Today, amid a push for reforming the county’s handling of police-involved shootings, the King County Council voted unanimously to provide publicly-funded attorneys for the families of police shooting victims during inquests.
Unlike many municipal governments, King County orders inquests—a type of fact-finding hearing—after police shootings take place. Inquests don’t answer questions of civil or criminal liability in these shootings, but a jury determines the “facts” of what happened instead.
Families of police shooting victims, and particularly families affected by the spate of King County shootings over the last year, have criticized the limited inquest process for a number of reasons. One issue that repeatedly comes up is families can’t afford a lawyer to help them navigate the process. Inquests are typically packed with lawyers otherwise, including lawyers for the county or the city and lawyers for the police officers involved. Without a lawyer, families of shooting victims don’t have an avenue to pose their own questions to police officers and city officials.
The county ordered 34 inquests into police shooting deaths between 2012 and 2016, and at least 22 families have undergone inquests without legal representation. Sonia Joseph, mother of police shooting victim Giovonn Joseph-McDade, boycotted her son’s inquest after she couldn’t raise enough money in time to participate in the inquest with a lawyer.
The King County Department of Public Defense had already testified that it was willing and able to provide attorneys to families at no additional cost to the county.
“I am grateful and hopeful that moving forward families don’t have to be in an inquest alone like I was,” Joseph said during public comment during today’s council meeting. “And hopefully Giovonn’s case will be the last one without an attorney representing them. And also the last case prior to the review and reform of the inquest process. I pray that the number of inquests are reduced with the training of deescalation here in King County.”
As Joseph mentioned, providing legal representation to the families of police shooting victims is just one part of reforming the inquest process. To that end, the county has suspended all pending inquests—including Charleena Lyles’ and Tommy Le’s—while a task force reviews the inquest process.
In the meantime, King County Council member Jeanne Kohl-Welles, the primary sponsor of the legislation, said passing the ordinance was not only the “logical thing to do,” but “the decent thing to do,” as well.
“This, to me, represents a leveling of the playing field,” Kohl-Welles said.
But Council Member Claudia Balducci underlined inequities that remain in the inquest process.
“The questions that are asked, the answers that are given, don’t really answer the fundamental concerns that people bring into that room,” she said. Balducci added that she thought the bigger discussion around use of deadly force was “long overdue.”
Update: The family of Tommy Le issued a statement after the hearing, saying they had not been invited to participate. The statement, provided by Le family attorneys Jeffrey Campiche and Linda Tran, agreed that providing legal representation was necessary, but criticized the structure of the inquest process itself.
Read it below:
The Le family was not invited to speak to the King County Counsel today
regarding the proposal to provide legal representation to indigent families of
people shot and killed by the police during the Inquest process. Had they been, the
Le family would have agreed that appointing legal counsel for indigent families of
the deceased in an Inquest is appropriate.However, appointing legal counsel does not assure that the deceased’s family will
receive effective representation unless the King County’s Inquest Procedures are
changed to allow the family’s attorney to present independent evidence and
address the inquest jury.Without these necessary changes, the families of the deceased will continue to
have no real voice in the inquest. All they will have is the presence of an attorney
that can neither speak up or present evidence.King County does not provide an independent investigation into sheriff deputy
shootings. How can the truth be determined in a process that is by its very
structure biased and unfair?King county should either assure the family of the deceased – indigent or not – a
real voice in the inquest process – or discontinue inquests entirely.
