In all honesty, attorney Mike Spencer never thought he would pursue political office again.
The former county prosecutor, who is trying to get another term decades later, reached the pinnacle of his profession in 1987 when he was elected as judge in Grays Harbor Superior Court at the age of 38. It’s a position he held for five years until he resigned and teamed with two other former prosecutors, Doug Lewis and Curt Janhunen, along with established attorney Tom Brown to create a new law firm.
For the past 22 years, he’s been exclusively in private practice. He’s dabbled as a pro-tem Superior Court judge at times, but he had left the politics behind. He had spent years in the 1970s and the 1980s as a Democrat, but hadn’t attended a partisan political event in decades.
Those choices admittedly came back to haunt him last year when the party leadership and precinct committee officers of the Grays Harbor Democrats challenged him on his Democratic credentials when he expressed an interest in returning to political life and sought the appointment to become prosecutor following the retirement of Stew Menefee.
Publicly, just Spencer and Deputy Prosecutor Katie Svoboda were interested in the position. But the Democrats didn’t trust Spencer and made sure he wouldn’t get on the list. The county commissioners refused to go along with the Democrats, calling it a “political ploy.” And since Gov. Jay Inslee also refused to appoint someone to the position, the prosecutor’s position has been on pause for more than a year now, with Acting Prosecutor Gerald Fuller in the role and an official Attorney General’s opinion stating that the status quo is acceptable until the General Election. The Democrats were questioning Spencer’s background. Why did he resign as a judge? Why was he arrested for domestic violence in 2005? Is he just in this for the money?
These are the questions that circulated and continue to circulate as Spencer made the choice to file for election as prosecutor, now facing Svoboda.
“There’s a lot of talk and a lot of people talking about me, but not many to me,” Spencer said. “Most of it is lies.”
In the primary election, Svoboda was the clear frontrunner, winning with 54.35 percent of the ballots cast. Both advanced to the General Election. Spencer notes that he didn’t do a lot of advertising and is “all in” for the General Election, which typically sees a greater voter turnout that the primary.
Spencer and Svoboda are both running as Democrats.
“Personally, I am not going to allow the Democratic Precinct Committee to dictate who I am,” Spencer said. “And they say I am not a good Democrat. Apparently, that’s what they think. I guess. I’m not going to allow them to say that. I was just unwilling to allow them to dictate that.”
TRAINING
Spencer said he decided to run for prosecutor because he says the “office has fallen apart.” He produces a letter from retired Superior Court Judge Gordon Godfrey, who agrees with his sentiments. Godfrey says the attorneys are ill prepared for trial at times and that he and his fellow judges have tried to seek improvements in the office to no avail. Spencer says most of the 48 attorneys with the Grays Harbor Bar Association who have endorsed his candidacy have also not been satisfied with the way the Prosecutor’s Office runs.
“I’ve experienced it first hand as a pro-tem judge,” Spencer said. “Maybe three months ago during the morning of trial and we have 60 jurors out there and the defense comes to me and says, ‘The prosecutor just gave me things I’d never seen.’ And it was a fact. The prosecutor admitted they hadn’t sent it to the defense and I had to continue the case and, ultimately, Judge Edwards had to dismiss it. You can’t require your right to waive for speedy trial because the prosecutor screwed things up, and he ended up dismissing the charge. … I think I can try a criminal case better than anyone over there right now and I think I can try a civil case just as good as anyone in the county.”
Spencer says it comes down to a lack of training. Over the past few years, at least 14 deputy prosecutors have left the office and the replacements, he says, have never been properly trained. At its heart that is a criticism at Menefee, who was prosecutor for 26 years.
Spencer gives a recent example in which a woman borrowed $10 from her grandmother and gave her a “note” promising payment.
“The girl kept the money and they are prosecuting her for forgery — a felony,” Spencer said. “To file as a felony makes no sense. File that as third degree burglary, maybe. That’s a misdemeanor, but to bring in a jury, security and court reporters all to listen to a case like that. That’s crazy. That’s a reflection on poor judgment. If I was over there, I would require every deputy prosecutor who wants to file a case to run it by me. Most of the time, I’d agree, but sometimes I wouldn’t. I’d say, ‘No. We are not going to waste public funds for that kind of prosecution.’ You need to do good filing decisions. When someone in my office filed something, we filed what they did and we will try what they did.”
Spencer also criticizes the decision by the Prosecutor’s Office to re-file the Brenda Zillyette controlled substance homicide trial in which she is accused of providing the drugs taken by an Elma teenager in an overdose death. Zillyette was convicted of the crime in 2010, but the conviction was thrown out by the state Supreme Court last year, because the charging documents “did not identify the controlled substance that Zillyette allegedly delivered to (the victim) that resulted in (the victim’s) death.” Zillyette had already served her entire prison sentence. Last week, a hung jury came back after the second trial, unable to come to a verdict. Fuller says he’s considering filing the case a third time.
“I think you take your lumps, keep your head down and keep going,” Spencer said. “There’s no purpose served anymore in the prosecution and the excuse I heard is she won’t have any criminal history. If she gets in trouble again, that’s going to be something a judge will consider in spite of the fact there wasn’t a conviction. They are trying a homicide case where the deputy didn’t put in the kind of drug involved in the case. How can that happen? That is so fundamental. They screwed up the first time and now they are trying it for really no purpose?”
Asked if Svoboda would still have a job if Spencer wins the post, he says, “I don’t intend to terminate off the bat. I will evaluate everybody on their merits. I think Katie needs training and I’m willing to give it to her. She is trying cases that don’t need to be tried. There was a recent rape case involving a prostitute that ended with a hung jury. I don’t think the evidence was ever there for the charges she filed.”
JUDGE RESIGNATION
Spencer was appointed Chief Criminal Deputy in 1979 before running and winning the role of prosecutor in 1982. It’s a position he served in for seven years, winning re-election once, until the judge position opened up and he ran and won that seat.
Spencer says after he won, Superior Court Judge John Schumacher called him and poured a glass of scotch.
“I really admired him and he says to me, “You’re way too young for this at 38 years old. You’re one of the youngest people ever to be elected judge.’ He said I would probably not like the job. And he was right.”
In 1992, he resigned.
“I’m a pretty social guy,” Spencer said. “I enjoy people and if you ask any of these judges, you’re really isolated. If you go into Safeway, people call you, ‘Your honor’ and ‘Judge.’ I didn’t like that about being the judge. Secondly, I had kids at that time, who were young and I couldn’t go to a lot of their functions because it was changing my personality. I saw there was incompetence in the bar. And one person who should prevail wouldn’t prevail because the other attorney didn’t know what he was doing. In my mind, I was making decisions that I knew were the wrong choices, but had no choice because the other side was just not doing their job.”
Spencer says if he wins election, he will receive a higher pension since public pensions are based on the highest, recent salary years. But he says that has nothing to do with why he wants the job.
Spencer said he’s also “beyond pissed” that several Democrats have made accusations he left the job because of something to do with alcohol. The Vidette has been unable to confirm the allegations. Spencer said he has a relative with a similar name to his that was picked up on a DUI a couple years ago, but that’s it.
“There was no reason to suspect I would be beaten in an election,” Spencer said.
CIVIL PRACTICE
In private practice, he says he’s mainly concentrated on the civil end of things. He’s represented large companies like State Farm, Safeco, Anchor Bank and Masco Petroleum. That’s a big strength, he says, because he feels he can also help the county with its civil suits.
He says he thinks he could have made a difference and helped end the lawsuit earlier between the Superior Court judges and the county commissioners, which was settled out of court in 2013 after more than a year of fighting.
He also thinks he could help save the county money by contracting civil services out less often. For instance, the Prosecutor’s Office decided to contract out services to defend a lawsuit filed against the county by the timber industry over pay-for-access issues. County Commissioner Wes Cormier had been hoping to avoid the extra expense of defending the lawsuit with outside counsel.
“The commissioners deserve someone in the Prosecutor’s Office who will go to bat for them,” Spencer said. “They need to know they have an attorney that will go up there and kick butt.”
At the same time, Spencer stresses that he would also keep a check on the commissioners and all elected officials to ensure everyone is aware of their open government responsibilities.
ARREST
Spencer said when he was arrested for domestic violence in 2005, it changed his perspective on life. He spent a day and a half in jail before he was released by Municipal Court Judge Paul Conroy. The City Attorney’s Office opted not to charge him for fourth degree assault, and Spencer noted the Aberdeen city attorney has since endorsed him, “and I never approached him or asked him for it, but I don’t think he would do that if he thought I was actually an abuser.”
“I think it opens your eyes that someone can be accused of something and not be guilty,” Spencer said.
A police report obtained by The Vidette using the state Public Records Act shows that Aberdeen Police officers responded to a call of domestic violence on July 15, 2005. An officer arrived on scene and discovered a female victim identified as Spencer’s ex-wife, Elizabeth, in the driveway. “I immediately saw that she had a swollen upper lip,” the police officer wrote in his report. “Her upper lip also had a bleeding laceration on it. I also saw that her left wrist and forearm were bruised and swollen. She appeared visibly shaken and upset. … I smelled alcohol on Elizabeth and asked if she had been drinking. She said she had. She was lucid and did not appear intoxicated.”
She claimed Spencer assaulted her. The officer wrote that the “wounds on her face were more relevant to a fight.” But Spencer disputes that.
Photos taken by the officer show some of her injuries. There’s also a picture that shows a gigantic slash mark on Spencer’s neck.
“I still have that scar,” he says. “Who do you think was angry that day? I had divorced her that day. She came to my house and she started pounding on me.”
“At the beginning, he started hitting me,” she wrote in her one-page witness report. “I fought back and scratched his neck.”
Spencer’s six-page witness statement notes that he had just finalized his divorce that day, she was angry and they had a verbal argument and she started yelling.
“I grabbed her arms at the wrist and told her to stop screaming,” he wrote, worried because he lived next door to the mayor of Aberdeen at the time. “She kept screaming and started kicking me. We fell off to the side of her bed and she hit her arms, then she hit her head on the top corner of our night stand.”
The argument moved from the bedroom to the entry way of the home and Spencer says in the original witness report that he “shoved the door shut as hard as he could and locked it. She may have fallen off the porch.”
Spencer says his relationship with his ex-wife soured after the arrest. She moved away, he says, and died a few months later. He never re-married, although he has adult children from an even earlier marriage. Spencer says he thinks the situation will make him a better prosecutor.
“I lived through a domestic violence situation for many years,” Spencer said. “And I think it opens your eyes that someone can be accused of something and not be guilty, like I was. I think when we talked about this first, I didn’t want to bad mouth anyone, especially someone not with us. It opens my eyes to how easily someone can fabricate something — and that will always stay with me.”
Spencer pledges to make changes to the way the Prosecutor’s Office is handled.
“In my first month, I intend to sit down with everyone and tell them the ground rules,” he said. “For the criminal deputies, I would review every police report that comes through here and be involved on every filing decision and we’ll have training sessions. I don’t plan on cleaning house. I will tell them what I expect of them and if they don’t do what I expect of them, I will terminate them. It’s pretty simple.”
See both Svoboda and Spencer talk during the next Montesano Chamber of Commerce meeting, noon, Tuesday, Oct. 14 at Montesano City Hall.
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