Judge Robert S. Lasnik

 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT SEATTLE

 

ROGER W. KNIGHT,                                    )

                                                                        )

                                    plaintiff,                        )           No.  C02-879L

            v.                                                         )

                                                                        )           DECLARATION BY ROGER W.

CITY OF MERCER ISLAND, ALAN            )           KNIGHT IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF’S

MERKLE, Mayor of Mercer Island, RON       )           REPLY TO MERCER ISLAND

ELSOE, Chief of Mercer Island Police,             )           DEFENDANTS’ OPPOSITION TO

LONDI K. LINDELL, Mercer Island City       )           PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR PARTIAL

Attorney, WAYNE STEWART, Assistant        )           SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Mercer Island City Attorney, FRED                  )

STEPHENS, Director of Department of            )

Licensing, DENNIS BRADDOCK, Secretary  )

of Department of Social and Health Services,    )

GARY LOCKE, Governor of Washington,       )

and SUPERIOR TOWING, a corporation        )

doing business in the State of Washington,         )

                                                                        )

                                    defendants.                   )

____________________________________)

 

            I ROGER W. KNIGHT, declare that:

            On May 20, 2002, we started a trial in City of Mercer Island v. Knight, King County District Court, Bellevue Division, Nos. MIC 84199 and MIC 84268.  Judge Linda Jacke presided on that day.  Because on the previous Friday, May 17, 2002, I raised the issue of adequacy of notice by the Department of Social and Health Service (DSHS) as specifically required by RCW 74.20A.320(1) for any certification of nonpayment of support to the Department of Licensing (DOL) to be valid, Scott Robbins appeared for the City of Mercer Island with a witness from the DSHS.  He also presented me with documents relevant to this issue.  Attached as Exhibit A to this Declaration are these documents.

            Judge Jacke ruled that she lacked jurisdiction to consider the validity of the issue of adequacy of notice by DSHS as required by RCW 74.20A.320(1).  The witness from DSHS left and Mr. Robbins did not enter the documents a copy of which is attached herein as Exhibit A into the record of the Bellevue District Court case.  After the jury was voir dired, selected, and empanelled and trial began, an emergency involving one of the jurors came up and he had to leave.  With five jurors remaining I moved for mistrial and mistrial was granted.

            The next day, May 21, 2002, we had the trial before Judge Janet Garrow.  This time Judge Garrow heard my oral motion to dismiss or at least allow consideration by the jury the issue of whether the DSHS met the notice requirements of RCW 74.20A.320(1) before sending the certification of nonpayment of support to the DOL.  She denied on the grounds that she lacked jurisdiction to consider whether the notice requirements of RCW 74.20A.320(1) were met and would only allow consideration of whether the notice requirements for license suspension were met by the DOL, never mind RCW 74.20A.320(13) which provide that the hearing before DSHS provided within the WorkFirst Act is the exclusive administrative remedy and that the DOL has no jurisdiction to grant any such hearing and in fact, suspended the license without a hearing.  Judge Garrow allowed me to make exceptions to the jury instructions, she denied all of exceptions that I presented based upon the notice requirements of RCW 74.20A.320(1).  I was subsequently convicted of two counts of DWLS without any opportunity to contest the validity of the certification by the DSHS based upon lack of notice required by RCW 74.20A.320(1).  I appealed to the King County Superior Court, No. 02-1-01137-0 SEA.  Given State v. Dolson, (1999) 138 Wash. 2d. 773, 982 P. 2d. 100 and City of Bremerton v. Widell, (June 6, 2002) ___ Wash. 2d. ____, I would like to believe that I have a reasonable chance to win reversal or vacation of these DWLS convictions.  The issue that I have the best chance of winning on is the issue of adequacy of notice required by RCW 74.20A.320(1) and the opportunity to be heard upon such notice.  If I win on this issue the state court system may decide that it has no need to decide the validity of the WorkFirst Act.  Weiss v. Glemp, (1995) 127 Wash. 2d. 726, 731, 903 P. 2d. 455, constitutional issues need not be decided if party asserting them can be granted relief on a non-constitutional issue.

            I reviewed the documents provided to me on May 20, 2002 by Mr. Robbins.  I can confirm that I live in the house at (redacted for this website), Seattle, Washington.  I have no personal knowledge of the events described by C. Legge.  I never saw any such paperwork until it was presented to me on May 20, 2002.  I never picked up any certified mail that contained any documents similar to the Notice of Noncompliance and Intent to Suspend Licenses contained in Exhibit A.  The License Suspension Warning Letters that I had previously received by regular mail in 1997 and 1999 did not contain any notice that I had 20 days to request any kind of hearing.  No license suspension was actually conducted subsequent to either of these letters until, apparently, September 2001.  Not having actually received this document until May 20, 2002, I did not “request a hearing.”

            The issue of the non-impoundment of my automobile on January 21, 2002 never came up in the state court proceeding.  The issue of the validity of impoundment of my automobile on February 2, 2002 never came up in the state court proceeding.  I never had any opportunity to recover any damages arising from the impoundment in the criminal DWLS proceeding.  No evidence obtained in the search was ever presented by the CITY OF MERCER ISLAND, and I therefore had neither opportunity nor reason to move to suppress such evidence.  The search was conducted before the impoundment and therefore, the impoundment was not necessary for the search.  The impoundment is simply irrelevant to the validity of the convictions for DWLS.  Therefore, none of the issues arising from the impoundment can be raised on appeal to King County Superior Court.

            In 1991, I obtained a photocopy of Congressional Globe, 39th Cong. 2d. Sess. page 1571 from the University of Washington’s Suzzalo Hall Library.  I scanned it into a computer file and then converted it to a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) file.  Exhibit B is a true and correct print of this JPEG file.  Because it is hard to read, I used Microsoft Photo Editor to crop out the center portion of this page which contains Senator Lane’s comments.  I then made a printout with Senator Lane’s comments blown up to fill the page and to be easy to read.  Exhibit C is this printout.

            I certify under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States that the foregoing is true and correct.

Dated this 27th day of June, 2002, in Seattle, Washington, respectfully submitted and certified,

 

                                                            ____________________________________

                                                                        Roger W. Knight, pro se

If the back button does not take you there, click Home to go to the Index page of this Antipeonage Act Website, click Enemies for the main Enemies page, click Letters for the Letters page, and click Allies for the Allies page.  Click C02-879L to get to the main page for this case.  Or you can use the Antipeonage Act Site Map.