District Judge William Dwyer -- The Last Pages Of A Controversial Career

The judge best known for favoring the spotted owl over the timber industry hopes to leave the federal bench sometime this year. As he waits for the U.S. Senate to confirm his replacement, he looks forward to a life out of the spotlight.

Bill Dwyer was a scruff of young man at the University of Washington in the fall of 1948, handsome and unsure of his plans, but convinced they ought not include listening to professors drone on about things that did not interest him.

One day, on the advice of friends, he wandered into old Condon Hall and sat in on a torts class. There, in a lecture hall filled with nearly a hundred freshmen law students, Professor John Richards, a colorful and engaging teacher, talked about the basics of legal reasoning.

Dwyer didn't want to leave.

"Somewhere in my conscience, there must have been a tug of awareness that I might like to be a trial lawyer," he says.

His career as a lawyer and federal judge would span more than four decades and become linked with key players and momentous events that shaped Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, from the Cold War hysteria over communism to the arrival of the Seattle Mariners to the environmental wars over timber and spotted owls.

Dwyer, always self-deprecating, insists that he played only a bit part in all of them. Court observers, though, say the man once nicknamed "Destructo" for his low-key but relentless way of dissembling opponents on the witness stand, has been one of the most

influential members of Washington's legal community for a generation.

After 11 years as a U.S. District judge, Dwyer is retiring. Last month he went on "senior status," meaning he could begin working part-time or stop altogether. He had hoped to finally have time to learn ancient Greek and traipse off to South America with his wife, Vasiliki.

But his successor has not yet been approved. Washington's two U.S. senators, Patty Murray and Slade Gorton, last week nominated King County Superior Court Judge Marsha Pechman to fill Dwyer's seat. President Clinton and the federal Senate Judiciary Committee have yet to weigh in, and observers say it could be another year before she assumes the bench.

In the meantime, Dwyer, 69, says he'll keep working full-time, health permitting. A little more than a year ago, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

Passion for the law

Dwyer's eventual departure is already being lamented as a huge loss to Seattle's legal community. Long before he donned a black robe and gavel, he had earned respect as the lawyer who brought professional baseball back to Seattle and who successfully represented a legislator accused of being a Communist agent.

Colleagues say Dwyer embodies many of the qualities they aspire to: intellect, fairness, integrity and an unflagging passion for the law.

He has, says Seattle attorney Egil "Bud" Krogh Jr., "helped redeem our profession." Lawyers, judges and friends talk about Dwyer with a reverence that borders on worship. Even those who have crossed swords with him in the courtroom have nothing but nice things to say.

Bob Christie, a lawyer who represented the city of Lynnwood in a police-misconduct case, cites Dwyer's common-sense intellect, courtroom demeanor and insistence on the highest standards. He is, Christie said, a "judge's judge" who gives very thoughtful evaluation of the evidence and legal arguments put before him.

"Frankly you can't ask anything more. Sometimes you think he's right. Sometimes you think he's wrong. . . . I've always felt he was fair."

"There's no such thing as perfect judge," said John Strait, a law professor who has taught federal courts and jurisprudence at Seattle University. "But he'd certainly be one of the judges you'd pick to model yourself after. Everybody agrees that he's one of the brighter lights in the federal judiciary."

Few, in fact, have a negative thing to say about him, except perhaps his good friend Fred Brack who can't understand why Dwyer doesn't like the jazz singer Billie Holiday. (Dwyer thinks she sounds like she's whining.)

Scrapes, bruises part of job

Federal judges have become touchstones for controversy, sometimes scrutinized by members of Congress for hidden agendas and political leanings, then flayed for judicial rulings that citizens and politicians don't want to hear. Dwyer's own appointment to the bench in 1987 took nearly two years to complete.

Today, from his fifth-floor office at the federal courthouse in Seattle, Dwyer looks back on his own scrapes and bruises as part of the job and still feels incredibly lucky. There's been criticism but also an armful of plaques and professional honors.

"It would be a real mistake to ever get carried away by any accolades, just in the same way it would be a real mistake to ever get too depressed by criticism," Dwyer says. "You just try to do the best you can."

He is perhaps best known as the judge who redirected the course of environmental history. In 1991, acting on a lawsuit filed by the Seattle Audubon Society, Dwyer ruled that the federal government had failed to protect the rare spotted owl and other species in national forests.

He froze old-growth timber sales on owl habitat in Washington, Oregon and Northern California and put the logging industry on a crash diet for three years. The industry has never been the same. A furious political battle continues to this day over how people ought to balance their livelihoods with the preservation of natural resources and wildlife.

But if Dwyer wondered how his decision might gin up the caldron of emotions outside his windows, he didn't show it. He instructed employees to remain courteous and forward every angry phone call and letter to him.

Though the decision drew praise from environmentalists and editorial writers, Dwyer got a tongue-lashing from U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton. In a speech from the Senate floor, Gorton accused Dwyer of "anti-human" decision-making and called the ruling "radical" and "irresponsible."

The berating might not have had much significance. But it was Gorton who had sacrificed his own re-election in 1986 to get Dwyer on the bench in the first place.

A few months after the spotted-owl ruling, Gorton cooled off and admitted that any other judge would have done the same thing.

Dwyer, to this day, makes no apologies.

"You're in it to do justice and to uphold the Constitution, and to be fair to everybody," he said. "You're not in it to try to please those who brought about your appointment, or to try and displease those who were opposed to it. None of that has anything to do with it."

An informal manner

There is an intimidating aura about federal judges. Appointed by U.S. presidents for life, they do not have to seek re-election and are rarely impeached by Congress. That protection sometimes engenders pomposity.

But inside his chambers, past the armed guards and metal detectors, Dwyer is in his rumpled tie and rolled-up sleeves, still wearing the impish grin of that UW student skipping classes. If he wasn't here, reviewing another brief or preparing for a court proceeding, he'd probably be hiking the Cascades with one of his buddies or giving courthouse employees a nostalgic tour of Seattle.

A comfortable day for Dwyer is when he gets to meld into the crowd, wearing sneakers and jeans and going a day without shaving.

Parkinson's hasn't affected his mental agility, he says, nor his "mediocre" tennis game. A chronically bad back, though, has forced him to make other accommodations. He stands or kneels from behind his dais in the courtroom.

His wood-paneled walls and bookcases are adorned with photographs and mementos from turning points in his life: a 1966 sabbatical in Spain; the departure of the old Seattle Pilots baseball team; his courtroom advocacy for John Goldmark, a Democratic legislator accused of Communist leanings; and more recently, the births of his five grandchildren.

Forty years ago, Dwyer was taking pro bono and small-time cases from a cubbyhole of an office in the Northern Life Tower a few blocks away. And truth be told, he misses it. No one was trying to tell him what to do or second-guessing his decisions.

"I got acquainted with a lot of people I otherwise would not have met," Dwyer said of his career as a trial lawyer. "One of the joys about law practice is you learn about one new endeavor after another, one new set of people after another."

They included, among many others, Aaron Dixon, a leader of the Black Panther Party; Krogh, a top aide to President Nixon; and Dave Beck, the Teamsters president who was once the most powerful labor leader in the country.

Shakespeare at dinner

Today, Dwyer leads a rather isolated existence as one of 141 U.S. District judges in the 9th Circuit, careful about whom he socializes with and his interactions with politicians and public figures. He is one of seven U.S. District judges in Western Washington handling everything from criminal cases against accused drug dealers to complex securities cases.

Though it can seem as though Dwyer ends up with more controversial issues than his colleagues, it's actually been a matter of chance. Cases for all federal judges are assigned randomly and spit out of a computer.

Lawyers say he keeps a firm but fair hand on the matters before him, insisting that everyone walk in prepared and ready to work. But even those who have disagreed with his judicial decisions praise his golly-gosh humility and gentle demeanor.

A few years ago, lawyers were unable to settle a lawsuit involving alleged police misconduct after lengthy negotiations in a Kansas City hotel room, but Dwyer, who was serving as the mediator, didn't needle them for wasting his time. He offered poetic encouragement: "Be of good cheer gentlemen."

A bibliophile who reads two or three books at a time, he recites Shakespeare at the dinner table and quotes literary giants and legal philosophers to make his points in opinions and public speeches.

But lawyers also like him because he can talk to citizens in plain English. Journalists single him out as the federal judge who, in non-jury proceedings, lets them sit in the jury box so they can hear what lawyers are saying.

Earlier in his career, it was Dwyer standing before the bench, often defending his client against the establishment. The son of a Depression-era secretary and truck driver, he relished the chance to take on cases that went against the grain of American thought or that other attorneys might pass up.

"He's a man whose life has been committed to helping many people who have had struggles or who are not the most favored in society," said Krogh, the Seattle attorney and former Nixon aide who once counted himself among the disfavored. "If not for Bill Dwyer, I would not be practicing law in Washington."

When the state bar disbarred Krogh for a felony conviction involving Watergate, Dwyer not only got Krogh's license restored after five years, he gave him a job.

Culp and Dwyer

Dwyer grew up on Queen Anne Hill at a time when saw mills were within view and kids could play sandlot ball on unpaved streets. Dwyer's own childhood was fairly modest and marked largely by his mother's struggle to raise him. His parents divorced when he was 5.

Dwyer once thought he might like to be a newspaper reporter. In college he worked nights as a copy boy at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And in the summer of 1948, he helped cover the Canwell anti-Communist hearings at the old Armory in downtown Seattle for the UW Daily.

But once he got his law degree, it wasn't long before he began making the headlines instead of writing stories.

Lots of young lawyers hope to work for one of Seattle's major downtown firms, where they can work up to big-time cases. But after three years in the Army and three months clerking for a state Supreme Court justice, Dwyer had no interest in working for anyone. He set up shop in 1957 with one of his former college classmates, Gordon Culp.

His first brush with fame as a lead trial attorney was in the fall of 1963 when he represented Goldmark, an Okanogan rancher and state Democratic lawmaker who had been falsely accused of being a Communist. Goldmark, who lost his legislative seat in the 1962 election, sued his political opponents for libel.

The case became remarkable not just because of the people involved - and the horrible murder that would befall Goldmark's son and family in 1985 at the hands of David Rice - but because of the paranoia and fear it represented in American history. The accusations made against Goldmark and his attempt to clear his name came at the height of the Cold War.

Richard Larsen, a former reporter who covered the landmark trial, says he was impressed by the way Dwyer connected with the Okanogan jurors in the 1963 Goldmark case. In their dirt-smudged shoes and jeans, their outlook on the world was shaped by the independence of wide-open spaces. Dwyer, Seattle urbane in his suit and tie, won them over with his arguments about fairness and common decency.

"When he felt that the evidence or testimony was outrageous, he would be outraged," said Larsen. "He was almost physically upset by the notion that someone who believed in constitutional rights should be subversive. He would flutter in disbelief."

Gorton, then a young legislator, testified in the trial and was so impressed by Dwyer that later, as the state attorney general, hehired him to represent the state in the lawsuit against the American League and baseball owners.

Local officials accused the American League of a breach of contract when it allowed the Seattle Pilots to move to Milwaukee (a team now known as the Milwaukee Brewers). Previous legal challenges against the baseball owners had been unsuccessful, and Gorton was outraged.

Supporters worried that rich and famous baseball owners would dazzle local jurors, and it was the first time a community had directly challenged the antitrust exemption for professional baseball. But Dwyer took the case with no less self-confidence than he'd had walking into the courthouse in Okanogan.

When the owners finally agreed to give Seattle a professional team, Dwyer tucked in a provision just to make sure they kept their word: The lawsuit would not be dismissed until the Mariners played their first game at the Kingdome. A reputation for for kindness

Former clients and friends have long admired not just Dwyer's legal talents but his acts of kindness.

David Crosby, a former Seattle resident, still talks about how Dwyer searched the streets of Seattle on foot one night in the 1985 when Crosby's 14-year-old son had dropped out of school and run away from home.

Crosby blamed a local teen dance hall, The Monastery, as the magnet for trouble for his son and many other street kids. Dwyer helped Crosby get the business shut down and a new local ordinance approved on teen dance halls, on only one condition: He would do the work for free.

Judy Ramseyer, a former law clerk for Dwyer, says the judge used to receive thank-you notes from convicted criminals who appreciated his ability to convey sensitivity and reasonableness even while meting out a long term in prison.

"He has the ability to say to someone, `I am sentencing you to five years in prison, and I'm confident that you can use this time to become the son or father or brother that these people who are here on your behalf believe you to be,' " Ramseyer said.

Gorton's deal

Dwyer's support for Democratic candidates and his work as an ally to the ACLU and other liberal causes almost jettisoned his nomination to become a judge.

When a U.S. District Court vacancy opened up in 1986, Gorton and then-Sen. Dan Evans - both Republicans - nominated Dwyer. But other Senate Republicans and the Reagan administration objected. They saw no reason to appoint a Democrat and viewed the nomination as an affront to the people who had elected Reagan.

In a political deal that would come back to haunt him, Gorton agreed to vote for a controversial, conservative judicial nominee from the Midwest if then-U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese would let Dwyer's nomination move forward.

Gorton's Democratic challenger Brock Adams turned the trade into a campaign weapon and won Gorton's Senate seat that same year. (Gorton won the state's other Senate seat two years later, in 1988.)

Evans, for his part, had to threaten to block every judicial nominee in the 9th Circuit to get Dwyer past the Reagan administration and Senate Judiciary Committee.

Even so, the going was tough. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., the ranking minority member on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and other conservatives grilled Dwyer during lengthy confirmation hearings. Dwyer was accused of being pro-pornography for his defense of a sex-education book "Show Me" at the Seattle Public Library. Crosby offered to testify in Dwyer's behalf and Dwyer's old Army lieutenant colonel wrote a letter to Thurmond, a fellow military man, to help get Republican votes.

When sworn in, Dwyer took a huge pay cut in his new judicial position, which then paid $89,000 a year. The small firm he and his friend had created had expanded to Culp, Dwyer, Guterson & Grader, with 40 lawyers and 100 employees.

Friends and colleagues had long believed Dwyer had the credentials to one day be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But over time, with control of the presidency and Congress split, they also knew that it was politically improbable.

"Had the stars been lined up differently, Bill clearly would have been an ideal justice," said his friend Brack. "Anybody who knows him would say it. But Bill's aspirations are modest. His aspirations are to be a good judge, to be a good father, to be a good husband, to be a good friend. Those are his aspirations, to lead an appropriate life."

Observers say Gorton's willingness to put Dwyer on the bench was one of his great acts in office, proving his willingness to put legal acumen and merit above partisanship. But times have changed since the mid-1980s and so has Gorton.

He is now the point man for Republicans on judicial appointments in Washington state. And he has become more partisan, insisting that Republicans have more say over judges and that there be more "philosophical balance" in federal courts.

This year politics - and Gorton - will once again play a key role in the next phase of Dwyer's career.

Though Murray and Gorton have agreed on a nominee, so must the president and Senate Judiciary Committee. Assuming Pechman gets the green light, Clinton and the Democrats will need his support and advocacy to help guide her nomination through Republican leadership in the Senate. But Gorton and other Republicans have other things on their minds at the moment, namely the impeachment trial of Clinton.

The Dwyers were hoping to spend the winter in Patagonia but have put the trip off a year. They escaped, nonetheless, for a two-week respite over the holidays, in Mexico.

Dwyer still hopes the newest appointment will take only a few months rather than years.

Either way, in the meantime, he isn't budging.

Barbara A. Serrano's phone message number is 206-464-2927. Her e-mail address is: bserrano@seattletimes.com

---------------- William L. Dwyer ----------------

Age: 69.

Education: University of Washington, B.S., 1951 (board of editors, Law Review); New York University Law School, 1953.

Family: Wife, Vasiliki; three grown children, five grandchildren.

Residence: Central Seattle.

Career: In 1957, co-founded with Gordon Culp the firm of Culp & Dwyer, which later became Culp, Dwyer, Guterson & Grader. Practiced law with firm for 30 years. Served as president of Seattle-King County Bar Association (1979-1980), member of the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association (1982-85); co-originator of Volunteer Legal Services program, providing pro bono help to the needy in King County; author of "The Goldmark Case," 1984.

Awards: Warren G. Magnuson Memorial Award, Municipal League of King County; Judge of the Year Award, Washington State Trial Lawyers Association; Outstanding Jurist Award, American Board of Trial Advocates.

Little Known Fact: Played the role of the judge in 1982 charitable staging of "Inherit the Wind" a dramatization of the Scopes trial.

----------------------------- Major cases as trial attorney -----------------------------

1959: Assisted in the legal defense of John Beck, then president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, against federal charges of tax fraud. Beck was convicted, but his attorneys successfully appealed and got most of the convictions overturned. He served 2 1/2 years at McNeil Island for filing false information on a tax-exempt organization.

1963-1964: Represented John Goldmark, who lost his seat representing Okanagon County in the Legislature after political opponents accused him of being a Communist or Communist sympathizer. The jury ruled in favor of Goldmark and awarded him $40,000. A subsequent Supreme Court ruling set aside the libel ruling but upheld the verdict clearing Goldmark's name.

1968: Defended Black Panther leader Aaron Dixon against criminal charges for grand larceny. Dixon, 19, was captain of the local Black Panther organization. A jury ruled Dixon not guilty. Dwyer handled the case pro bono.

1968: Won a state Supreme Court ruling invalidating the city of Seattle's ordinances censoring movies. Dwyer represented the old Ridgemont Theater in Greenwood, the first foreign movie theater in Seattle.

1970-1976: Represented the state of Washington and King County in a lawsuit against baseball's American League after the Seattle Pilots were sold and moved to Milwaukee. The settlement, after four weeks of trial before a jury, resulted in expansion of the league and creation of the Seattle Mariners.

1975-1981: Represented Egil "Bud" Krogh Jr., a former aide to President Nixon, in a disbarment case before the Washington State Bar and Washington Supreme Court. Krogh, convicted of a felony for his role in the Watergate "plumbers" operation and the break-in at the office of psychiatrist Daniel Ellsberg, was disbarred. Dwyer helped Krogh regain his license to practice law after five years.

1980-1981: Represented independent logging companies and small mill owners in antitrust cases against two major Alaska pulp-mill operators. The total recovered was about $10 million.

1982-1983: Represented newspaper employees as chief counsel in a legal challenge of a proposed joint-operating agreement between The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The employees won in U.S. District Court, but the newspapers appealed and won in the Court of Appeals. Dwyer handled the case pro bono.

1983: Defended 37 houseboat owners against eviction notices by dock owners. The settlement included long-term leases for the houseboat owners and led to the adoption of a new "floating home" ordinance in Seattle.

----------------------------- Major cases as district judge -----------------------------

1988: Presided over the nation's first federal product-tampering homicide case. A jury convicted Stella Nickell of murdering her husband and an Auburn woman with a cyanide-laced painkiller. Dwyer sentenced Nickell to 90 years in prison.

1990: Ruled that Metro, King County's transportation and public-utility authority, was unconstitutional since voters could not directly elect Metro officials. The King County Council was subsequently expanded from nine to 13 seats and assumed responsibility for Metro services.

1991: Ordered the U.S. Forest Service to adopt a conservation plan for the spotted owl in habitat areas of Washington, Oregon and Northern California. His injunction against logging in national forests remained in place for three years. President Clinton later held a Northwest Forest Conference in Portland and developed a plan that allowed logging to resume but reduced the harvest by 75 percent.

1991: Overturned the death penalty for Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, a defendant in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle's International District. Dwyer upheld the murder conviction but said Mak did not receive adequate legal counsel at sentencing. The King county prosecutor will attempt to get the death penalty reinstated.

1994: Issued an injunction ordering state officials to provide adequate mental-health care for civilly committed sex offenders at Washington's Special Commitment Center in Monroe.

1994: Declared the state's term-limits law unconstitutional as it applied to members of Congress. Despite voter approval of such limits under Initiative 573, Dwyer said the law limited voters' constitutional freedom of choice. He said the U.S. Constitution would need to be amended to permit term limits on Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court later agreed in a similar case.

1994: Mediated a settlement in one of several police-misconduct lawsuits involving the death of Robin Pratt, an Everett woman who was shot and killed during a bungled SWAT-team raid. The city of Lynnwood agreed to pay Pratt's surviving family $3.4 million.

1995: Mediated a settlement over Jimi Hendrix' music legacy. Hendrix' father, Al, and a family lawyer and friend had argued over intellectual property rights. The Seattle family regained ownership of all songs, unmastered recordings and images of the guitarist, worth $50 million to $75 million.

1997: Allowed a massive land swap between the U.S. Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser involving nearly 35,000 acres of public and private land. The Pilchuck Audubon Society and Muckleshoot Indian Tribe challenged the exchange; the Sierra Club and other environmental groups supported it. Dwyer ruled that it was legal.

1998: Upheld a Mill Creek's man's right to post offensive words against debt-collection and credit-reporting agencies on the World Wide Web. Dwyer declared the Internet "an arena of free speech."