It's tough for lawyers who work in the trenches
Originally published April 07, 2000 by Susan Paynter Seattle Post-Intelligencer Columnist
As the pigeon flies, it's not far from the gritty King County Courthouse to the glossy Seattle Sheraton
But, this week, the distance seems vast indeed.
In the hotel's lofty ballrooms, sleek-suited members of the American Bar Association's litigation section are attending a national convention. They're listening to speeches by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and William
H. Neukom, the senior vice president of law and corporate affairs for Microsoft.
In the trenches of Courthouse Room 155, rumpled defense attorney Tony Savage is listening, too. He's listening to his client, Matthew Bolar, who recently threatened to poke Savage's eye out with a sharp pencil.
The swells at the Sheraton sit comfortably, focusing on ethics and absorbing advice from a panel of federal judges on the nuances of courtroom presentation.
At the Courthouse, Savage and his partner, John Hicks, sit with a protective human buffer stationed between them and their sometimes volatile client.
Savage has defended his share of dregs. Among them have been executed killer Charles Campbell and David Lewis Rice, who is serving a life sentence for slaying the Charles Goldmark family on Christmas Eve.
But even this war horse of many murder trials has never had a King County corrections officer as a body shield before.
This is the real deal, the tedious-but-bizarre realm of law that the theorists rarely see.
Yesterday, it came as welcome relief when a bleat broke the sound of shuffling papers in the courtroom and a voice announced it was time to duck and cover for the courthouse's semiannual earthquake drill.
The case has been dragging and droning on ever since last May.
When Savage and his partner took over March 13, they were the third set of attorneys to be assigned to Bolar's case by King County Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel. And they tried to get out of it, too.
Previous attorneys were excused after threats on their lives and those of their families were allegedly made by the defendant. And after Bolar vacillated between wanting appointed counsel and wanting to act as his own attorney.
Something of a jailhouse lawyer, Bolar gained practical experience in the past by defending himself in court on various drug charges.
By the time Bolar "threatened to poke both my and Mr. Hill's mutual eyes out," Savage says, Judge Mertel was "so sick of the case it would have taken an atom bomb" for him to dismiss counsel and start over again.
So Mertel's solution was to appoint a guard in plain clothes to sit between the lawyers and their client.
Seeing him yesterday, I wondered if the guard in the striped shirt was in less jeopardy than an attorney would be. Or did the judge just consider his eyes more dispensable?
Either way, Savage has given his client a felt-tipped pen to play it safe.
And, by now, even the defendant may be getting bored, although he did wave a paper yesterday attempting to pose his own objections.
Murder cases like this don't soak up much ink in the newspaper. On a scale of one-to-10 among his cases, Savage says this one is maybe a three. "These kinds of shootings go on all the time in the drug world," Savage remarked during a break.
Still, "to Matthew, it's vitally important," Savage said. No matter how many times he's done this, Savage is an unflagging believer in a system that provides that everyone gets a good defense no matter who they are or what they've done.
In Bolar's case, he was doing time in the County Jail on a probation violation. So he gave his girlfriend, Christine, some money and some drugs to keep her happy and introduced her to his pal, Rodney Hill.
The two got friendly. They got bored. And they ran out of money and drugs. So they broke into Bolar's storage unit while he was gone. And Bolar came out of jail mad and wound up shooting Rodney in the stomach -- he says in self-defense.
He was caught driving around Burien in a stolen car wearing what sheriffs deputies described as a "big-hair wig." Tell that one to the folks at the Sheraton.
By the way, Savage is not missing the meetings of the ABA because of this case. He's been pretty busy and didn't know they were in town.
Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to: susanpaynter@seattle-pi.com
