The mysterious shooting death of a Belfair native is making headlines in a California town east of San Francisco.

Benjamin Merrill, 22, was found shot to death in a Pittsburg, California park at 3 a.m last Tuesday, according to a story in the local Contra Costa Times. Though he’d grown up in Belfair, he’d become a waiter in San Francisco, the story says.

But despite the police’s best efforts, they have no idea how he got there. In fact, they didn’t even know who he was. It took one of his relative’s happenstance appearance in a nearby courthouse to see a sketch of then John Doe to realize it was Merill.

Read the story here.

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Kitsap County Sheriff’s detectives continue to hunt for a suspect or suspects believed to have killed Paymela Faye Long in Illahee Shores last weekend.

Scott Wilson, sheriff’s spokesman, put out a new release Thursday night. You can read it below.

Long story short: there’s not any new information outside of what we reported. But sheriff’s detectives would like to recirculate a call for tips if anyone does know anything about the killing.

“Sheriff’s detectives are pursuing all investigative leads,” Wilson said in the release.

Looks like any help they can get would be greatly appreciated.

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The two candidates for Bremerton Municipal Court judge are facing new challenges less than a week before the votes are counted.

At some point during this month, signs for attorney Ed Wolfe, who is challenging incumbent judge James Docter, began appearing with small placards that say “RATED Highly Qualified” (see photo that was emailed to me by a Docter supporter).

In a letter to the editor in our paper today, Kevin “Andy” Anderson (a lawyer who works as a county prosecutor) contends that the Kitsap County Bar Association poll results fly in the face of that placard. I’ll let you decide: the results, as published to votingforjudges.org, are thus:

Of 63 attorneys, Ed Wolfe was rated:

“Highly Qualified” by 15 lawyers;

“Qualified” by 17 lawyers;

“Not Qualified” by 26 lawyers;

And five abstained.

UPDATE: I spoke with Wolfe today (Monday) about the signs. He said he was “disappointed,” by my blog post, and that with the bar association poll results, “I feel comfortable saying I’m highly qualified based on that representation.”

He said that the poll was still taken by only 63 lawyers, even though there are hundreds of attorneys in the county.

Meanwhile, Port Orchard resident Stephen P. Miller has filed a complaint with the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) against incumbent James Docter. His allegation: that Docter stated, during a Bremerton Kiwanis candidate forum Oct. 8, he, nor his clerks, had found evidence that Wolfe had handled a criminal trial in Bremerton Municipal Court. Miller believes that a “reasonable person” would conclude Docter was using city paid clerks to help with his campaign.

I called Docter about the allegation, and he said he felt it was “completely baseless.” He said he’d asked a clerk at lunch one day if she could recall anytime Wolfe had in fact handled a criminal trial in order to double check his own memory.

I also checked with Theresa Ewing, Bremerton Municipal Court administrator. Ewing said she must remain neutral in elections: “We serve whoever wears the robe.”

She explained she was in the court’s break room at lunch one day when Docter and a clerk discussed if Wolfe had handled any such trials. But she was adamant that such discussions did not happen while on the city’s paid time.

The complaint won’t be followed up by the PDC until after election day.

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I confirmed with Bremerton City Attorney Roger Lubovich today that yes, a new courthouse property is getting a serious look.

City officials are currently studying the Kitsap Bank location at Sixth Street and Park Avenue, Lubovich said.

But it’s not yet time to slam the gavel down on a project long in the works. Kitsap Bank President and CEO James Carmichael told me Tuesday that despite having also having two other locations on Sixth Street (including the former West Sound Bank at Sixth and Pacific, which was once a candidate itself for the courthouse), his company is still getting good use out of the Park Avenue location.

The property is not for sale, but Carmichael said they’re getting a building appraisal. The city is having an appraisal completed as well on the approximately 12,000 square foot building, Lubovich said.

I’ll have a full story in Wednesday’s edition.

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It’s official: King County will send inmates to Kitsap if the Green River floods sometime this year or in 2010.

The Associated Press confirmed today that the King County Council has approved an agreement to bring up to 114 to Kitsap if the Green River floods the Regional Justice Center in Kent.

I spoke with Ned Newlin, Kitsap County’s chief of corrections, today about the logistics. He said King County will get space in an unused, older portion of the jail and inside the soon-to-be closed work release facility. King County will pay $28 per day, per inmate for such use, and will provide its own corrections staff (hence why they’re not paying the regular $80 per inmate per day that cities like Port Orchard pay).

King County is bracing for possible Green River flooding because of a weakened abutment at the Howard Hanson Dam.

(Photo of King County’s Regional Justice Center from King County’s web site.)

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Some elk hunters from Shelton recently “found themselves staring down the barrels of guns pointed at them by uniformed officers of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe,” earlier this month, according to a story in the Port Townsend Leader.

Reporters Barney Burke and Allison Arthur wrote Oct. 7 that the hunters, using muzzleloaders (an antique style firearm) were on private property in Brinnon between Highway 101 and the Hood Canal, and had permission from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife to hunt elk.

But the officers thought the men were hunting illegally — and took out their own guns in investigating. The hunters were handcuffed two hours.

The misunderstanding was eventually cleared up, but left the hunters “upset and angry,” the story says.

I spoke with Karl Gilje, chief of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s Department of Public Safety, this morning. He said that the investigating officers in the case were under the tribe’s department of natural resources, and not under his public safety department. They do sometimes assist one another at times, Gilje said, but not during the incident Oct. 3.

A full investigation is underway in the case by the state department of fish and wildlife and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Peninsula Daily News.

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You had to be living under a rock last week to avoid what has become known as the saga of “Balloon Boy.” What I’m most curious about is what exactly Larimer County’s lawyers will announce are the official criminal charges in the case.

According to CBC, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said Sunday that charges his department is recommending include conspiracy, making a false report to authorities, attempting to influence a public servant and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Some of those are felonies.

And what about federal charges? The Federal Aviation Administration is also conducting an investigation.

The Denver Post says the couple who allegedly orchestrated such a hoax faces up to six years in prison and a “seven figure fine.”

What makes this most interesting in my mind is how the couple will be prosecuted. Why? Because never before has an attorney in Colorado (let alone anywhere) been greeted with such a fact pattern.

All cases are unique. But somewhere in Colorado’s (and the United States’) criminal code, they’ll have to pick and choose laws they believe were violated (there is no “Pretending my kid’s in a UFO-like balloon so I’ll get the reality TV show I’ve always wanted” statute).

Constitutionally, they’ll have to find laws passed by lawmakers who could’ve never dreamed up what took flight over Colorado last week. And they’ll do it under the intense lens of the media. That, in my book, is a challenge.

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Washington was the first state to create a sex offender registry so the community would know when such offenders would be released from prison. I’ve often wondered if there are other serious crimes that our lawmakers might require offenders to register for upon their release from prison.

Turns out there already is one: Arson.

According to the Associated Press, California, Illinois and Montana already maintain a database of convicted arsonists that helps law enforcement keep track of them. Not quite a community notification system, but a definite clampdown on those convicted of a specific crime nonetheless.

Following some devastating California fires, the state’s senators are proposing a federal registry to keep an eye on serial arsonists.

“It’s not going to solve every arson-related thing. It’s not meant to do that,” William Soqui, chief of the fire department in Cathedral City, Calif. told the Associated Press. “It’s meant to give investigators another tool, to help them narrow down the list of suspects and to keep track of these people who have been convicted of a crime.”

Photo by Larry Steagall of the Kitsap Sun. (No, it’s not an arson fire.)

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A debate over the results of the Kitsap County Bar Association’s Judicial Preference Poll ignited this month, after Silverdale attorney Ron Templeton called the poll a “popularity contest.” (Read the full story here.)

Such a debate just wouldn’t be “lawyerly” if it didn’t involve some case law.

Bremerton attorney Stan Glisson, in responding to Templeton’s accusation that Bremerton Municipal Court was a venue for “dog bites and traffic infractions,” invoked the legendary case Marbury v. Madison. The case opinion by John Marshall in 1803 was the first time the US Supreme Court declared something unconstitutional, establishing the idea that the courts could keep in check the executive and legislative branches of government.

The heart of the case was a last minute appointment by President John Adams of a justice of the peace, among many “midnight” appointments Adams made in an effort to fill the judiciary with federalists on the eve of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency.

“In 1803, few people probably cared whether William Marbury won a commission as a local justice of the peace,” Glisson wrote. “But Marbury v. Madison established our current concept of judicial review, without which the separation of powers and our concept of government is effectively meaningless.”

In Templeton’s response, he used the same case to make his point — that challenger Ed Wolfe, who’s facing incumbent Judge James Docter this fall for the municipal court seat, isn’t unqualified to serve as judge. James Madison and William Marbury, the men involved in the case, had little in the way of judicial experience, Templeton wrote.

“Both Marbury and Marshall were well-respected for their intellect,” he wrote. “However, under the ‘experience’ test enumerated by some of our colleagues today, neither Marbury or Marshall would be judged ‘qualified’ to fill the judicial positions to which they were appointed.”

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Here are the four letters exchanged by the attorneys in the great 2009 Kitsap County bar poll debate.

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