The following article has been sent by a user at TACOMA PUBLIC LIBRARY via Proquest, an information service of the ProQuest Company LITTLE WAS CAUTIONED REPEATEDLY, FILES SHOW -- OFFICIALS, ATTORNEY FOUND JUDGE'S OUT-OF-COURT CONTACTS WITH JUVENILE BOYS DISTURBING [SECOND Edition] Seattle Times Seattle, Wash. Sep 16, 1988 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Authors: ERIC NALDER, PETER LEWIS Pagination: A1 ISSN: 07459696 Abstract: Files released today by King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng's office reveal that Judge Gary Little had been told in 1981 by court and juvenile detention officials - as well as a youth's attorney - that he should stop visiting young males who had appeared before him in court. The file contains details of interviews the prosecutor's office had with juvenile male offenders who visited Little at his home and his Sinclair Island cabin. In one case, Little visited a boy at a group home for troubled youths. The file also contains statements from probation officers and lawyers, as well as some statements attributed to Little himself. There was no evidence that Little had sex with any of the boys, but one man has told The Times that the commission did get a statement from him in 1981 that Little made sexual advances toward him when he was a high-school student in the early 1970s. Copyright Seattle Times Sep 16, 1988 Full Text: Files released today by King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng's office reveal that Judge Gary Little had been told in 1981 by court and juvenile detention officials - as well as a youth's attorney - that he should stop visiting young males who had appeared before him in court. The file contains details of interviews the prosecutor's office had with juvenile male offenders who visited Little at his home and his Sinclair Island cabin. In one case, Little visited a boy at a group home for troubled youths. Little had threatened two of the teen-agers with stiff sentences in detention, the files show. But after visiting the boys, the judge reduced or lifted those sentences. The youngsters fit a similar physical and emotional profile: they were all slim and fair, and were having problems with their families. Little killed himself last month after learning that newspaper stories that he had sexually molested young men in the late 1960s and early 1970s were about to be published. Little had been privately admonished by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct in March 1982 for improper out-of-court contacts with male juvenile offenders who had come before him at Juvenile Court in the early '80s. Some lawmakers and others are now criticizing the commission, saying its secrecy prevented the public from having important information about the judge's conduct. While the commission authorized the prosecutor to release part of the files on Little, it prohibited release of correspondence between its office and the commission, including information that the prosecutor sent to the commission as a complaint in 1981. The commission also officially turned down a request from two state legislators to turn over the entire file on its investigation of the Little case. One of the legislators who requested the commission files, Sen. Kent Pullen, R-Kent, who chairs the Senate Law and Justice Committee, said the refusal to open the files will fuel support for two constitutional amendments that his committee plans to introduce to the Legislature. If approved by lawmakers, the proposed amendments would go to voters in November 1989. One amendment would change commission procedures to require greater openness, Pullen said. The other would require judges to stand for election on the November ballot. The constitution now says judges are elected in the September primary if any candidate gets a majority of the votes, or if there are only one or two candidates. The files released today show that two boys told authorities that Little said he would pay for their educations and give them other special favors, if they followed his guidance. One boy refused to cooperate with the authorities after he learned that giving information about out-of-court contact with the judge who sentenced him would not affect his sentence or help get him out of detention. The file also contains statements from probation officers and lawyers, as well as some statements attributed to Little himself. There was no evidence that Little had sex with any of the boys, but one man has told The Times that the commission did get a statement from him in 1981 that Little made sexual advances toward him when he was a high-school student in the early 1970s. Much of the information in Maleng's file has already been made public through other reports that were leaked to the press. But items in the file add new information or shed more light on the case, including: -- Jean Rietschel, an attorney representing a boy who visited Little at his island cabin and his home, told the judge in July 1981 that he should remove himself from the case. "She cited rumors about the judge's extra-judicial contacts with (the youth). She said that she didn't know whether anything sexual was going on or not, but it didn't look good,'' said former King County deputy prosecutor Linda Walton in a statement contained in the file. -- Walton - who accompanied Rietschel to the July 1981 meeting with Little - warned the judge that he was violating rules that prohibit the imposition of suspended sentences in juvenile court. Little had imposed an extra stiff penalty on the boy for a burglary conviction, but had suspended the detention time and said he would consider a motion to reconsider the sentence. In the meantime, he took the boy to the movies and bought him presents. She said it was improper to keep "detention time hanging over the kid's head.'' -- Little refused to remove himself from handling Rietschel's client, although he acknowledged he had taken a ``personal interest'' in the boy. He said he might remove himself from future cases involving the boy, but he remained as the probation judge. He said he had found the boy a job and was helping him with educational pursuits. -- Rietschel's client, in a statement given to deputy King County Prosecutor Bob Lasnik, told how Little was ``a good friend'' who had taken him to the movies, bought him clothes and books and introduced him to several prominent Seattle businessmen at his Madison Park home and his cabin in the San Juan Islands. At one point, the boy - who was 16 at the time - visited Little's cabin when he was supposed to be in detention, on a sentence imposed by Little. "The judge said he'd help me get a college education by loaning me money if I needed it. He has encouraged me to read more and stay informed on current issues,'' the boy said. "Since the judge came into my life, I haven't been in trouble with the law, and I think I might still be ripping off if he hadn't straightened me out,'' the boy said. -- Another boy, with a long criminal record and reputation for street prostitution, was less cooperative when Lasnik asked him about an overnight visit he had with Little. The boy was then 17, and was described by social workers as small for his age, very immature and showing signs of confusion about his sexual identity. He had a reputation as a street prostitute but denied he was one. The boy acknowledged meeting with Little in private, but ``about this time (the boy) realized the focus of our interview and said he wouldn't answer any more questions about Judge Little.'' The boy asked Lasnik whether his sentence in juvenile court would be nullified if he had contact with Little out of court. When told that wouldn't happen, the boy ``said he would not be a part of anything that would get the judge in trouble.'' Although the prosecutor cited this case as one of the most serious instances of improper out-of-court contact, the commission dropped it and did not admonish Little for it. The judge was admonished for three other cases. -- In another case, for which the judge was admonished, Little visited a troubled boy - who was then 14 - at the Griffin Group Home for boys in Renton. The boy said Little told him he was worth nearly $1 million, that he drove a Mercedes Benz and that he had waterfront property in the San Juan Islands. "The judge told me he had paid for four other guys' education and that they were all lawyers now,'' the boy recalled. The boy said the judge had ``dangled'' a stiff detention sentence over him. He said he had told the judge he was moving to another city, and Little told him he could help him ``because he knew four judges there.'' When the boy's parents heard about this conversation, they objected. Dwayne Mauer, a social worker at the home, told Lasnik that the parents "questioned the appropriateness of him telling (the boy) about his personal finances.'' The boy's mother was puzzled by Little's promise to help with the boy's education. "I didn't understand if it was the court that was going to pay for the expenses, or if the judge had said he'd personally pay for (the boy's) education, but it seemed odd,'' the mother said. Documents prepared by the state Department of Social and Health Services and the court showed that the boy had average intelligence, and that he was having problems in school. -- After Little was admonished by the commission not to have further out-of-court contacts with juvenile offenders, he had such contacts with one boy in 1983 and another in 1985. Details of the 1985 case have already been made public. Further details of the August 1983 case were included in Maleng's file. In that case, Scott Reiman, a public defender in juvenile court, was representing a boy who was charged with burglary. The case that was presented against the boy in the non-jury trial wasn't a strong one, according to a statement given by the prosecutor, Dan Gibson. But Little convicted the boy anyway. The boy was ``distraught'' because of his conviction and the fact that his motorcycle had broken down and he couldn't get home, Reiman said in a written statement. Reiman said the judge commented to him after the trial that he might be able to get some money to get the boy home. The next day, while Reiman was chatting with another lawyer in the hallway, Little walked up and said: "By the way, I've talked to your client and we've worked it out so he'll have to pay a substantial fine and any detention time will be served here over Christmas vacation.'' Reiman said he was shocked that the judge had "worked out'' a deal with his client in private. Reiman said he was torn between reporting what he considered to be a violation of judicial ethics, and the fact that his client had privately worked out a pretty good deal with Little. * * * |