After change in law, few 'lay judges' remain
ZILLAH, Wash. (AP) - Debbie Mendoza leaned over to pet the dog she just ruled dangerous.
Mendoza, the judge at Zillah Municipal Court, smiled and let Raja, a female pit bull, lick her hand.
"She's so happy," she told the dog's owner. "Take care."
Less than 10 minutes earlier, the judge had declared Raja a threat to Zillah residents because she snarled and growled at a neighbor. She ordered the owner, a 23-year-old woman, to remove the dog from the city limits.
"As much as I hate to, I'm going to have to find that you kept a vicious dog," Mendoza said.
It was only the 10th bench trial of Mendoza's 13-year career as one of three nonattorney judges in Washington state's court system.
"Lay judges," as they are known, are a throwback to an era of small-town justice when rural lawyers were hard to come by. And for years, cities under 5,000 were allowed to hire them.
In 2002, however, the Legislature began requiring all courts to hire attorneys as judges. Exempted from the rule are tribal courts and lay judges who were allowed to remain under a grandfather clause.
Today, that leaves Mendoza in Zillah (pop. 2,635); Municipal Court Judge William Nix in North Bonneville, Skamania County (pop. 593); and Municipal Court Judge Marlynn Markley in the Whitman County town of Uniontown (pop. 345).
All three work part time -- Mendoza also is the court administrator for nearby Sunnyside Municipal Court.
When they leave or retire, attorneys will take their places as judges.
But in Zillah, those who like the current system are hesitant to change judges. They like the one they have.
"I guess we're going to keep Debbie alive as long as we can," said Zillah Mayor Gary Clark said with a chuckle.
Unlike other municipal and superior court judges, Washington's three lay judges have no law degrees and haven't passed the state Bar.
They have passed a six-hour, open-book qualifying exam and attended the same week-long training as attorney-judges from the state Administrator of the Courts in Olympia. Mendoza also takes continuing education classes, as do many other judges around the state.
Mendoza has felt throughout her career she had to prove she was a good judge despite her lack of a law degree. Attorneys in her courtroom would blatantly ask her, "Do we have another judge coming?"
She believes lay judges are just as qualified as attorney judges and if anything, her "lay" status gives her an edge when handling cases in this Central Washington community.
"I bring common sense to the bench," she said. "I don't see a whole lot of that with attorneys."
The mayor and other supporters agree.
"She's probably on a more level playing field with the people coming before a municipal court judge," Clark said.
Some lawyers think so, too.
Therese Murphy, Zillah's city prosecutor, said Mendoza, a 57-year-old single mother who grew up in the Lower Valley, makes a "realistic connection" with the defendants who come before her.
George Colby, a Toppenish attorney and former Yakima County District Court judge, said of lay judges, "They've got a little more pulse to the community."
Glenn Phillips, president of the Washington state District and Municipal Court Judges Association, doesn't buy that. All judges, whether attorneys or nonattorneys, elected or appointed, bring their life experiences to the bench, he said.
"Life experience are life experiences," Phillips said.
However, he noted that lawyers are required to know much more about the law.
"(Attorneys) generally would be thought of as more knowledgeable," Phillips said.
The legislation requiring that courts hire attorneys as judges was sponsored by Sen. Adam Kline, a Democrat and attorney from Seattle. The judges' association supported it. The State Bar Association took no position on it.
In 2002 testimony supporting the law, proponents, including some district court judges, said attorneys have more professional qualifications.
"It is important that the public receives professional legal services that formal legal training allows," they wrote.
Last April, Mendoza was reprimanded by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for regularly failing to advise defendants of their rights, including their right to an attorney; failing to properly accept guilty pleas, record all hearings, and failing to use qualified court interpreters. In a reprimand issued in April, the commission blamed her "insufficient judicial training, rather than any lack of will to be conscientious."
Mendoza said it was the only time she's been investigated by the judicial commission in her 13-year career and that the shortcomings have been fixed.
"They're taken care of," she said.
Mendoza grew up in Grandview and Prosser as what she called a "rule follower." She passed when friends raced cars or snuck out drinking, mostly for fear of getting in trouble.
"I was kind of a fuddy-duddy that way," she recalled.
Her dad worked as a truck driver. After her parents divorced when she was 8, she took on the responsibility of baby-sitting her younger sisters while her mother worked nights as a hospital records clerk.
Mendoza entered the legal field in her 30s after a divorce left her with the responsibility of raising two children -- and in need of a career.
After earning an associate degree as a legal secretary from Yakima Business College, she landed her first job as a clerk for Yakima County District Court in 1980. Six years later, she started working as the administrator for Sunnyside Municipal Court
In court mail, she twice found open invitations to take the judicial exam. It sounded "cool," she said, using a word she throws around a lot.
Her predecessor, Zillah Municipal Court Judge Joe Dennis, also a lay judge, had encouraged Mendoza to take the exam so she could work as a judge. "He said, 'Yeah, we need more of those in the state,"' she said. "He kind of got the sense that we had to fight to be appreciated."
Mendoza passed the judicial exam and filled in occasionally for Dennis. In 1996, after he died, she was hired to take his place.
Her youngest son, Danny, said the job didn't change much at home. His mother could tell when he was lying before and after.
"If she thinks I might not be telling the truth, she just gives me that look and I won't be able to hold the lie anymore," said the 22-year-old college student.
He compared his mother to any good parent. She washed mouths with soap for bad language and made her children do extra chores to earn money if they stole from the family's piggy bank, he said.
When one of her sons had a run-in with the Sunnyside Police, she let the police handle it without going to the station to try and help. Today, she has four children and four stepchildren, all of them now grown. She also has 16 grandkids.
Her hobbies include crocheting and acting in the Over the Hill Senior Theatricals troupe. She played a judge in "Hello Dolly."
She has no aspirations to attend law school now, mostly because she's happy doing what she is doing.
"I think about it, but it's not really a goal of mine," Mendoza said. "An attorney is not something I want to be."
Mendoza holds court in Zillah twice a month in a building shared with the police department. The city pays her $815 per month.
She has no chambers but dons her black robe and waits for court in her clerk's office. Mendoza uses one inbox on the corner of an extra desk by the window for paperwork and tries to tune out any conversations at the clerk's transaction window.
In court, she presides quietly, overruling or sustaining objections with barely a whisper. She smiles almost bashfully at witnesses who are visibly uncomfortable.
At times she jokes with her defendants.
When Robert Johnson II came before her on misdemeanor charges of bouncing a check, he blamed part of the problem on his bank and told Mendoza he was considering opening a new account so he could get the cash he needed to pay his fine.
"Then you'll do it to another bank," Mendoza told him with a laugh, though she agreed to give him more time to pay his fine.
"Can I write you a check?" he quipped.
"No, that's OK," she said.
Mendoza usually spends only a few hours in court each day, dealing mostly with traffic violations, but Nov. 20 was different. It brought not only the vicious dog bench trial but only the second jury trial of her career.
In the case, the city of Zillah charged Gordon Celius, 46, with obstructing a police officer from arresting another man for drunken driving in June. Every seat in the tiny courtroom, which doubles as the City Council chambers, was full of potential jurors. Mendoza wondered if the diagonal parking on Zillah's Seventh Street could handle the crowd.
She and Murphy, Zillah's prosecutor, double-checked to make sure they had current jury instructions while Mendoza scrounged for a pocket recorder for a pretrial meeting upstairs in the police chief's office.
Mendoza said little during the trial except to read from pattern jury instructions published by the state Administrator of the Courts.
She denied a motion to dismiss the charges after testimony and overruled the prosecutor's objection when the defense attorney tried to enter a police report as evidence.
The jury took only about 10 minutes to return with a verdict of not guilty.
Mendoza excused the jury and thanked them for their time. She then turned to Celius and the attorneys
"I guess that's it," she said.
Mendoza, the judge at Zillah Municipal Court, smiled and let Raja, a female pit bull, lick her hand.
"She's so happy," she told the dog's owner. "Take care."
Less than 10 minutes earlier, the judge had declared Raja a threat to Zillah residents because she snarled and growled at a neighbor. She ordered the owner, a 23-year-old woman, to remove the dog from the city limits.
"As much as I hate to, I'm going to have to find that you kept a vicious dog," Mendoza said.
It was only the 10th bench trial of Mendoza's 13-year career as one of three nonattorney judges in Washington state's court system.
"Lay judges," as they are known, are a throwback to an era of small-town justice when rural lawyers were hard to come by. And for years, cities under 5,000 were allowed to hire them.
In 2002, however, the Legislature began requiring all courts to hire attorneys as judges. Exempted from the rule are tribal courts and lay judges who were allowed to remain under a grandfather clause.
Today, that leaves Mendoza in Zillah (pop. 2,635); Municipal Court Judge William Nix in North Bonneville, Skamania County (pop. 593); and Municipal Court Judge Marlynn Markley in the Whitman County town of Uniontown (pop. 345).
All three work part time -- Mendoza also is the court administrator for nearby Sunnyside Municipal Court.
When they leave or retire, attorneys will take their places as judges.
But in Zillah, those who like the current system are hesitant to change judges. They like the one they have.
"I guess we're going to keep Debbie alive as long as we can," said Zillah Mayor Gary Clark said with a chuckle.
Unlike other municipal and superior court judges, Washington's three lay judges have no law degrees and haven't passed the state Bar.
They have passed a six-hour, open-book qualifying exam and attended the same week-long training as attorney-judges from the state Administrator of the Courts in Olympia. Mendoza also takes continuing education classes, as do many other judges around the state.
Mendoza has felt throughout her career she had to prove she was a good judge despite her lack of a law degree. Attorneys in her courtroom would blatantly ask her, "Do we have another judge coming?"
She believes lay judges are just as qualified as attorney judges and if anything, her "lay" status gives her an edge when handling cases in this Central Washington community.
"I bring common sense to the bench," she said. "I don't see a whole lot of that with attorneys."
The mayor and other supporters agree.
"She's probably on a more level playing field with the people coming before a municipal court judge," Clark said.
Some lawyers think so, too.
Therese Murphy, Zillah's city prosecutor, said Mendoza, a 57-year-old single mother who grew up in the Lower Valley, makes a "realistic connection" with the defendants who come before her.
George Colby, a Toppenish attorney and former Yakima County District Court judge, said of lay judges, "They've got a little more pulse to the community."
Glenn Phillips, president of the Washington state District and Municipal Court Judges Association, doesn't buy that. All judges, whether attorneys or nonattorneys, elected or appointed, bring their life experiences to the bench, he said.
"Life experience are life experiences," Phillips said.
However, he noted that lawyers are required to know much more about the law.
"(Attorneys) generally would be thought of as more knowledgeable," Phillips said.
The legislation requiring that courts hire attorneys as judges was sponsored by Sen. Adam Kline, a Democrat and attorney from Seattle. The judges' association supported it. The State Bar Association took no position on it.
In 2002 testimony supporting the law, proponents, including some district court judges, said attorneys have more professional qualifications.
"It is important that the public receives professional legal services that formal legal training allows," they wrote.
Last April, Mendoza was reprimanded by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for regularly failing to advise defendants of their rights, including their right to an attorney; failing to properly accept guilty pleas, record all hearings, and failing to use qualified court interpreters. In a reprimand issued in April, the commission blamed her "insufficient judicial training, rather than any lack of will to be conscientious."
Mendoza said it was the only time she's been investigated by the judicial commission in her 13-year career and that the shortcomings have been fixed.
"They're taken care of," she said.
Mendoza grew up in Grandview and Prosser as what she called a "rule follower." She passed when friends raced cars or snuck out drinking, mostly for fear of getting in trouble.
"I was kind of a fuddy-duddy that way," she recalled.
Her dad worked as a truck driver. After her parents divorced when she was 8, she took on the responsibility of baby-sitting her younger sisters while her mother worked nights as a hospital records clerk.
Mendoza entered the legal field in her 30s after a divorce left her with the responsibility of raising two children -- and in need of a career.
After earning an associate degree as a legal secretary from Yakima Business College, she landed her first job as a clerk for Yakima County District Court in 1980. Six years later, she started working as the administrator for Sunnyside Municipal Court
In court mail, she twice found open invitations to take the judicial exam. It sounded "cool," she said, using a word she throws around a lot.
Her predecessor, Zillah Municipal Court Judge Joe Dennis, also a lay judge, had encouraged Mendoza to take the exam so she could work as a judge. "He said, 'Yeah, we need more of those in the state,"' she said. "He kind of got the sense that we had to fight to be appreciated."
Mendoza passed the judicial exam and filled in occasionally for Dennis. In 1996, after he died, she was hired to take his place.
Her youngest son, Danny, said the job didn't change much at home. His mother could tell when he was lying before and after.
"If she thinks I might not be telling the truth, she just gives me that look and I won't be able to hold the lie anymore," said the 22-year-old college student.
He compared his mother to any good parent. She washed mouths with soap for bad language and made her children do extra chores to earn money if they stole from the family's piggy bank, he said.
When one of her sons had a run-in with the Sunnyside Police, she let the police handle it without going to the station to try and help. Today, she has four children and four stepchildren, all of them now grown. She also has 16 grandkids.
Her hobbies include crocheting and acting in the Over the Hill Senior Theatricals troupe. She played a judge in "Hello Dolly."
She has no aspirations to attend law school now, mostly because she's happy doing what she is doing.
"I think about it, but it's not really a goal of mine," Mendoza said. "An attorney is not something I want to be."
Mendoza holds court in Zillah twice a month in a building shared with the police department. The city pays her $815 per month.
She has no chambers but dons her black robe and waits for court in her clerk's office. Mendoza uses one inbox on the corner of an extra desk by the window for paperwork and tries to tune out any conversations at the clerk's transaction window.
In court, she presides quietly, overruling or sustaining objections with barely a whisper. She smiles almost bashfully at witnesses who are visibly uncomfortable.
At times she jokes with her defendants.
When Robert Johnson II came before her on misdemeanor charges of bouncing a check, he blamed part of the problem on his bank and told Mendoza he was considering opening a new account so he could get the cash he needed to pay his fine.
"Then you'll do it to another bank," Mendoza told him with a laugh, though she agreed to give him more time to pay his fine.
"Can I write you a check?" he quipped.
"No, that's OK," she said.
Mendoza usually spends only a few hours in court each day, dealing mostly with traffic violations, but Nov. 20 was different. It brought not only the vicious dog bench trial but only the second jury trial of her career.
In the case, the city of Zillah charged Gordon Celius, 46, with obstructing a police officer from arresting another man for drunken driving in June. Every seat in the tiny courtroom, which doubles as the City Council chambers, was full of potential jurors. Mendoza wondered if the diagonal parking on Zillah's Seventh Street could handle the crowd.
She and Murphy, Zillah's prosecutor, double-checked to make sure they had current jury instructions while Mendoza scrounged for a pocket recorder for a pretrial meeting upstairs in the police chief's office.
Mendoza said little during the trial except to read from pattern jury instructions published by the state Administrator of the Courts.
She denied a motion to dismiss the charges after testimony and overruled the prosecutor's objection when the defense attorney tried to enter a police report as evidence.
The jury took only about 10 minutes to return with a verdict of not guilty.
Mendoza excused the jury and thanked them for their time. She then turned to Celius and the attorneys
"I guess that's it," she said.