The King County Prosecutor’s Office announced Thursday afternoon that Shavelle M. Lewis pleaded guilty as charged to Vehicular Homicide and Felony Hit and Run for the hit and run death of tow truck driver William A. “Tony” Padilla, of Burien, on I-5 in Seattle on September 24, 2010.

As we previously reported, Padilla was struck and killed by Lewis, who was impaired at the time, while hooking a vehicle up to his tow truck on I-5 near Spokane Street. Padilla, 51, was working for GT Towing in Seattle when he was killed.

Lewis, 21, will face a sentence range of 41 to 54 months in prison when she is sentenced May 20 before Judge Bruce Hilyer at the King County Courthouse.

Hollie Beston, a Burien woman who videotaped herself and her husband raping her own 4-year-old daughter, was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison by Judge Mariane Spearman on Friday (Feb. 18) in King County Superior Court.

Beston was arrested in October 2009, along with her ex-husband, Brian Beston, 36, by Seattle Police after the FBI learned of the sex crime from the recipient of the photos, a man facing child-molestation charges in Southern California. Her husband was also sentenced in June 2010 to a minimum 26 years in prison.

Charging papers say the two provided live streaming video of the rape of their child over the internet to the California man, who alerted authorities as part of his therapy. Documents also claim that Brian Beston admitted repeatedly raping the girl, and that Hollie Beston admitted taking photos and videos of the crimes.

According to investigators, Beston was offering the girl online to have sex with the California man and streamed the live abuse to prove the authenticity of the offer.

Some other amazingly unpleasant facts we dug up from this story (as we previously reported in October, 2009):

• Police believe the Bestons abused the girl for several months.
• Hollie Beston is also accused of operating the camera and sending the images via a cellphone and the Internet.
• Police searched the Bestons’ homes in Kent and Burien and confiscated computers, cameras, flash drives, cellphones and other electronics, court papers said.
• The child was taken into custody by state Child Protective Services.

We did our own Google search for “Hollie Beston” and found a profile for her (direct link here), which includes some incredibly ironic statements like:

• “I am a fun loving and caring person.”
• “I have a problem with caring for people too much, which leads to people trying to use me.”
• “It is a lot of fun meeting new people but I am careful because I have a young one to take care of.”

Here’s exact wording from her Google Profile, which is still active:

Hollie Beston

Medical Assisting ; Student at Kaplan University
Burien, Washington

Interests:
Traveling, astrology, baking some, reading, swimming, going for walks…

I am a fun loving and caring person. I love to goof off and raising my child. I graduate in August but will be done with classes in the middle of march then plan on continuing my education by going for my RN. I have a problem with caring for people too much, which leads to people trying to use me. I enjoy doing a variety of things and have hopes and dreams that will someday come true. It is a lot of fun meeting new people but I am careful because I have a young one to take care of.

Places I’ve lived
Golden Valley, AZ ; Lenoir, NC; Kent and Burien, WA

Susan Mahoney

by Jack Mayne

Judith Eiler, the judge who was recently suspended for five days by the state Supreme Court for “rude, impatient and undignified treatment” of people before her in court has been voted off the bench by voters in the Burien area.

The winner is the current assistant city attorney for Des Moines, Susan Mahoney.

The loser, who picked up the “Judge Judy” moniker, after a harsh television judge, will leave the court in January and be replaced by Mahoney.

“I thought if anything it would be close but it has not been close at all,” she said in a telephone interview with The B-Town Blog. “The doorbelling paid off. I am just so grateful. It is just great that the people paid attention and I am humbled and honored and wouldn’t have gotten this far without that support.”

With less than 39 percent of the vote counted on Wednesday afternoon, Mahoney had 25,815 votes (69.82 percent) to Judge Eiler’s 10,965 (29.65 percent).

by Jack Mayne

Susan Mahoney has been thinking for some time about becoming a judge, but a recent situation where her opponent was disciplined by the state Supreme Court for being rude and abrupt prompted her to run now.

Mahoney says of her opponent, Judge Judith Eiler, “Her philosophy and mine could not be more different, her approach and mine cannot be more different.”

Judges are elected but most voters either do not vote for any of them because they know nothing about them, or vote for all on the ballot or just for the one or two they have heard of.

Judges are not permitted to directly raise money for campaigns, but must have campaign managers do it as a way of preventing real or imagined conflicts of interest over donors.

Mahoney is running for position two in the Southwest Electoral District, which includes Burien.

District Court hears a rather broad array of cases, including all criminal misdemeanors, including driving infraction such as speeding and driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol – anything punishable by a year or less in jail. It covers all unincorporated parts of the county and also for cities that contract for court services as the City of Burien does. The court hears most first appearances for felony charges, cases that are later before Superior Court judges.

In addition the court hears all disputed ticket cases, civil matters (rent, property and debt disputes) not over $75,000 and smaller personal injury cases and small claims cases. A major area for the court are protection orders where a person seeks that a husband or other person be ordered to stay away from them.

Mahoney is now the assistant city attorney for the City of Des Moines and a former deputy King County prosecuting attorney, as well as a private practice lawyer. Besides being in court in various roles, she has served as a pro-tem (temporary) judge in district courts.

She says she has been considering a judgeship for a while because she says our system is different for anywhere else in the world. All District Court judge must be lawyers.

“No system is perfect, and neither is our, but ours is the best system going,” she says. “It takes good and dedicated people committed to those ideals to continue a good justice system.

Susan Mahoney at the Oct. 19th B-Town Blog Candidates Forum.

“District Court is the people’s court,” she says. “More people come into contact with that court than any other.”

She says District Court judges not only need good, sound legal knowledge “but also those who have a heart for dealing with people. You really have to have a degree of patience because of the high case loads, dealing with attorneys” and with those people acting in their own defense which happens often in this level of court.

Mahoney says many immigrants in the area are fearful of courts and police, and others do not trust the system of courts or simply do not understand how the court system operates, so judges must be understanding and help people to deal with the process. There is also the problem of people not speaking English well, or at all.

“Some may actually function incredibly well in a day-to-day basis, but when you put them into a foreign atmosphere, an intimidating atmosphere (a judge) needs to take the time with them,” she says. “You can’t present their case for them or advocate for them, but you can help them understand their situation as clearly as possible.”

The financial crisis affects the courts, she says. There are 26 judges in the King County District Court and the Legislature approved the addition of six more, but the county appropriated money for only four. The court had been cut back a few years ago for financial reasons, she says. With cuts in court services, judges will have to oversee probation matters, further impacting the work of a judge.

She says she is willing to put the time into the heavy workload, adding that she waited until now to run for a judicial job so her son to be old enough to fend more for himself. She is a single mother with a 14-year-old son.

Her opponent, District Court Judge Judith Eiler, has never been in court “except as a judge,” Mahoney says. “I have handled literally thousands of cases in court, as an advocate, either a defense attorney or a prosecutor, or as a judge. If you interrupt somebody, you are not moving a calendar along, you are slowing it down because people lose their train of thought, they get rattled and they are not able to move forward.

“I can move a court calendar along and still treat people well,” obviously referring to her opponent’s recent five-day suspension for using terms such as “stupid” and “idiot” for the bench, interrupting and intimidating people before her.

Mahoney says the courtroom can be managed in a civil way and still move the process.

A judge can start off by setting time limits for people, telling them things the judge needs to know and then ask questions if further information is needed, all without intimidating people.

Because of the system that judges are assigned to wherever needed, Judge Eiler does not sit in the Burien court but downtown in the courthouse.

by Jack Mayne

District Court races are usually quiet matters hardly noticed by voters, but because of a dust-up over courtroom behavior by a judge seeking reelection in the Burien area, and a name that draws attention, more people have heard of Judge Judith Eiler, or “Judge Judy,” invoking the name of a television series.

“If my name had been Joan or Jane, probably no one would have heard about it but the name thing has just gone everywhere,” she says with a smile.

Voters often ignore judge races because they have never heard of the candidates or the incumbents. Sometimes voters simply vote for all on the ballot. Probably not this race this year.

Judge Eiler has been a District Court judge for 18 years has been the been the chief civil judge for all three of the court’s districts. She says the King County District Court system does criminal matters “really well” but “we sort of push back on civil and we had a backlog of four to six months for doing our paperwork to attorneys and I have turned that around now in two districts to 48 hours.” She is now the chief civil judge for the third division, Seattle.

She was originally elected in Federal Way where she still lives, but that city now has its own municipal Court so she serves where the chief judge assigns her.

In 2005 the Commission on Judicial Conducts found Judge Eiler to have been “engaging in a pattern of rude, impatient and undignified treatment of self-represented litigants in the courtroom. This included inappropriately interrupting them, addressing them in an angry or condescending or demeaning tone of voice, and threatening to rule against them if they interrupted or annoyed her.”

The Commission reprimanded Judge Eiler and ordered her to participate in approved ethics and sensitivity training at her own expense.

Judge Judith Eiler, left, and candidate Susan Mahoney, right, listen as 6th grader Aden Markwell asks a question at the Oct. 19th B-Town Blog Candidates Forum.

But she ran afoul of the commission again in late 2008, but this time the commission recommended she be suspended 90 days without pay. The Supreme Court overruled that penalty.

“Judge Eiler has failed to satisfy the standard with respect to (rules regulating judges),” the Supreme Court said. “Her failure to improve her deportment after one prior admonishment merits a more severe penalty than is typical. As a result, we find that a five-day suspension – a more serious reprimand or censure – is the appropriate sanction for Judge Eiler.”

In her defense her lawyers said in court documents that she “may have made an occasional error, as happens with all judges, but she did not violate the Code of Judicial Conduct and that at all times she conducted herself properly.”

In an interview with The B-Town Blog, Judge Eiler said the “Supreme Court found that in 15 instances I was impatient and that is the only thing that they found, was that I was impatient. They said I was sharp with people and blunt and I am honest about it, I am blunt. I don’t use gobbledygook. I speak straight. I am not in the political correctness field.

“So when somebody is going 29 miles over the speed limit, and is mentally 20ish, I tell them they are driving like an idiot. The Court would prefer that I say, ‘you are driving above standard, norm for the community in which you live and you should slow down.’ I don’t think that grabs the person who is 19ish and gives them something that might stop them from doing it again.

“I tend to move things along (in court) but I have huge calendars. In my small claims calendar of which I am accused of being impatient and moving people along, sometimes we have 12 trials in the morning and 12 in the afternoon. It sounds bad to say we just don’t have time for (lengthy explanations by litigants) but that is the blunt truth, we don’t have time for that.”

She says that she changed everything the Commission on Judicial Conduct said she should change after the 2005 case, which was similar to the later situation.

“The Commission would like everybody to leave court feeling good about themselves, and that may be true if you had a lot of time, where you can do a lot of things for people, but rarely does everybody feel good about themselves when they leave and especially on traffic infractions.

“It’s a factor of being a judge that half the people before you are going to be disgruntled,” she says.

She says the District Court is a very busy place and judges have limited time to understand the matter before them, hear testimony and question people and render a decision.

“I am a user-friendly judge,” she says. “I try to make people understand what is happening in my courtroom. I try to make those kinds of lessons they can learn. If you speed, you shouldn’t leave the courtroom thinking, ‘That was easy.’ You should say, ‘I am never going to do that again.’

“Before I was an attorney and before I was a judge, I was a teacher. I think that courtroom is a teachable moment where a person can learn something. If you are speeding, then you ought to have someone in a stern voice saying you should not do that,” says Eiler.

“If you want tough, you’ve got me.”

Attorney Christopher M. Davis wrote an interesting piece on his blog Tuesday (Sept. 21st), about his Burien client Jeanette Cunningham’s case about a “dangerous” pit bull dog that attacked her in July (we first covered this story here and here).

As many of our Readers will recall, Jeanette had to have major facial surgery to “get her smile back” because of the attack. Her face was disfigured in the attack, with the majority of the damage done to her mouth and chin area, caused by the dog jumping up and biting her face. A fundraiser auction was held for her Aug. 31st, and over $5,500 was raised for her.

A hearing was held in Burien this morning, where it was discovered that Burien’s animal control department had already released the pit bull back to its owners. Apparently city laws only permit it to “ban” animals from city limits, not to destroy or euthanize the dog.

Davis writes:

This morning I attended a “Dangerous Dog” hearing in the City of Burien. The hearing involved an appeal by the owners of a dangerous pit bull dog. The owners were appealing the City’s determination that the dog was dangerous and should be banned from the city limits.

The dog owners, Gabriele and Juan Garcia, appealed the City of Burien’s decision to declare the animal dangerous and then ban it from the City. That determination was eventually upheld by the hearing examiner this morning (Tuesday, Sept. 21).

The dog owner testified this morning that the animal has since gone to live with relatives in the City of Yakima where it will likely live out the remainder of its life. What’s unclear is whether the City of Yakima has any idea that a dangerous dog is now living within its boundaries. My guess is that it has no idea, particularly when the City of Yakima also has a law banning pit bulls.

Nonetheless, I have to seriously question the wisdom of the City of Burien for not adopting a dangerous dog ordinance that allows it to euthanize an animal that has already seriously maimed and disfigured a human being within its boundaries.

Read the rest of Davis’ blog here.

Here’s a video report by Q13 Fox on this story:

Here’s another from KING-TV:

So what do YOU think? Should the city have euthanized the pit bull or not? Please take our Poll or leave a Comment below:

According to The Seattle P-I, the 50-year old male suspect who police say has committed more than 30 “smash-and-grab” style burglaries in the Burien/West Seattle area made his first court appearance Thursday after his arrest early Wednesday.

His bail was set at $150,000.

According to reports, on Wednesday morning around 2am, police responded to an alarm at Huff Motor Sports in the 15821 block of First Ave South in Burien. A witness told police that he saw a man wearing a blue shirt and tan pants running from the scene, carrying a cash register.

On Thursday, that same witness identified the suspect in court, police said.

Washington State Patrol records show that the suspect has a record, including a previous felony conviction for attempted residential burglary, two felony convictions for burglary and a conviction for felony theft in 1991. He also has felony convictions for forgery and drug possession, along with numerous aliases.

Read the P-I’s full story here.

by Jack Mayne

The Seattle-Tacoma International Taxicab Association (STITA) lost another round in its fight to retain a contract with the Port of Seattle to be the sole provider of cab service leaving the airport, a contract it has held for about 20 years.

The Washington Supreme Court on Thursday (Aug. 5) declined to review an appeals court decision upholding the Port of Seattle’s award of the outbound taxi service contract to Yellow Cab. The Court also dissolved a stay preventing a new contract between Yellow and the Port and, within moments of the high court’s decision being announced Friday morning, the Port signed a new contract with Yellow that will take effect on Nov. 1

Chris Van Dyk, the principal of the Bainbridge Media Group and the person who authored the Yellow Cab bid, issued a news release Friday:

“You will be pleased to know that . . . the Washington State Supreme Court denied certiorari (review) of the STITA appeal of the temporary injunction that had been issued, blocking contract signing between the Port and Yellow, in this case,” Van Dyk wrote. “Accordingly, the Port of Seattle has signed the contract for outbound taxicab services with Puget Sound Dispatch dba Yellow Taxi Association, and Yellow will begin outbound on-demand (curbside pickup) taxicab service at SeaTac on Nov. 1, 2010.”

The original STITA contract was supposed to have ended on August 31, but was extended by the port for 60 days because of the legal battle, plus the fact Yellow would need time to redeploy cabs to the airport and to make other arrangement to take over the service, said Perry Cooper, spokesman for the airport.

Despite the setback, STITA attorney Michael Goldfarb of the Seattle firm of Peterson Young and Putra, said the case was still a long way from being over.

Goldfarb says he plans to file a motion in another suit involving cab service at the airport. STITA will allege the contract signed between Yellow and the Port is illegal because there were “significant changes: made after the contract outlined in Yellow’s original bid.

“Our position is that the Port negotiated wholesale changes to the agreement and any such changes were never approved by the Port Commission (in a public meeting),” said Goldfarb. “We will ask the (King County Superior Court) to nullify the contract,” the attorney said.

“Even though the important issues raised by this first case won’t be heard by the state’s highest court, we still have a strong position in a second case,” said Jesse Buttar, STITA spokesman. “We still look to the Port to restore the public trust in this contract and process.”

The state Supreme Court has suspended Burien-based District Court Judge Judith Eiler for “extreme rudeness” in her local courtroom.

Eiler has served as a King County District Court judge for nearly 20 years, and, according to documents, had previously received numerous complaints about her behavior over the last 7-8 years. Statements in legal documents describe her courtroom behavior as “rude, intimidating, condescending, or demeaning.”

In the decision, four of the court’s nine judges agreed that Eiler had violated judicial ethics, but instead of the requested 90-day suspension, voted to impost a lesser, five-day suspension.

She had also been previously reprimanded in February, 2005 and April, 2009, for similar violations, but, the high court found, continued to behave “rudely.”

“Judge Eiler’s rude, discourteous, and impatient behavior was certainly unprofessional, but it did not go so far as to undermine the integrity and independence of the judiciary,” Johnson wrote in the lead opinion.

The case document also states:

…Judge Eiler had repeatedly “interrupted litigants; addressed them in an angry, condescending or demeaning tone of voice; threatened to rule against litigants who interrupted or annoyed her; and otherwise failed to conduct herself in a judicious manner.”

King County voters elected Eiler to the bench in 1992, and she has served there ever since, winning re-election many times while managing a caseload that primarily consisted of small claims and traffic infraction matters in which most, if not all, litigants appear pro se (representing oneself as opposed to hiring a lawyer).

The County says that Eiler has heard close to 100,000 such matters during her tenure on the bench.

Here’s Eiler’s full bio as posted on the District Court website:

Judge Judith Eiler served at the Federal Way Division of the King County District Court from 1992 through 2002. In January of 2003, the Federal Way Division was closed and Judge Eiler now serves as a Judge in the King County District Court, Southwest Division. The Southwest Division encompasses the cities of Federal Way, Des Moines, Normandy Park, and Burien. Judge Eiler and her family have lived in Federal Way for nearly 40 years.

Prior to being elected to the bench Judge Eiler practiced law in Federal Way for 12 years. She has been an active member of the Federal Way community. She has been a member of the Federal Way Branch of the American Association of University Women, a member of the Federal Way Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Rotary International and she was a founding member and past president of the Federal Way Women’s Network. She has also been active in Bar Association activities. She has been President of the South King County Bar Association, as well as its Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. She has served as a Trustee on the governing board of the King County Bar Association and represented both the South King County Bar Association and the state-wide District and Municipal Court Judges Association at the Board of Governors for the Washington State Bar Association. Since 2007 Judge Eiler has served as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the American Bar Association’s, Judicial Division for Special Court Judges representing judges from the states of Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. Judge Eiler has served on the Executive Committee for the state-wide District and Municipal Court Judges Association and has served as the Assistant Dean of the State Judicial College, as well as chairing the State Judicial Education Committee.

In 1999 Governor Gary Locke appointed Judge Eiler as a Commissioner to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. From 2004 to 2007 she was named as a Judicial Outreach Liaison by the American Bar Association and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to serve the states of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho. She has also taught as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Seattle University.

We’re curious to know if any of our Readers have had interactions with Judge Eiler, and if so, are they surprised at this decision? Please leave a Comment below…

On Thursday (April 15) STITA Cab announced that it is challenging Chris Van Dyk, lobbyist for Yellow Taxi, to provide documents and answer questions about his role in drafting two rival taxi contract proposals.

Yet, according to documents (download PDF here), Van Dyk has failed to respond to subpoenas in the case and on Wednesday (April 14) filed a motion to plead the Fifth Amendment. The motion will be noted for decision in King County Court this Friday (April 16).

As we’ve previously reported, STITA has filed two lawsuits against the Port for its alleged mishandling of switching cab vendors over from STITA to Yellow Taxi. They have also accused Van Dyk of collusion in the RFP process.

Prior to this, the most recent news was Feb. 22nd, when the Washington state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the cab company by granting a temporary injunction against the Port of Seattle’s planned contract with Yellow Cab/Puget Sound Dispatch.

According to STITA:

“If Chris Van Dyk has nothing to hide and didn’t do anything wrong, then why is he pleading the Fifth?” said Jesse Buttar, STITA spokesperson. “Clearly, it’s time for the Port of Seattle to do the right thing and re-write the proposal request and re-bid the contract.”

The Port of Seattle faces two lawsuits stemming from its handling of a competitive contract process for the exclusive rights to offer cab service for passengers leaving Sea-Tac Airport. The Seattle-Tacoma International Taxi Association (STITA) filed a lawsuit in January against the Port of Seattle to stop the Port from awarding its airport taxi contract to Yellow Cab.

On Feb. 12, Farwest Taxi (Rainier Dispatch), which was part of a joint venture that submitted a bid to the Port last year, filed a separate lawsuit alleging that Van Dyk had misappropriated the joint venture’s confidential information and had improperly passed it on to the winning bidder, Yellow Taxi. Farwest’s suit requests the court to disqualify Yellow Taxi’s bid, require the Port to start over and reinitiate a new Request for Proposal (RFP) process, and bar Yellow Taxi from bidding on the new RFP.

Van Dyk’s assertion of the Fifth is important because the Port’s RFP states: “One or all responses will be rejected if there is reason for believing that collusion exists among Proposers, and no participant in such collusion will be considered in future proposals for concessions at the Airport.” [RFP, 13.4.1, p. 6]

Last year, the Port opened the contract for on-demand taxi cabs at Sea-Tac and issued a Request for Proposals. In December, the Port awarded a five-year contract to Yellow Cab, to start in September. However, the Port currently is blocked from signing the contract with Yellow while the lawsuits make their way through the legal system.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

• Court Ruling Prevents Port Of Seattle From Signing Taxi Contract. For Now.
• Taxicab Companies Request State Investigation Into Port Of Seattle
• Port Of Seattle Being Sued By Second Taxi Company
• UPDATE: After Brief Denial, STITA Cab Wins Stay Against Port Of Seattle
• STITA Taxi Files Lawsuit Against Port Of Seattle For Breaking Contract