LAKEWOOD, Wash. — It’s been 10 years since a convicted felon with a grudge against law enforcement walked into a Lakewood coffee shop on Nov. 29, 2009 and gunned down four police officers getting ready for their shift. Several people were convicted of helping him afterward.
But families of the four officers are still hurting, and they’re still frustrated by the legal process that has left one loose end.
There were a slew of charges against seven people, mostly for rendering criminal assistance, but also unlawful possession of firearms. The prosecutor’s office fought for maximum time for anyone who aided suspect Maurice Clemmons in his police officer assassination.
Of the seven, one was acquitted after serving a year. Five others had their sentences overturned or reduced and got out early. All of Clemmons’ accomplices are out of prison, except one – alleged getaway driver Darcus Dewayne Allen.
“There's no question in my mind that he knew, if not at the time definitely immediately afterwards, when he's driving him from the scene,” said Lakewood Police Chief Mike Zaro.
Allen has been locked up for 10 years, and the family wants to keep it that way. In Allen’s first trial, aggravating factors led a judge to sentence him to 420 years in prison. But any satisfaction the families might have gotten from the exceptional sentence would be short-lived, as the case was appealed to the state’s highest court. And that’s where the prosecution’s case began to unravel.
"We'll be glad when the trial is over with,” said Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett, who was the chief criminal deputy prosecutor at the time. “We want to give the family closure."
The prosecutor’s office began building their case from day one. The first case against Allen seemed solid. Evidence shows he was driving the car that morning, but the question was whether he knew about Clemmons’ plans.
The prosecutor’s argument was that Allen was an accomplice if he knew or should have known about Clemmons’ plans to kill police officers that morning. But on January 15, 2015, the Supreme Court weighed in, and it disagreed with the lower courts, saying it wasn’t a matter of whether Allen could have known, should have known, the aggravating circumstances only applied if he did know.
Justices overturned the verdict, threw out the aggravated charges, and called for a new trial, finding among other things, “the prosecuting attorney’s statements were improper” and “the Jury was influenced by the improper statement of law.”
The second trial culminated last December with the high court once again ruling against the lower courts, throwing out the aggravated charges once and for all, and ordering a third trial against Allen.
“It is frustrating, and you know that what they want to do is to be able to, I don't want to say move on, but they want to know that there's some closure,” Zaro said. “And it's 10 years later, and they don't have it for one reason or another.”
Robnett says she shares in the families’ frustration.
“I can't imagine how difficult this must be for them to be facing another trial 10 years after the fact,” she said.
