The case that helped shape Locke

This is the last in a three-part series of profiles on the leading candidates for governor.

Nearly 22 years ago, Gary Locke rose to make one of the most important speeches of his life. It wasn't a political speech. It was a speech about a murder - how it happened and why two men who killed a Seattle taxi driver should be tried for the death penalty.

Locke was a 28-year-old King County deputy prosecutor, just three years out of law school. He was making the trial's opening statement.

Locke says the case, the biggest of his career, helped shape his views on crime and punishment. It also gave him firsthand experience he would draw on later as a legislator debating criminal-justice policy and as governor deciding the fate of men on death row.

"It's one thing to say you support the death penalty," Locke said. "It's another thing to actually be involved in a case where you are confronted with it. . . . It really requires you to search down deep about what your views are."

His experience as a prosecutor, one of his few jobs outside politics, continues to shape Locke's image as a moderate Democrat. In the Legislature, even while embracing the agenda expected of a Seattle liberal - gay rights, a state income tax - he sided with Republicans on crime.

And as he runs for re-election, looking back 20 years gives insight into who Locke was before he began relying on voters for his jobs.

In his campaigns, he is quick to talk about his previous work.

It may be more important than ever this year. Running hard in the Republican primary is John Carlson, a former talk-radio host who spearheaded two anti-crime initiatives. Already he and the state Republican Party have attacked Locke as soft on crime.

The early years

The son of Chinese-immigrant parents, Locke lived briefly in Seattle's Yesler Terrace public-housing project. His parents ran a restaurant for several years, then bought a corner grocery and moved the family to Beacon Hill.

Locke became an Eagle Scout at 14 and excelled at Franklin High School, where he was an honor student, athlete and member of the school choir.

Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran, who went to Franklin with Locke and would later work with him in the prosecutor's office, says, "He was very much the same in high school as he is today.

"Same bad hair, same low-key personality and earnestness."

Locke, the first in his family to graduate from college, received a scholarship to Yale University and later earned a law degree from Boston University. At age 26, he was back in Seattle, starting his first job as a deputy prosecutor.

He had been told it was the best training for a legal career. Later, he thought, he would join a downtown law firm, perhaps specializing in estate planning or immigration law.

He was hired by the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office in 1976 as it was trying to diversify its overwhelmingly white staff.

Locke had gotten a taste of criminal law as an intern there - prosecuting misdemeanor cases such as drunken driving and shoplifting - and felt drawn toward the prosecution side of the courtroom.

"Defendants deserve their rights, they deserve their representation, but I could never be a public defender," he said.

Colleagues remember him as a workaholic young lawyer with a knack for complex cases, including burglaries and vehicular homicides.

"He was a first-rate young deputy," said Dave Boerner, who was one of Locke's superiors and now teaches criminal law at Seattle University. "You could tell by the assignments he was getting that he was well-respected."

Locke was part of a prestigious class. Among the people he worked with: Norm Maleng, current King County prosecutor; Robert Lasnik, now a U.S. district judge; William Downing, now a King County Superior Court judge; and Sidran.

A year after starting work, Locke's views on crime were hardened by personal tragedy.

His 60-year-old father, James, a Chinese immigrant, was shot and nearly killed during a holdup at the family's Seattle grocery.

"I remember getting that phone call from my sister saying Dad had been shot," Locke said. "That was so traumatic."

The shooting left bullet fragments in his father's belly and left Locke with a better understanding of what it's like to be a victim of crime. "It certainly made me more committed as a prosecutor."

Pivotal case

In late April 1978, police found the body of taxi driver Glenn McLelland in a field near Issaquah. He had been shot in the head three times. Detectives quickly traced a connection to Clyf Gladstone and Carey Webster - two young half brothers from the Suquamish Tribe.

Within a week, Gladstone, 24, and Webster, 19, were arrested in Kansas.

Nine days after the killing, more than 120 Seattle cabdrivers formed a motorcade to McLelland's memorial service at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral.

Locke appeared in court to charge the two suspects with aggravated first-degree murder. The state would likely seek the death penalty, he said.

During the trial, defense attorneys would play heavily on the fact the men were Native Americans who grew up poor on a reservation. But they felt Locke, a Chinese American, was chosen to blunt concerns about a white judge and nearly all-white jury.

"To my way of thinking, that was the strategy of the prosecution," said Mike Magee, who represented Gladstone. "It took away the race question or at least minimized it."

Locke says ambition, not race, earned him the assignment. "Every prosecutor wants to be on a murder case," he said.

At that time, for the crime to qualify as a capital offense, he and Tom Kelly, the senior prosecutor, would have to convince the jury that the murder was premeditated and that there were "aggravating" circumstances. If jurors agreed, prosecutors would then urge them to give the men the death penalty.

The prosecutor's office allowed attorneys to opt out of such cases if they personally opposed the death penalty.

Locke says he likely would have stayed on to the penalty phase.

"I was about 90 percent there," he said. "But it never went to that stage, so I never had to take that walk in the woods."

Though he was the junior prosecutor, Locke played a major role. He helped fend off a vigorous attack on the constitutionality of Washington's death-penalty law. And it was Locke who, just days before the trial, found evidence that became the cornerstone of the state's case.

He found a diarylike entry in Webster's address book that other lawyers and detectives had missed. To prosecutors, it was not only a confession but showed premeditation.

When the trial got under way, Locke ended his opening statements by quoting Webster: "It's something I have wanted to do for a long time. . . . It didn't even make me nervous or nothing. Not even the slightest feeling went through my heart."

After a monthlong trial, the jury returned with a verdict in less than seven hours. Jurors found both defendants guilty of first-degree murder but said Webster was not guilty of premeditated first-degree murder, meaning they would not consider the death penalty. (The judge had already thrown out the premeditation element of the charge against Gladstone.)

At sentencing, Locke urged Judge William Goodloe to send the defendants to prison for life - never to be released.

The judge refused. He gave them standard life sentences, allowing parole in less than 14 years.

"I am not going to close the door to the possibility that sometime you will be restored to society," Goodloe said.

Both men were sent to the state penitentiary in Walla Walla.

The call of Olympia

Locke went on to other cases, but none as big as Gladstone and Webster. He burned out after nearly five years.

"It was very intense," he said. "Every time I came out of the courtroom, I would have a splitting headache."

While he had studied political science at Yale, he says, "I never thought I would end up in politics."

Still, as a lawyer in his 20s, he had begun to dabble in it, ringing doorbells for Seattle City Council candidates, including Norm Rice and Dolores Sibonga.

In 1980, Locke worked as a staff attorney in the state Senate. He spent most of his time reviewing bills.

After that, he briefly was an attorney for the Seattle Human Rights Department while still keeping an eye on Olympia.

"I came to see that the people who passed the laws were just everyday people from all walks of life," Locke said. "I figured, if they can do it, why not me?"

In 1982, Locke ran for a House seat in Seattle's 37th District, a Democratic stronghold and one of the most ethnically diverse and liberal districts in the state. He beat six-term incumbent Peggy Maxie, an African American, in the primary and cruised to an easy win.

A month after taking office, Seattle's new legislator was invited to consider a return the courtroom.

In February 1983, the state was rocked by the Wah Mee Massacre in Seattle's Chinatown International District. The state sought the death penalty against two men accused of killing 13 people.

Locke says he got a call from the King County prosecutor's office, asking if he would be interested in helping on the case. Locke says he indicated he would, but it never went further than that.

Downing, who prosecuted the Wah Mee case, doesn't recall contacting Locke but said prosecutors had wanted to learn as much as they could about Seattle's Chinese-American community.

In the Legislature, Locke's agenda fit well with his liberal district. He introduced a gay-rights bill and co-sponsored income-tax bills three times. As a chief budget writer, he oversaw state spending increases and joined former Gov. Booth Gardner's 1989 campaign for an income tax.

But on crime he was sometimes at odds with fellow Democrats.

He wanted to halve the blood-alcohol level for a drunken-driving charge. (It was an unsuccessful effort, but as governor he helped pass a law that reduced the blood-alcohol level to 0.08 percent from 0.10.) He also proposed a law to permit the state to seize the car of anyone with two drunken-driving convictions within five years.

In 1985, he formed an alliance with Republicans and helped draft legislation requiring that crime victims be notified of key trial dates and that their statements be filed with the court.

In 1989, he helped lead the charge in the only successful override of a veto by Gardner, who had excised portions of a bill that increased penalties for burglaries.

It wasn't a consistent pattern, though. He joined with the House's most liberal Democrats in originally voting against an anti-drug package in 1989 because it included expanded police wiretap powers.

And there is an indication Locke has had mixed feelings about the death penalty. He says he has never wavered in his support of it, and that he has always believed Gladstone and Webster should have been hanged.

But in 1990, while representing Southeast Seattle in the Legislature, Locke wrote a letter to the state parole board saying the opposite.

"I was not in favor of seeking the death penalty against Gladstone and Webster," he wrote. He indicated that he would have opted out of the case had it advanced to the penalty phase and that another prosecutor would have taken over.

The letter was written at the request of the victim's widow when the two inmates were appearing for their first parole hearing.

In recent interviews, Locke could not explain the contradiction. He said he recalls writing the letter but doesn't know why he said he opposed seeking the death penalty.

Gladstone and Webster came close to winning their freedom in the mid-1990s, but the parole board decided to keep them behind bars.

Bringing up the past

For some, it's no surprise that Locke plays up his past as a prosecutor.

"When you hear someone was a prosecutor, you believe from the beginning they're tough on crime," said Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But, she said, "Anytime an elected official wants to draw on past experiences, that's fair. I talk about the time I worked at the post office for a few years.

"It is part of life experience that people are interested in, and they want politicians with varied life experiences."

Locke and Carlson both brought up past experience in their first campaign appearance before the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs.

Carlson touted his leadership of the "three strikes, you're out" and "hard time for armed crime" initiatives and made note of the fact his father was a police officer. Locke talked about his career as prosecutor. "I prosecuted drunk drivers, murderers and every other kind of criminal."

Still, Republicans hope to paint the governor as soft on crime.

Last week the state GOP unveiled television ads that criticize Locke for vetoing bills that would have brought methamphetamine-related crimes under the state's three-strikes law.

"Governor Locke has not only not taken any leadership on this issue, he has actually tried to stop the Legislature from cracking down on this scourge to our communities," party Chairman Don Benton said in a statement.

Locke vetoed the bills because he said three strikes should be reserved for violent crime, and he worried that it could lead to other "inappropriate" expansions of the law. A committee of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys agreed with Locke's veto.

Locke did sign a bill in 1998 doubling fines for meth production.

Locke says past experiences and events, such as the Gladstone and Webster case, have strengthened his resolve for the death penalty while also giving him a better understanding of society's harshest penalty.

Gladstone and Webster were on his mind when the fate of triple murderer Jeremy Sagastegui came to the governor's desk in October 1998. Sagastegui had murdered a toddler and two women near Kennewick.

Locke rejected a last-minute appeal for clemency.

"It was very emotional for me," he said. "I had to go out for a walk after that. I had to be by myself - knowing that, in a few minutes, a person was going to die."

Now, as Locke's political future rests with voters in November, Gladstone and Webster are seeking freedom. Gladstone will again face the parole board this month; Webster will follow later this fall.

Tracy Parker, the slain taxi driver's widow, said she will again oppose their parole but is not certain whether she will seek Locke's help.

"In my heart of hearts, I know that I probably should forgive them, but I just can't," Parker said. "I watched my daughter grow up without a father."

Today, imprisoned at the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe, Webster says he thinks of McLelland's family often: "I pray for them. . . . I hope good things happened to them."

He also thinks about Locke.

Webster has followed his prosecutor's career from behind bars and said he holds no ill feelings toward the man who wanted to see him hanged. He remembers sitting in a prison day room years ago and seeing Locke on television. He had become governor.

"We all have our path to follow," Webster said. `He was just doing his job."

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Gary Locke

Age: 50.

Hometown: Olympia.

Party: Democrat.

Education: Political-science degree, Yale University; law degree, Boston University.

Political experience: Elected to the state House of Representatives in 1982 and served 11 years. Elected King County executive in 1993, governor in 1996.

Work experience: King County deputy prosecutor.

Hobbies: Photography, home repair (plumbing, in particular), working on his car.

Interesting fact: Once, while doing repairs, Locke fell from his roof and broke his back, then spent six months in a body cast.