"Senior status" isn't likely to dilute judge's demanding, compassionate style

When John Coughenour walks through the door separating his chambers from his courtroom, he sees a framed letter from a prison inmate thanking the federal judge for handling his case with care and encouraging him to lead a better life.

Coughenour hung the letter there to remind himself, when facing a defendant, "that this is a person in front of me, not just another case."

When he takes his seat on the dais, he sees another deliberately placed reminder. It's a sign made by an aide poking fun at Coughenour's reputation for exploding at lawyers who make a misstep in his courtroom. It reads: "CHILL OUT."

Over the past 25 years, Coughenour has become a legendary figure on the Seattle federal bench, in part because he is such a study in contrasts.

He is renowned for his compassion when sentencing defendants and his ability to make connections that prompt cards and visits from those he sends to prison.

He is a strict taskmaster who excoriates high-powered lawyers who disrespect the judicial process.

He is a lover of Russian history who has read "War and Peace" eight times. He is a Harley-Davidson rider who sails, skis and enjoys the television crime drama "Law & Order."

Coughenour has handled numerous high-profile trials and delivered scores of controversial verdicts as a Seattle federal judge since 1981. He oversaw the prosecution of terrorist Ahmed Ressam and last year gave him a lighter sentence than the government sought and famously used the occasion to unleash a broadside against secret tribunals and other war-on-terrorism tactics that he said abandon "the ideals that set our nation apart."

He handled the 1998 fraud trial of 12 Montana Freemen, an anti-government group that had a three-month standoff with the FBI in 1996. In 1995, he ruled unconstitutional a Washington law that allowed the state to detain sexual offenders after the conclusion of their prison sentences.

Last Thursday, when he turned 65, Coughenour quietly assumed "senior status," a form of semi-retirement that allows federal judges to hear fewer cases but still earn a full salary.

He minimized the moment; he worked a normal day and plans to keep a full workload for the foreseeable future.

He is changing titles, he said, mainly so the White House can appoint another full-time judge for the Western District of Washington.

Still, it is a fitting occasion to review the career of a man who has shaped the lives of thousands of defendants, lawyers and students, a judge who has been one of the region's most energetic advocates for, and practitioners of, "justice for all."

Small-town credentials

Growing up in Pittsburg, Kan., Coughenour's interest in law was sparked by Ray Letton, a country lawyer who was the father of his best friend, John Letton. A junior-high-school civics teacher heightened Coughenour's interest while presenting an overview of the federal judiciary.

After law school at the University of Iowa, Coughenour and his wife, Gwen, pored over atlases before deciding to live near the water and mountains of Washington state. Coughenour paid his way to interview at Seattle law firms and accepted an offer from Bogle & Gates, then the city's premier firm.

Coughenour was assigned to the federal tax department — his worst subject in law school — and spent months worrying he'd make a huge blunder.

He moved to litigation, which came more naturally, but remained full of doubts.

"I was convinced that I was in over my head and it was only a matter of time before they realized how big a mistake they'd made," he said.

Gwen Coughenour said her husband's worries stemmed from his small-town, small-college credentials, since Bogle & Gates was full of Ivy League graduates.

He decided to leave the pressure behind in 1970 and teach at the University of Washington Law School. But his trajectory was altered again when a Boeing downturn crippled the state's budget and threatened layoffs at UW.

Fortunately, Coughenour's bosses at Bogle & Gates pushed hard for him to come back.

"They surprised me, because I felt like I had really struggled" at Bogle & Gates, Coughenour said. "It gave a real boost to my self-assurance about myself as a lawyer."

Coughenour returned to Bogle & Gates in 1973 and became one of Seattle's top white-collar lawyers. Then-Sen. Slade Gorton recommended him to President Reagan in 1981 to fill a federal court vacancy, and he was confirmed by the Senate. Coughenour was just 39.

Tough on lawyers

Ask any litigator in Seattle to describe the first case they tried before Coughenour, and they use words like "nervous," "scared" and "terrified."

Coughenour is legendary for his eruptions. He believes the reputation is overblown, but admits he has high standards.

"When lawyers misbehave in my courtroom, I think it is my job to let them know," Coughenour said. "I think that people who practice in federal courts ought to be very high-caliber lawyers."

Jeffrey Robinson, a defense attorney at Schroeter Goldmark & Bender, said he has never seen Coughenour blow up at a litigant, only at lawyers who are ill-prepared or long-winded.

Dan Dubitzky, who co-founded Dubitzky and Zarky, said he has occasionally been "atomized" — his word — by Coughenour for erring in his courtroom. Yet he never felt the outbursts were mean-spirited.

"I think he just wanted us to take things as seriously as he did," said Dubitzky. "He made me a much better lawyer."

Coughenour's standards can damage more than a lawyer's ego.

In May 2005, he dismissed a $40 million lawsuit filed on behalf of 16 black students against the Kent School District when one of two plaintiffs' attorneys was late for a pretrial hearing.

Making a connection

Coughenour considers sentencing "the most important thing we do," and he handles the process with tremendous gravity.

Though he has heard thousands of pleas for leniency, Coughenour "remains very much a person who is there in the moment with the person in front of him," said Robert Lasnik, who succeeded Coughenour as chief judge of the Seattle federal court in 2004.

Tom Hillier agrees. Hillier became the federal public defender in Seattle in 1982, and he has watched Coughenour evolve.

Despite having little experience with criminal cases when he became a judge, Coughenour has developed an ability to get through to criminals whom he believes have the potential to change.

"He manages to connect with people in a system that discourages connection," Hillier said.

Coughenour never loses sight of the impact prison has on the lives of defendants and their families.

He does this in part by visiting prisons to chat with people he has sentenced. It is a tradition Coughenour began in 1989, after touring a recently built federal penitentiary in Sheridan, Ore.

While walking the yard with the warden, a prisoner he had sentenced said, "Hi, judge." Coughenour asked the inmate about prison conditions and his plans for life after release. Similar talks followed with two or three other inmates.

Soon, Coughenour was regularly riding his Harley-Davidson to the prison and offering to spend 15 or 20 minutes with anyone he sentenced. He still tries to visit once a year. So many people want to meet with him now that his visits last two days.

Coughenour's interest in inmates lives' echoes a favorite passage from Feodor Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment."

"I'm paraphrasing now, but Dostoevski said you can tell a lot about a people by how they treat their prisoners in their prisons," he said. "That, I think, is quite applicable to this country today."

Coughenour is hotly opposed to mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, which he feels are often "obscenely harsh."

Additionally, mandatory minimums take sentencing discretion away from judges, Coughenour said, and puts it in the hands of prosecutors. For instance, a prosecutor can charge a drug dealer with a lesser crime if he or she provides information that will help build a case against his bosses. Judges have no such authority.

Coughenour also believes long mandatory sentences risk turning good people who've made bad decisions into lifetime criminals, especially if they are young people who do not have a history of crime.

"Is it beyond the realm of possibility that if [criminals] think that society treated them in an unfair way, they don't buy into the social compact? And so they say, 'I've been treated unfairly, and I'm going to get what I can, any way I can, when I get out.' "

"Faith" in Constitution

Many people knew little about Coughenour until he handled the trial of Ahmed Ressam.

Ressam was arrested in December 1999, when he tried to bring in bomb-making materials as he arrived at Port Angeles from Canada. A jury later found him guilty of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

Before he was sentenced, Ressam began cooperating with federal investigators looking into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But when Ressam stopped talking in 2003 and the government failed to persuade him to help prosecute suspected al-Qaida operatives in Canada and Britain, the U.S. attorney sought a 35-year sentence.

Coughenour instead sentenced Ressam to 22 years and, at the sentencing, launched a broadside against the use of secret military tribunals to try suspected terrorists.

"The tragedy of Sept. 11 shook our sense of security and made us realize that we, too, are vulnerable to acts of terrorism," Coughenour said at the time. "Unfortunately, some believe that this threat renders our Constitution obsolete. ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."

Coughenour received harsh criticism from many Republicans, but he never backed off his comments.

He welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that the use of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was illegal.

"Let's just say my faith in the Constitution has been restored," he said.

No one should have been surprised by Coughenour's comments, said attorney Dubitzky.

For one thing, he said, Coughenour has been speaking passionately about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers since 1981.

And, Dubitzky said, Coughenour has never hesitated to reach verdicts or deliver sentences he feels are just, no matter who objects.

That courage may be Coughenour's most endearing trait and most enduring legacy.

"If I'm going to try a case in federal court, and I mean a serious case," said Robinson, the defense attorney, "I would be absolutely thrilled if I drew his name."

David Bowermaster: 206-464-2724 or dbowermaster@seattletimes.com