The Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Washington State University owed a legal duty of care to Sam Martinez, the 19-year-old Bellevue freshman who died of acute alcohol intoxication during a 2019 fraternity hazing ritual, sending his parents' wrongful death case back to King County Superior Court.

The Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that a judge who grants a mental health sentencing alternative may also waive the mandatory confinement that normally comes with a deadly weapon finding, a decision that now binds every superior court in the state. The opinion in State v. Perrin was Thursday

A Clallam County Superior Court judge refused Tuesday to grant a mental health sentencing alternative that prosecutors and defense counsel had agreed on, and sent a 34-year-old man to state prison for 23.25 months instead. Judge Brent Basden found that James R. Lundstrom had expressed a willingness

The Quillayute Valley School District Board of Directors heard new firsthand testimony Tuesday night, as a district graduate who now works as a substitute for the district and a high school assistant cheer coach told the board she personally experienced the kind of touching described in evidence at the Larson

A 69-year-old man whose failed scheme to float hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Canada left duffel bags of drugs washed up on Clallam County beaches has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. John Michael Sherwood, a former resident

The first defense filing has landed in Director Nancy Hamilton's lawsuit against the Port Angeles School District, and the complaint itself has been refiled to fix a paperwork error, according to Clallam County Superior Court records reviewed by The Olympic Herald. Attorney Lori M. Bemis of McGavick Graves,

Ballots for the August 4 primary went in the mail on July 17. They are sitting on kitchen counters across Washington right now, next to a voters' pamphlet that tells you what each candidate says about themselves and nothing about who paid to get that message in front of

A 47-year-old man walked into the Sequim Police Department July 16 to ask for a gas card from its human services fund and left in custody, according to a probable cause certification filed in Clallam County Superior Court. Andy Kim, listed in charging papers at a Kent address,

The Port Angeles School District Board of Directors declined on Thursday, July 23, to approve the minutes of its June 18 meeting, the session at which it voted 4-1 to censure Director Nancy Hamilton. The vote keeps the official written record of that night out of public view for

A multi-agency search for two men who disappeared separately at Cape Flattery ended Friday evening with no sign of either, and the trail at the northwestern tip of the contiguous United States has reopened to the public. The operation ended at 6 p.m. Friday, according to the Clallam

Five concerts remain in Sequim's free Music in the Park series, and the next one is Tuesday. Bread and Gravy performs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the James Center for the Performing Arts bandshell, the stage at the Water Reuse Site on the north

A state appeals court has found the defense attorney at a gun trial "plainly deficient" for agreeing to give jurors the name of the 1998 felony that cost his client his firearm rights, after Clallam County Superior Court Judge Brent Basden repeatedly urged him not to. The conviction

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has suspended the Washington education certificate of a tutor employed by the Skokomish Tribe who worked two school years inside Shelton High School, citing a pattern of multiple incidents of inappropriate interactions with students in Mason County and, later, in Nebraska. William Heelan

The Quillayute Valley School District Board of Directors is scheduled to meet Tuesday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Forks High School Library/Media Center, its first regular session since the district paid the Larson judgment and since a closed-door special meeting that ended with

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has permanently revoked the Washington education certificates of three educators in orders signed on the same day, two of them arising from felony convictions in other states. The Final Orders of Mandatory Permanent Revocation were signed July 14, 2026, by Deputy Chief Legal

The Port Angeles School District Board of Directors will hold its regular meeting tonight at 5 p.m. in Room 208 of the Lincoln Center, 905 W. Ninth St.  It is the board's first regular meeting since June 18, when directors voted 4-1 to censure Director Nancy

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has suspended the education certificate of a former Tumwater fourth grade teacher who registered a .185 blood-alcohol reading after school administrators took him to a medical facility on a Monday morning in April 2025. Sean Colgan, who taught at Peter G. Schmidt

The trial of a Sequim man facing child exploitation charges has been postponed after his newly retained defense attorney asked the court to push back the trial date. Carl King, 23, appeared July 2 for a pretrial hearing in Clallam County Superior Court, where Judge Brent Basden granted the continuance

On Monday I filed two public records requests seeking the paper trail behind last week's silencing of the public on the "Judge Ferguson-Brown" Facebook page: who runs it, what was deleted, and who said what, to whom, as the comments disappeared. One request went to

The Clallam County Superior Court has refused to release its own search warrant logs. In a two-page memorandum opinion dated July 13, Judge Simon Barnhart denied my formal Petition for Internal Review, upholding the court administration's blanket refusal to produce the search warrant logs of former Court

A Port Angeles woman charged with assaulting a police officer during a Wednesday welfare check will undergo a mental competency evaluation before her criminal cases move forward, a Clallam County Superior Court judge ordered Friday. Deanna L. Long, 41, appeared in custody Friday afternoon before Judge Brent Basden for what