help out with those things.

But I've been very supportive of reform.

I've been less supportive of programs that are pilots and experiments and that sort of thing, particularly when they come from programs that have failed in jurisdictions as large as Spokane or larger.

- Thank you.

Ms. Conklin?

- Over the last decade, we have had the Blueprint for Reform, we've had the Department of Justice pattern and practice investigation report, we've had the MacArthur Grant, we've had the Burns report.

And one of the consistent themes through all of that, and, in particular, in the October 2020 report from the Blueprint for Reform, the repeated report card said that there are these reforms that are supported in various parts of the County, but the Prosecutor's Office tends to be the stumbling block to implementing those.

And so we need a Prosecutor's Office that actually embraces those evidence-based practices, not resists them.

And I think it's important to say that the people doing the Blueprint for Reform and the report card on it were a retired judge, someone who had been, among the three of them, they'd been a prosecutor, they'd a public defender, they'd been an Assistant Attorney General and a federal attorney.

- All right, thank you.

Mr. Haskell, you want to use your first rebuttal?

- Thank you.

Yes, I may.

- 30 seconds.

- This criticism has come up before, it's untrue.

I looked at the Blueprint for Reform status update, we showed much discovery in one of five areas.

Two of them were ECR and the County no longer does the Early Case Resolution.

And so those are non-starters as far as this situation goes.

And then we developed the relicensing program that they asked for and we also have increased the admissibility to the drug court.

So the criticisms as being outlined are greatly exaggerated over fact.

- All right, thank you.

Ms. Conklin, you'll take this next question first from Emma.

- All right.

Some have argued that there's a perception of bias in the Prosecutor's Office, due both to the continued racist statements of Mr. Haskell's wife and prosecuting data, do you think that there is bias within the Prosecutor's Office currently?

And do you think the mere perception of bias can interfere with the fair administration of justice?

- The really important thing is not my opinion.

The really important thing is that every study that's been done over the last decade has shown that there is disparate treatment for Black, indigenous, and people of color in the law enforcement system, including in the Prosecutor's Office.

So that's database, that's not my opinion.

And there is in the community.

I mean, I'm active in a large number of community organizations that work very hard to make our community a safe and wonderful place to raise our children, to work, to go to school.

And most of those organizations at this point are deeply concerned about the image that there is racial bias in the work of the Prosecutor's Office.

And so it causes a lack of respect that has got to be addressed.

- [Kristi] Mr. Haskell?

- Yes, we have dealt with this issue for some period of time.

What's interesting about it though is, until the comments that were published in the "Inlander" back in January, there were no complaints filed against the office, there was no allegations made of any bias or racism or anything like that.

Not from the judges, not from the law enforcement, not from inside the office, not from outside the office.

And so shortly after the allegations were made and they hit the media, there was a group that got together and one of the defense attorneys filed a motion with the court.

They brought in some Seattle area experts on disparate treatment, and they filed information with the court.

The state had also contracted with a gentleman that's done studies for other law enforcement agencies in the state and including the Spokane County Sheriff's Office.

And the court made a number of findings after looking at all 24 of the cases that were submitted and concluded there was no evidence that any of the charges or enhancements were unsupported by facts, which is conduct.

And the reports provided do not reach the conclusion that the Officer Haskell are making racially motivated charging decisions.

- All right, thank you.

Mr. Haskell, you will take this next question from Rebecca.

- Mr. Haskell, you've criticized Spokane judges in the past for setting bond amounts that you feel may be too low.

But there are those in the community that feel that bond is not necessary, especially for non-violent offenders.

What do you think the role- What role do you think bond plays in the criminal justice system?

- Well, I think it plays an important role because it's part of the law of the state of Washington.

And I have been critical of some judicial decisions in terms of releasing people.

But a lot of that is reflective, and I've indicated this before from comments that I get from people in the community.

Why is this person out?

Then numerous of them have committed additional crimes.

And the rule is CrR3.2, we use it all the time, and it talks to the issues of what the judge should consider, whether they set bond or not, failure to appear or possibly the likelihood that they're gonna commit another crime.

We do an individualized argument to whoever it is, whether it's a court commissioner or whether it's a judge.

And there was an article recently, as you know, in the "Spokesman" authored by judges, retired judges, Murphy, Peterson, and Rodgers, with five false allegations there that we don't presume, or that I don't presume, there's a constitutional presumption of innocence, that we don't argue individualized evidence and that we have never appealed.

We do what we call revision for commissioners.

- [Kristi] Sorry, you're out of time Mr. Haskell.

- Thank you.

Ms. Conklin.

- So the rule that Mr. Haskell cites starts out by saying in non-capital cases, so in cases where the death penalty is not a factor, there is a presumption that the person should be released on their own recognizance.

That should be the starting presumption.

And then you ask, are they at risk to not appear when they should or are they a danger to the community, or is there danger that they might somehow thwart justice by threatening witnesses or something like that?

So the first issue is, are they likely to appear?

And we have addressed that over the last several years by implementing things like providing cell phones for defendants so that they can actually get reminders and communicate with their defense attorney by something that they'll actually use.

Because many people, if they're homeless, don't even have a street address.

So mail doesn't work.

We have the possibility of electronic home monitoring to get them to court.

We also have ways of supervising people with supported pre-trial release that will help make sure that they are not a problem until they get back to court.

- Thank you, Ms. Conklin.

You'll take this next question from Emma.

- Settlements related to police shootings that have cost the city and county nearly $6 million this year indicate legal teams were worried about a jury finding issues with the law enforcement response.

The Prosecutor's Office found no criminal wrongdoing in all of those cases.

Do you believe the Prosecutor's Office has taken a fair look at these cases?

- I think it's important to remember that the standard for a criminal case is different than a civil case.

You have to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

So there are some concerns there.

The issue of holding police officers responsible for the actions they take that injure suspects or victims or simply people who get into contact with law enforcement officers is a national issue.

And that's one that we work with a whole lot in the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, obviously.

And the preferred practice at this point is that we take that work out of the local entities and have someone who can be more objective and distance deal with that.

So Washington is, in fact, in the process of setting up both an agency to investigate and an agency to make prosecutorial decisions when we have law enforcement officers who injure civilians.

And I think that solves that problem well.

- Thank you.

Mr. Haskell.

- I disagree with that.

The Office of Independent Investigation was started up by a statute.

I met with the leadership group when I attended the Chelan WAPA meeting.

And, you know, it was only as recently as 2015 that Governor Inslee stood up and said, you know, it is the prosecutor's duty in the jurisdiction in which the incident happens to take a look at the facts and make a decision.

And unless there's some compelling and a specific reason why they should be removed, then they should be allowed to do that.

So the law hasn't changed that much.

There was initiative 940.

So right now under 9A.16.040, you look at whether or not the officer's actions were reasonable under the circumstances, what the officer knew, and what the officer perceived, and whether or not a reasonable officer in the same position would have acted in the same manner.

And again, as counsel pointed out, the standard is different for civil versus criminal, and we take a look at it from the standpoint of proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.

And if not, we don't charge.

- All right.

Thank you, Mr. Haskell.

You'll take this next question from Rebecca.

- The prosecutor has a seat on the County Canvassing Board which certifies elections.

Do you think the outcome of the the 2020 election was legitimate and do you think elections in Spokane County are secure?

- I do sit on the Canvassing Board, except this year, of course.

So we looked at the election results and we have listened to a lot of inputs from a lot of people.

And we've talked to the auditor's office in the elections department and nobody brought to us any systemic flaw in the Spokane County system.

I know there's a lot of people that suspect that there is, but again, there's legal standards for that.

And unless it meets a legal standard, such that it would trigger an investigation, which would be initiated by the Sheriff's Office, then we're not gonna prosecute anybody.

There were a couple of isolated incidents that I turned over to one of my deputies for a look-see, and they decided that under 9.94A.411 under reasons to not prosecute, it was an isolated circumstance and we were talking elderly people, and we felt that it would not promote greater respect for the law to prosecute under those circumstances.

And the details could be available through a public records request.

- All right, Ms. Conklin?

- Thank you.

I've actually heard Vicky Dalton, our current auditor, describe the system they go through to make sure that our elections in Spokane County are fair and are processed correctly and that votes are handled correctly.

And it's a very detailed, very comprehensive system.

And, by the way, both Republicans and Democrats and other people can get training and observe that process.

So there are people watching the whole process as it takes place.

And at this point, nothing I've read, nothing that I've heard, nothing that I've seen suggests that there are any weaknesses in the system we're using in Spokane County.

- All right, thank you.

Ms. Conklin, you'll take this next question from Emma.

- Spokane County has had 12 superior court judges since 1999 despite significant population growth in the county.

The legislature approved an additional judicial seat that has remained unfilled since 1997.

But several local leaders want to change that, arguing that it would reduce justice backlogs.

Do you support adding another superior court judge?

Why or why not?

- I believe we do need to add a superior court judge.

I mean, the numbers are hard to talk about at this point because COVID made everything so confusing.

But even pre-COVID, one of the problems, one of the challenges of the system is that criminal cases take precedent over civil cases because in Washington, our speedy trial law actually is put into effect by a 60-90 day rule.

And so we have some pretty stringent requirements about how soon criminal cases have to get to trial, which means they take priority in the court system.

So when we don't have enough judges, not only do civil cases sit there way too long, but we have criminal cases that become challenging to get to trial.

So we need to make sure that we have enough judicial resources to handle the caseload that we have in our county.

- Thank you.

Mr. Haskell.

- And I've been on the record as supporting the 13th position for some period of time, and if they authorized it, the legislature at 14th position.

The fact of the matter is that the population of Spokane County grows and grows and grows.

It's up around 575,000 now.

1999 being a long time ago, we were probably not much more than half of what we are right now.

It's not even the 60 and 90 day rule.

Very seldom will you see a criminal case go to trial for an in custody defendant in 60 days.

Very seldom will you see a case go to trial for an out of custody defendant in the first 90 days.

The real problem is, how long they take to resolve themselves and that there's constant work being done by the bench and other agencies on that, and including myself, urging my lawyers.

But again, they don't drive the bus.

The clients represented by the defense do.

But in any case, there's also the civil cases and the family law cases that come along with increased population.

So I definitely support the 13th position.

- Mr. Haskell, you'll take this next question first from Rebecca.

- The Spokane County Commissioners have authorized the Prosecutor's Office to sue the state over the state's largest homeless encampment known as Camp Hope.

Do you think that's the right approach to resolving this issue?

Why or why not?

- Well, the problem is that there's a growing problem at Camp Hope and nothing seems to have been done about it up to date.

So what I can say is the calls for service according to the Spokane Police Department, have risen 76.9% in the last nine months of Camp Hope.

There's a lot of crime in there.

There's human trafficking in there, there's drug dealing in there, there's assaults in there.

So we're prosecuting cases out of that particular encampment right now.

So the issue becomes, you know, who is gonna do something?

So we represent the Sheriff as part of our civil function, we represent numerous county agencies and department heads, and we also represent the other electeds.

The Sheriff asked us to take a look at the feasibility of some action, abatement action in Camp Hope.

And our office is doing that.

I can only speak to what's been published so far.

You've seen the resolution and you've also seen a letter from SPD also expressing a desire to do something as well.

That's all I can say publicly right now.

Thank you.

- [Kristi] Ms. Conklin.

- The concern I have about this direction is that the city and the state and the organizations like Empire Health Foundation that have been working with Camp Hope and with the people there to find a solution to this problem have made progress.

And we have reached a place where we can sort of see that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

And in normal situations, even though the County Sheriff and the county technically have jurisdiction to enforce laws within the city as well as in the unincorporated county, usually there's a comedy there.

Usually the county would stand back and let the city decide how to deal with a problem within the city limits.

And so Camp Hope is in the city's jurisdiction and the city should be given the opportunity to solve that problem first without the county coming in and being heavy-handed and saying, "You have to fix it now."

- All right, thank you.

This is gonna be the last question and you'll be limited to 30 seconds.

Ms. Conklin, you can take this question first from Emma.

- How would you lobby the State Legislature to address the Supreme Court's State v Blake decision, which said that Washington's drug possession law was unconstitutional?

- I would consult with a number of different entities around what the best solution is right now.

Because what we had is the Blake decision came down and a large number of simple possession cases were voided because the statute under which they were prosecuted became unconstitutional.

And then we had the Legislature come up with a bipartisan quick fix last year.

I think we need to sit down with all of the interested parties and stakeholders and come up with a solution that's going to help reduce crime.

- Thank you.

Mr. Haskell?

- I'm very familiar with the Blake case.

We have been hearing and setting motion after motion in front of judges to undo the convictions that have happened over nearly 50 years worth of what the current law was.

The Legislature- I'm not sure that that legislation was bipartisan, but in any case, the fact is that they did pass a fix.

The actual fix expires middle of next year.

The Legislature will have to address it in the 2023 session.

And, you know, whatever they do, you know, they could go the Oregon model which reduced the drug offense to a misdemeanor, or rather a civil infraction.

But it remains to be seen.

Thank you.

- All right.

Thank you both and that'll be the last question.

So time now for closing statements.

And Mr. Haskell, you go first.

- Ladies and gentlemen, thanks very much for listening.

Appreciate the reporters coming here and the moderator as well as KSPS giving us this time.

I am far and away the most qualified person that's running for County Prosecutor at this point.

I've held the office for the last eight years.

Prior to that, I was a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney since 1998, with the exception of the fact that I did go do three years on active duty post-911.

I prosecuted many different types of crimes.

I've got many jury trials.

I've managed the largest law firm in eastern Washington now for eight years.

I'm skilled at what I do.

I'm a good leader, I'm a good manager.

I hire, train, and try to retain as many good lawyers as well as non-attorney staff that we can.

And we try to make a collegial environment and we try to make sure that everybody understands that we work for the people of Spokane County and our job is to keep them safe, prosecute nothing but conduct, and make sure that we do it at the best possible price because it is not our money, it's theirs.

- All right.

Thank you.

Ms. Conklin.

- Thank you to KSPS for holding this and for Emma and Rebecca for being the moderator's question offers.

I think it's important for the public to have an opportunity to see and assess both of the candidates for this critically important office.

I have been a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney.

I have worked with law enforcement officers effectively, and I have earned their respect.

And I bring to this position a wealth of personal experiences.

I have been a single mom, I have been a pastor, I have worked with people who have been traumatized by crime, by abuse, by many of the issues that the Prosecutor's Office deals with.

And I've also been an active member in a number of community organizations that care about this community and that work hard to make this a wonderful, safe place to work and to raise our children and to go to school.

And I believe that we need to reassess how we're approaching crime.

Because even Mr. Haskell and Sheriff Knezovich are telling us the crime rate is skyrocketing.

So if it's skyrocketing, maybe we need a different approach.

- All right, thank you.

Well, that will do it for our debate.

Thanks to each of our candidates as well as to our journalists, Emma Epperly and Rebecca White.

This debate and other election specials can be found online at our website, KSPS.org.

For all of us at KSPS, thanks for watching.

(lively music)