Bill to create independent prosecutor for police deadly force cases fails in Washington state

A top priority for police accountability groups has died in the Washington State Legislature.

It was the second attempt to launch an independent prosecutor’s office, to pursue cases against police officers accused of misusing deadly force.

Police and county prosecutors opposed the proposal, while families of people who have died during police encounters supported the measure, saying the office would be free from the “inherent” conflicts of interest they say affect local jurisdictions.

The most recent iteration of HB 1579 failed to advance from the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Monday. It would have established an Office of Independent Prosecutions as a separate division within the state Attorney General’s Office.

The state prosecutor would have shared authority with county prosecuting attorneys to charge police officers with misuse of deadly force. In the event of both offices seeking jurisdiction in the same case, the bill instructed the courts to determine “whose prosecution will best promote the interests of justice.”

The Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys argued the bill was unconstitutional because legislators lack the authority to diminish the role of elected local prosecutors.

RELATED: Does Washington state need an independent prosecutor to charge police with misusing deadly force?

“They were trying to transfer the power ... or role of the [local] prosecutor to have first review of the situation, and divest the prosecutor of that and transfer it to the independent prosecutor,” said Jon Tunheim, Thurston County prosecutor and a member of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

The bill also said county prosecutors would face a presumption that they have an inherent conflict of interest.

“We disagree that there’s an inherent conflict of interest in every case,” Tunheim added.

But he would support launching the independent prosecutor's office if local prosecutors could refer cases to the office voluntarily, he said.

“I think we could come together around this idea, build it, and then see what happens, right? And if it’s not working the way everybody thought it might work, we talk again and we figure it out.”

Tunheim said he believes local prosecutors would choose to forward cases to the independent prosecutor, in part because putting police officers on trial is complex and expensive. He said the Attorney General’s Office already offers resources to handle other types of criminal cases.

Advocates of the bill say they’re disappointed that it failed.

In a statement, State Rep. Monica Stonier (D-Vancouver), the bill's sponsor, called it “the best way to ensure fairness and justice for victims of police violence and for the law enforcement officers involved,” adding that the "work on this issue is not finished.”

Katrina Johnson, a member of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, said her group has always envisioned having an independent prosecutor to handle any cases generated by the state’s new Office of Independent Investigations, which is gearing up to review all deadly police encounters.

“If you do all these independent investigations and they go back to the local prosecutor, where there’s already an inherent conflict, we are still nowhere further than where we were before we had an Office of Independent Investigations,” Johnson said.

The power of local prosecutors was the crux of the opposition in the legislature, she added.

“Prosecutors have a lot of power, and it’s hard for people that have a lot of power to cede that power — and that’s exactly what they would be doing," Johnson said.

Law enforcement groups were also strongly opposed to creating an independent statewide prosecutor.

“We take significant issue with the idea of spending $12 million to hire two dozen people whose sole job it is to charge police officers with murder,” said James McMahan, policy director for the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, in his testimony against the bill. “We have seen, and we have every confidence that prosecutors will continue to charge every person — especially police officers — if they are found to commit crimes.”

There have been a handful criminal cases against police officers in Washington state in recent years.

The state Attorney General charged Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer with false reporting (a misdemeanor), and also charged three Tacoma police officers with murder and manslaughter for the death of Manuel Ellis after police violently restrained him in 2020. Both of those cases ended in acquittal by jurors.

The King County Prosecutor is the first local office to criminally charge a police officer since voters passed Initiative-940, which eliminated a legal standard of not charging officers in deadly force cases unless it can be proven they acted with "malice." In 2020, the office charged Auburn police officer Jeffrey Nelson with second-degree murder and first-degree assault in the 2019 death of Jesse Sarey. Nelson still awaits trial.