Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

the nation, where you’re appointed and you run against yourself. That kind of thing. We
recommended it but it didn’t go over.
Hughes: An appointed judiciary as opposed to being elected? Is that some kind of hybrid
plan?
Dimmick: Appointed and then you’ve got to run against yourself. You have to have some
sort of an election. But that was the recommendation. However, it was never going to go
in our Legislature and our area because people still like the right to put their name up and
run as they feel like it.
Hughes: On the Superior Court you said that your judicial philosophy was to use a lot of
experts. “I have an alcohol expert,” you once noted, to deal with driving while intoxicated
cases, and “in every criminal case I have a pre-sentence investigation.” Is that sort of a
hallmark of your approach?
Dimmick: Everybody did too.
Hughes: So that was no big deal.
Dimmick: Everybody had a pre-sentence in court.
Hughes: But this notion of using experts. Is Carolyn Dimmick the kind of judge who really
wants to get all the information she can get?
Dimmick: Yes. … I mean you can’t possibly know everything about every subject that
comes in front of you. So I certainly benefited by listening to the experts.
Hughes: And what were the kinds of cases that really made you sort of scrunch forward
and furrow your brow?
Dimmick: Well, it’s when somebody would come in with a mental illness defense, where
we would get a couple of psychiatrists. And you would do interviews with them and try
to figure out whether the (defendants) were really mentally ill or just trying to beat the
system.
Hughes: Do you have any skepticism on that score that you developed over years on the
bench?
Dimmick: Well, I’m not too high on psychiatrists. For one thing, I don’t think people level
with them so they can really do their jobs. And I’m not sure that they can read people that
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