KCLL Klues: Washington State Legal Research

Check out our training schedule for new class dates in July and August.  In July, we will be offering “Westlaw” and “Skip Tracing”.  On July 27, we will teach one of our newest classes “Commencing an Action” in the Community Room at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.   “Public Sleuthing on Social Networks” and “E-Filing: Advanced Features” round out the August calendar.  All of our classes are free of charge.  Space is limited and pre-registration is required.  Call the Library today at 206-296-0940 to sign up!

On June 18, 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled for execution in Utah by firing squad. Regardless of one’s stance on the death penalty, the idea of execution by firing squad (or hanging) seems rather archaic. However, it is interesting to get a sense of how the death penalty is applied across the US.

For as long as there have been organized societies, capital punishment has been used to punish crimes, real or imagined, and to suppress political opposition. In 1972, the US Supreme Court determined in the collective cases known as Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), that Georgia’s capital punishment statutes were arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause because juries were given no guidance to determine whether a defendant deserved execution. In the aftermath of Furman, the Court voided forty state’s death penalty statutes.

Many states immediately began rewriting their death penalty statutes to remove the “arbitrariness” by giving judges and juries guidelines for determining whether a case warranted the death penalty, and also introduced aggravating and mitigating factors. These new statutes were approved by the Supreme Court in 1976 in the Gregg decision, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). The Court thus determined that the death penalty, as drafted under Gregg, did not violate the Eighth Amendment and reinstated the death penalty.

Since the Gregg decision, there have been 1,215 executions throughout the US. Fifteen states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico do not have, or have rescinded their death penalty statutes. And two states, Kansas and New Hampshire, while not abolishing the death penalty, have not had any executions since 1972. This means that executions in the US are carried out in thirty-three states.

The means of execution are as follows, listed in order by frequency of use: lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and firing squad. Oklahoma and Utah provide for execution by firing squad as one means of execution while Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington execution statutes provide for hanging as one means of execution. Washington’s second method of execution is lethal injection.

Although executions occurred here years before Washington became a state, the death penalty was enacted in 1904, abolished in 1913 and reinstated in 1919. It was abolished again under Furman in 1972.

In 1975, an initiative favoring the death penalty was passed by Washington voters. However, the state legislature enacted its capital punishment statutes in compliance with the constitutional guidelines approved by the Gregg decision in 1977. The current version of the death penalty statute was enacted in 1981, but has not been revised since 1998. Washington has executed a total of 109 in all, but only 4 people since reinstating its death penalty statute. And, in the time since the death penalty has been reinstated, one person has been exonerated.

Click the following links to obtain more information for or against the death penalty.

To read more about Mr. Gardner’s upcoming execution, click here or here or here.

To read more about the death penalty in Washington, click here or here or here.

To learn more about exoneration in Washington, click here.

Stay tuned for our upcoming podcast–an interview with former defense counsel Dan Riviera for convicted murderer Joseph Self.

Law-enforcement officers statewide can begin stopping and ticketing drivers this week for speaking on the phone while holding it to an ear or texting while driving.  Lawmakers modified the law to make talking on a cell-phone without a hands-free device  or texting a primary offense and a $124 fine.  For information on this change, you can go to the Washington State Department of Licensing site.

Since April 20, 2010, oil from a BP deep water rig has been gushing into the gulf waters off the coast of Louisiana. As it creeps toward Florida, it still may be difficult to understand how big this oil slick really is.

Resource Shelf–a newsletter designed for educators, journalist and information professionals–has provided a link to ifitwasmyhome.com to help visualize the areas affected by this disaster. To give a better perspective of this environmental hazard, this web tool allows you to see the size of the slick in the Gulf of Mexico, or as centered over a location of your choosing.

Click here to see the oil slick superimposed over a map of your current location. Once the page has loaded, you can change the map to a different location.

Click here to see other links provided by that Resource Shelf to get updates on the Spill.

The U.S. Courts website has a new look as of May 15.  Among the new features are an email update service, more video features, widgets for users to add dynamically updated content to their websites, and a link to the Federal Judiciary YouTube Channel. The videos, both on the web site proper and the YouTube channel, include Bankruptcy Basics in both English and Spanish.

The State’s annual budget has a tremendous affect on all of us but understanding how it’s derived can be tricky.  Fortunately, the Legislative Evaluation and Accountability Program Committee publishes a  good guide to the State’s budgeting process called Citizen’s Guide to The Budget.  The Guide uses a series of hypothetical questions to walk you through the major components of the budget and the budget planning process.

Just a reminder that we recently installed copies of SupportCalc in both of our branches.  SupportCalc is professional child support calculation software from Legal+Plus .  The version we’ve installed allows you to create new SupportCalc files and open/edit files you’ve already created back at the office.  You can also print completed files — at a minimal charge of 15 cents per page —  and/or save them to your own USB drive.

Maytag has announced its recall of nearly 1.7 million dishwashers due to fire hazard. The company has received 12 reports of electrical failure in the dishwasher heating element — including one kitchen fire. The recalled dishwashers are from the Maytag, Amana, Jenn-Air, Admiral, Magic Chef, Performa by Maytag and Crosley brands. Each of these affected dishwashers have front panels in black, bisque, white, silver and stainless steel and platic tubs. They were sold in US department and appliance stores from February 2006 through April 2010.

If you own one of these Maytag dishwashers, you should stop using it immediately and disconnect it from its power source. You should then check the Maytag website to determine if your dishwasher is included in this recall. Maytag plans to give consumers the option of a free in-home repair or a rebate of $150 or $250 toward the purchase a new Maytag dishwasher.

To find out more about this recall you can read the report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website or the Maytag repair website.

To read news articles on th Maytag recall, click here or here.

This past March, the Washington State House and Senate passed into law SB6239, which makes technical changes to gender-based terms contained in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW)—that is, changing “he” to “he or she” and “his” to “his or hers”. This bill was signed by Governor Gregoire on March 10, 2010.

The affected statutes can be found here. These changes will go into effect on June 10, 2010.

You see it periodically: a flag at a courthouse, public school or other state government building flying at half-staff.  You understand it probably has something to do with honoring the service of a prominent person who has recently died or commemorating an historic event.  But who decides what circumstances trigger this?

At the State level, it’s the Office of the Governor.  The Governor’s web site includes a link to a page devoted to the rules for flag lowering.  There you will find the conditions when it is appropriate to fly the flag at half-staff and information about recent requests by the Governor to do so.  The page also includes links to additional information about the Washington State and United States flags and to Title 4 of the US Code, which describes the proper use and display of our national flag.

It’s interesting to note that while we’re supposed to fly the flag at half-staff on Pearl Harbor Rememberance Day (Dec. 7) and Patriot Day (September 11), we’re not supposed to do so on Memorial Day or Veterans Day.