Killer Campbell: A Decade Is Not A Fast Track

SHANNAH Wicklund would be 19 now. She'd probably have graduated from Snohomish High School a year ago. Perhaps she would be just finishing her first year of college.

But her life ended in the small Snohomish County town of Clearview April 14, 1982, at the age of 8. Charles Rodman Campbell slit her throat with a butcher knife. He used the same knife to kill her mother Renae, 31, and a neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson, 51.

The family of Barbara Hendrickson has lived with the grief of her death for more than 11 years. So have friends and relatives of Renae and Shannah Wicklund.

I did not know Shannah Wicklund but have talked to people who did. They said she was a cute, shy little kid with a lot to live for.

Her life was snuffed out in a grisly crime of revenge. Campbell was serving time for raping Renae Wicklund while holding a knife to then-infant-daughter Shannah's throat.

Wicklund and Hendrickson testified against him. While on work release in Everett, Campbell went to Clearview and turned Wicklund's home into a sickeningly bloody triple-murder scene.

I have been a life-long opponent of capital punishment, but I can find no compassion for Charles Campbell.

Right or wrong, capital punishment is the law. Campbell has made a mockery of the application of that law.

"This is not an issue of capital punishment, it is a case of abuse of the system" Attorney General Christine Gregoire says. "Charles Campbell has become a symbol of frustration with the system - even by people who are opposed to the death penalty."

Every condemned man or woman deserves the fullest appeal. But Campbell has milked the system dry - aided and abetted by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that would rather delay than rule on death-penalty cases. Campbell has re-fashioned the same arguments over and again in appeals. He has contended that having to choose between hanging and lethal injection violates his religious beliefs. Murder didn't.

He has had - and continues to have - some of the best defense attorneys in the area. He routinely fires good lawyers to cause more delays. He's had 15 attorneys and still is trying to fire the ones he has.

Some opponents of capital punishment speciously wail that Campbell is being rushed to the gallows.

A fast track for Campbell? That's absurd. It has been 10 1/2 years since his conviction.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has criticized the 9th Circuit for dragging its heels on rulings in the Campbell case. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor criticized the court for acting with "glacial progress."

Attorney General Gregoire added:

"Mr. Campbell has manipulated our judicial system to the breaking point."

Today, at age 38, Campbell appears closer to his end.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled Tuesday that hanging is not cruel and unusual punishment - the grounds for Campbell's latest appeal.

"I will say for the record here today I do not believe in capital punishment," Judge Coughenour noted.

That didn't stop the judge from ruling in a timely fashion after three days of hearing on the constitutionality of hanging.

Don't count on the same timeliness now that the matter goes back to the San Franciso-based 9th Circuit. It seems bent on turning back capital punishment by delay.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit first heard arguments on the hanging question in Campbell's case in 1989, then waited until the spring of 1992 to issue a decision.

Campbell was convicted of aggravated triple murder in Snohomish County Superior Court Nov. 26, 1982. Death-sentence judgment came on Dec. 17, 1982.

The state Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence Nov. 6, 1984. His first death warrant was signed by Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Dennis Britt. Execution was set for March 29, 1985.

Campbell's legal appeals have enabled him to survive three scheduled execution dates. He was 33 hours away from being hanged in 1989 when the 9th Circuit Court granted an indefinite stay of execution.

"This has not been a question of guilt or innocence," Gregoire said. "I'll do everything I can to ensure that defendants' rights are protected, but what I heard time and again when I was campaigning was a lack of trust in the judicial system.

"People said the system was too cumbersome - that justice takes too long," Gregoire said. "And they kept bringing up Campbell's name."

The deaths of Renae and Shannah Wicklund and Barbara Hendrickson were swift and certain. Campbell's hasn't been swift. It should be certain. Soon.

Don Hannula's column appears Thursday on editorial pages of The Times.