King County inquest process reinstated by Washington Supreme Court
The King County inquest proceedings, which has been the subject of much-heated debate and litigation, will soon resume after a fateful decision by the Washington Supreme Court.
As background, the King County Charter requires coroner’s inquests be held whenever “an action, decision or possible failure to offer the appropriate care by a member of any law enforcement agency might have contributed to an individual’s death.”
Within a two-month period in 2017, law enforcement officers in King County shot and killed three people — Damarius Butts, Isaiah Obet, and Charleena Lyles — whose deaths soon after became the subject of such inquests.
In response to growing community concern that the inquests favored law enforcement and lacked compassion for the families of those who were killed, in 2018 King County Executive Dow Constantine issued Executive Order PHL 7-1-2-EO, significantly overhauling the inquest process, including providing for an inquest administrator to preside over inquests, reducing the role of the prosecuting attorney, and expanding public access to the inquest proceedings. Over time, other Executive Orders (EOs) were issued clarifying the inquest process.
Three main factions emerged that hotly debated the scope of the inquest process:
(1) the families of Butts, Obet, and Lyles, who argued that state law requires more than the EOs provided for, specifically that the involved officers be examined by the inquest jury and that the inquest jury be allowed to determine whether the involved officers killed by criminal means.
(2) representatives of law enforcement, who argued that the EOs exceeded the Executive’s authority and impermissibly broadened the inquest’s scope and purpose.
(3) Executive Constantine and Inquest Administrator Michael Spearman, who argued that the EOs were a valid exercise of the executive’s powers and should be enforced as issued.
In August 2020, a Washington Superior Court decision sided with law enforcement, effectively putting to a halt the Butts, Obet, and Lyles inquests. However, on July 15, 2021, the Washington Supreme Court reversed that decision. The Supreme Court for the most part reinstated the EOs, except that it agreed with the families that inquest juries should be able to examine the involved officers and decide whether those officers killed by criminal means.
Executive Constantine issued the following statement:
Today’s ruling affirms the core tenets of our inquest process: fairness, accountability, and transparency. With this clarity from the Supreme Court, we can move forward to provide the people of King County with the overdue reforms to the inquest process we sought three years ago.
I set out to change the status quo – to take steps toward justice and accountability in a system that has for too long been imbalanced against the victims of state violence. Today’s unanimous court ruling has affirmed what I said when I issued my executive order in 2018: a reformed inquest process will provide families, law enforcement officers, and community members with greater transparency and accountability.
And more recently, on July 28, 2021, Executive Constantine issued a new Executive Order further refining the inquest proceedings, setting the stage for restarting the delayed inquests and for reviewing even more instances of officer-involved deaths.
Portrait of Charleena Lyles, photograph by Derek Simeone