'Tenacious and well-informed, the worst kind': retired Supreme Court Justice Charlie Wiggins

Andrew Binion, Kitsap Sun Published 6:15 a.m. PT April 21, 2020

Charlie Wiggins didn’t set out to be a state Supreme Court justice, a judge, or really even an appellate lawyer.

“I didn’t give any thought early on to becoming a judge,” said Wiggins, 72, of Bainbridge Island, who retired from the state’s high court at the end of March after being elected in 2010. “I had no idea how one became a judge.”

Originally from southern Alabama, Wiggins became an officer in the Army after graduating from Princeton University, where he was in the ROTC program. He met his first wife, an Oregon native, in law school at Duke University, which drew him to Seattle where he landed a job at a small law firm -- he was the fifth lawyer in the office.

It so happened that the senior partner at the firm, the late Malcolm Edwards, regarded as the “architect of appellate law” in the state, was in the process of revising and rewriting the appellate rules. Lawyers across state wanted to learn the new rules and the firm was flooded with requests by lawyers to take their cases to the next level.

Wiggins, as a young lawyer in 1976, found himself at the right place at the right time to learn the ropes of appellate law, the stage where trials are reviewed for errors.

“As in probably every profession, when you come in, the new kid on the block does what the old man doesn’t have time to do,” Wiggins said. “That’s what happened. I ended up doing a lot of appeals. I did well at it, and I liked it and I was able to build up a nice practice.”

Over time, he said, he watched others advance to become judges.

“You think, ‘Wait a minute, I beat that person in a case, or I helped that guy out, or I was on the other side of that woman and we were both pretty good,’” he said, adding: “I was a little skeptical about it at first, but I decided to give it a try.”

Retired State Supreme Court Justice Charlie Wiggins of Bainbridge Island (Photo: contributed)

Wiggins went 2-1 in elections

He was appointed in 1995 to a seat on the Division II Court of Appeals by former Gov. Mike Lowery. When Wiggins ran the same year to keep the seat he lost to John Turner, who in the voter pamphlet cast Wiggins as a “political appointee” and “career appellate lawyer from a large Seattle law corporation.”

Wiggins’ signature bowtie may not have helped, either. After leaving office, Wiggins formed a private appellate practice on Bainbridge Island.

“Local lawyers still joke about how Wiggins might be a justice today if he hadn’t learned to tie a bowtie,” journalist Eric Scigliano wrote in a 2010 Seattle Met magazine profile as Wiggins launched his high court campaign against former Justice Richard Sanders. Wiggins won the election by about 13,000 votes out of nearly 2 million cast.

During Wiggins' campaign for a second term, he discovered that he had run afoul of powerful people who had apparently taken exception to his votes on cases that had come before the court.

In 2016 two political action committees backed by Bill Gates, Paul Allen and others gave about $1 million dollars to run television ads opposing Wiggins and supporting his opponent.

“I don’t run in those circles with those folks, but what I understand the issue was charter schools,” Wiggins said, adding: “Apparently I voted wrongly.”

Wiggins won with 57 percent of the vote. "It's not a landslide, but I was very proud of it," he said. "At least I didn't lose it like I lost on the Court of Appeals."

Important decisions

Wiggins said there are times when judges have to make rulings they wish they didn’t have to make.

“I think the vast majority of all judges want to do what is right,” Wiggins said. “They want to follow the law, bring about a just result. That doesn’t mean it’s a pretty result, but it’s a result that is just and fair and will be used justly and fairly in the future.”

From his time on the bench, the case that stands out to him the most is the 2012 decision in McCleary vs Washington, where the court ruled that in funding the public school system the state had not made “ample provision.”

Wiggins most people might not understand the work the Supreme Court partly because many get their idea of what goes on “behind those closed doors” from television and movies, and school finance doesn't make the most compelling material.

“You aren’t going to get a movie about contemplating what to do when the Legislature won’t appropriate enough money for schools,” he said. “It just doesn’t have that appeal.”

Often the work of the court is on matters that are highly technical -- such as how juries are picked -- but can have a powerful effect on people.

One example of that is a 2013 opinion he authored in the case of State vs. Saintcalle, where a black man convicted of murder at trial saw, during jury selection, prosecutors remove the single black prospective juror from deciding the case. That juror was a woman who worked as a middle school counselor and had been questioned by the prosecutor far beyond other prospective jurors.

The opinion written by Wiggins resulted in a rule for all jury trials in the state that attempts to eliminate the “unfair exclusion of potential jurors based on race or ethnicity.”

“This is not fair and how can we fix that,” Wiggins said of the decision.

Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud arrived on the court it began deciding the case.

"Basically what he did was alert the parties that he was willing to look at this anew," McCloud said. "As a result, litigants started briefing the issue far more fully. A large part of the result of the new rule being adopted was because he acknowledged this as a problem and invited input from both sides."

Bainbridge was home to four statewide officials The number of statewide officials who call Bainbridge Island home has given Kitsap County a higher profile than what is expected of a county with 270,000 people.

In addition to Gov. , Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz and Wiggins, Bainbridge Island is also home to McCloud, who knew Wiggins before they became justices. Wiggins had volunteered as an official observer for McCloud's son in 2008 when he set a Guinness Book speed record for targeted cuts with a samurai sword.

Both being from the island allowed the two justices to carpool together to Olympia. While on the road, the person not driving would read briefs out loud, and McCloud took the opportunity McCloud to learn from a justice who had arrived at the court a few years before her.

“In the privacy of the car you can ask a lot of stupid questions,” McCloud said.

The long rides led to lively debates not just on law, but religion, where scripture took the place of statute -- McCloud is Jewish, Wiggins is Christian.

When asked what kind of debater Wiggins is, McCloud said: “Tenacious and well- informed, the worst kind.”

The most intractable conflict between the two appeared to be one of scheduling. McCloud characterized Wiggins, a former military officer, as believing if a person isn’t 15 minutes early then a person is late, a philosophy McCloud admitted she did not share.

McCloud said she and Wiggins shared a common judicial philosophy that research is key.

“I think we also share the philosophy that the Constitution embodies the values that our country is based on, and that those values remain constant, but they always have to be applied to new and different facts and new and different situations over time,” McCloud said.

Even when in disagreements, McCloud said Wiggins remained respectful.

“He is an old-fashioned gentleman in how he conveys respect in his manner and in his graciousness, and he never lost that,” she said.

Right time for retirement

Though Wiggins retired, and Inslee appointed last week former Pierce County Superior Court Judge G. to fill his seat, Wiggins remains officially a “pro tem” justice. This allows him to finish cases he was working on, an extension he said will last a couple of months. If he had finished his six-year term he won in 2016 he would have been 75, the age limit for judges in the state.

“It would have been perfect,” he said, but admitted he is looking forward to other things, like sailing his boat and taking trips with his wife, Nancy.

“This feels pretty good to be unemployed,” he said. “It’s about the first time that’s happened to me in 40 years.”