Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

So you didn’t go home after that one and lose a lot of sleep over Charles Rodman
Campbell?
Dimmick: No. Philosophically, however, I think the death penalty is outdated because
it’s too expensive. It breaks communities. Small communities can’t afford to try a death
penalty case and put forth all the experts needed, all the defense money that’s needed.
You might as well put them away and throw away the key is now my philosophy. But when
I wrote a dissent … when I wrote on one of those (death penalty) cases, I had researched
and found that the governor had commuted cases where they were supposed to have life
without possibility of parole, and they had been given clemency by the governor. And so
it didn’t really mean what it said when you’re putting them away forever. There’s always
some way out.
Hughes: With all these multiple appeals —
Dimmick: It’s too expensive.
Hughes: If you ruled the world would you change that? Have we just gone too far in
allowing appeals to drag on?
Dimmick: I think we have. I mean you can’t take away any more rights than you’ve now
given them, which is public defense. You can’t do that. But in order not to bankrupt the
counties and wherever it happens, you might as well do something differently.
Dimmick: That Campbell case came over here when I was on this court.
Hughes: It did?
Dimmick: Yes, because they appealed and then it goes to the federal system.
Hughes: What happened then?
Dimmick: He got it. He went through the ropes – all of his avenues of appeal.
Hughes: My favorite Carolyn Dimmick decision – from the standpoint of both wisdom
and wonderful writing — is the one from 1984 where you wrote for a unanimous State
Supreme Court in a “wrongful birth” case that made headlines. A woman and her
spouse sued a doctor who performed sterilization. Despite the tubal ligation, the woman
became pregnant and delivered a healthy, normal child. In the final analysis, you said it
was impossible to weigh with reasonable certainty the costs of raising a child against the
82