King Co. judge declines to block arsonist's records requests

A man who's serving 24 years for having the cars of two lawyers firebombed might be creeping out prosecutors by seeking information about them under the Public Records Act, but a judge has ruled he's entitled to keep asking.

King County Superior Court Judge Glenna Hall said she had no authority to bar the arsonist, Allan Parmelee, from making public disclosure requests. Parmelee has filed hundreds of such requests since his incarceration, seeking records on prosecutors, prison guards, state troopers, judges and others who helped put him behind bars.

Alarmed, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg took the extraordinary step of asking the judge not only to let his office ignore Parmelee's pending requests, but to bar him from filing any more unless he first obtained court permission _ an option the Public Records Act does not contemplate. Parmelee sought to harass his staff, Satterberg wrote, and giving him what he wanted could be dangerous.

Hall said that argument stretched the law.

"Here, the requester has been characterized as not only annoying or vocal, but violent," Hall wrote in an opinion published Monday. "Even so, the law requires the court to presume that access to the public records he seeks is in the public interest, and not make him show his purpose."

As for Parmelee's pending requests, Hall said some must be granted _ such as his requests for photographs of King County employees, including judges; lists of names, job titles and pay scales; work e-mails and office phone numbers, which are all public records. Other records he requested, such as personnel files, are exempt.

The prosecutor's office is considering whether to appeal, spokesman Dan Donohoe said Tuesday.

In a telephone interview from McNeil Island Corrections Center, where he is in solitary confinement, Parmelee said Tuesday he was generally pleased with the ruling, and that he's trying to shed light on who the public officials are and how the government works. He believes he was wrongly convicted of arson and that his status as an indigent defendant was improperly removed by the trial court, making it difficult for him to appeal.

"My objective is not to do what they said I was trying to do," Parmelee said. "I'm basically just a guy everybody loves to hate."

He summed up his legal arguments by comparing his case to Seattle's two daily newspapers: "If all of a sudden King County decides they like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, but not The Times, are we going to give the records to one guy and not the other?"

Seattle open-government lawyer Michele Earl-Hubbard, who is not involved in the case, also called Hall's decision on barring future requests correct.

"I completely understand the concerns of the employees," she said. "But there's noting in the statute that gave the court the authority to do that. There's not a right to stop people from asking for public records in the future."

Parmelee was convicted in 2004 at his second trial of first-degree arson in the firebombing of one vehicle belonging to his ex-wife's divorce lawyer and another belonging to an attorney who represented his roommate's ex-girlfriend. His first trial ended in a mistrial because he was found to have personal information about the jurors.

In addition to requests from other agencies, Parmelee has asked the state attorney general's office for records including "working hours, schedules ... (and) photographs in color" of eight current and former assistant attorneys general. In a phone conversation, Parmelee told one, Brian Maxey, that he might pay a visit to his house; another, Sara Olson, received a letter from Parmelee that referenced the firebombings and said she was acting "so unprofessionally (as) to invite some similar response."

Under Washington's Public Records Act, much personal information is exempt from disclosure. But if a record is public, agencies can't decide to release it to one person but not another. There is no limit on how many requests someone can file.

The state has won previous orders against disclosing specific information to Parmelee. A Thurston County Superior Court judge granted the Department of Corrections' request to withhold staff photographs, but that order _ along with two of Parmelee's cases from Clallam County _ are to be argued in the state Court of Appeals in May, said one of his lawyers, Michael Kahrs of Seattle.

In another case, though, Parmelee won more than $19,000 in fees from the Department of Corrections because it delayed providing him with certain records. Parmelee has not seen the money because the state has taken steps to have it directed toward his criminal fines.

Kahrs praised Hall's ruling.

"Judge Hall has tried to balance the interests of a public records requester with the intent of the law and the interests of the employees of the agency," he said. "She was just following the law."