FWS photo
INSIDE Guest column
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Read more on how to attract hummingbirds this spring on page 5.
Joe Reilly music
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Man faces felony
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VOLUME 36, NUMBER 9 • February 26, 2013
Level 3 sex offender expected Parties square off over challenge to move to San Juan Island to county charter review changes By Scott Rasmussen Journal editor
Two years after his request to relocate to San Juan Island was denied by state corrections officials, a level 3 sex offender is expected to make the island his home sometime in the near future. Local authorities last week received a letter from David Franklin Stewart notifying them of his intent to relocate to San Juan Island, where he and his wife bought a home in the Bridle Trails Estates neighborhood in 2004. The 60-year-old, convicted a year earlier of first-degree rape of a child, is no longer under supervision of the state Department of Corrections and is free to come and go, and live, where he chooses, San Juan County Sheriff Rob Nou said. “He’s served his time, so to speak,” Nou said. “Two years ago we had two community meetings that were well-attended and we were very upfront at that time in saying that in 22 months he would no longer be under corrections’ supervision.”
As a registered sex offender, Nou said that Stewart must notify the Sheriff’s Department of his place of residency within three days after moving to a new location. Stewart, who, as a Level 3 sex offender, is considered at “high-risk” to re-offend, served seven and a half years in prison and two years of DOC-supervised probation following his conviction in 2003. He has lived in the Sultan area, located near the Monroe state penitentiary, following his release from prison. Nou said the letter from Stewart indicated that he could be relocating to his San Juan Island home as early as Monday, but that as of Tuesday, he had not been at the Sheriff’s Office to register his place of residency. According to the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department sex-offender website, Stewart admitted to a 30-year history of sexually assaulting boys and girls as young as one to two years of age, as well as teens. He failed to complete a sex offender program while in prison for lack of progress. Stewart’s request in 2011 to relocate to San Juan Island prompted a series of protests on the courthouse lawn and a flurry of letters to DOC from local residents asking that his request to move to
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See offender, page 4
Ruling on merits of the case is expected before April By Steve Wehrly Journal reporter
What’s the problem? In 2012, that question was asked again and again by critics as the Charter Review Commission fashioned its amendments to the county charter. Now, ironically, that same question was posed in legal language by San Juan County Prosecuting Attorney Randy Gaylord in support of the charter amendments and against a legal challenge filed days after the amendments were approved in November by the voters. With Superior Court Judge John M. Meyer of Skagit County presiding -- San Juan County Superior Court Judge Don Eaton recused himself from the proceedings -- the case of Carlson, Gonce & Bossler v. San Juan County reached its climax Feb. 19
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before a packed courtroom inside the San Juan County Courthouse. Although numerous legal and procedural issues were raised, the focus of plaintiffs’ attorney Stephanie O’Day’s case was that “fundamental voting rights are affected” by residency districts of unequal population, even when, or perhaps especially when, all of the county’s voters are allowed to vote for all candidates. “Because fundamental voting rights are affected, the court must apply a ‘strict scrutiny’ test,” O’Day said. “Strict scrutiny” is the highest standard for determining the constitutionality of a statute, often a statute dealing with the Bill of Rights (the First through Tenth Amendments) or the Fourteenth Amendment. O’Day argued that because residency districts violate the “one-man, one-vote” requirements of both the Washington state and U.S. constitutions, the charter should be subject to strict scrutiny under Fourteenth Amendment principles of due process and equal protection of the law. She cited Washington and U.S. constitutions and constitutional cases as the basis for asking Judge Meyer to halt the election for the threeperson council, scheduled
for April 23. Gaylord countered with statutory and constitutional law citations of his own, asserting that because voting under the charter amendments is county-wide and because “all voters vote for all candidates,” the charter was “not an infringement of anybody’s fundamental right to vote.” The action of the CRC, according to Gaylord, is therefore “not a constitutional decision, but instead is a political decision,” that should be judged by the lesser standard of “rational basis” rather than strict scrutiny. Since the contentious CRC meetings of a year ago, local voters have approved the three charter amendments replacing the sixperson council with a threeperson council, elected (by district) three members to the six-member council, and picked candidates countywide to campaign for the three-member council in the upcoming April election. Gaylord said the plaintiffs have failed to show that the county-wide voting scheme, which was used by the county prior to enactment of the charter in 2005, had stopped or even diluted one voter’s vote. Residency districts apply to where a candidate lives, not to who may vote for See charter, page 3
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