On the morning of Sunday, November 29, 2009, four officers of the Lakewood Police Department in Washington State died together in Parkland, an unincorporated community south of Tacoma. They were a sergeant and three officers. The deaths were attributed to Maurice Clemmons, a 37-year-old man who had come to Washington on parole from Arkansas and had walked out of the Pierce County Jail on bail six days earlier. Clemmons was never charged. He was killed by a Seattle police officer in Seattle on December 1, 2009, and so no jury ever heard the case against him.
The case was tried instead through the people around him. A man who had worked for Clemmons was charged as his accomplice and convicted of four counts of first degree murder, then won a new trial in the state Supreme Court, then sat through two more trials that ended without verdicts before he pleaded guilty, more than thirteen years after the deaths, to a single count of conspiracy. Five other people were convicted of helping Clemmons after the killings, and the appeals in those cases reached the Washington Supreme Court too. Alongside the courtroom history ran a public one: a state corrections review of how Clemmons had been supervised, and a constitutional amendment on bail that Washington voters approved by more than five to one less than a year after the four officers died.
Clemmons had moved from Seattle to Arkansas as a teenager, shortly before the crimes that first sent him to prison. Convicted in Arkansas in 1989, at 17, of aggravated robbery, theft of property and other offenses and sentenced in all to 108 years, he had that sentence reduced to 47 years by the governor of Arkansas on May 3, 2000, a reduction which, in the words of the Washington Department of Corrections, "made Clemmons eligible for parole immediately."
The Arkansas parole board granted him parole on July 13, 2000, and he left custody on August 1. The release lasted less than a year. In July 2001 he was returned to the Arkansas prison system for a technical violation of parole and a new robbery charge, and a further 10-year sentence, set to run concurrently, followed. On March 18, 2004, the parole board released him again, this time only to Washington State, where he had family. Arkansas asked Washington to take over his supervision under the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision, the agreement through which the states hand parolees to one another, and Washington accepted on the strength of a brother living there, a suitable residence and the prospect of a job. Clemmons came under Washington supervision on March 29, 2004. His Arkansas parole was set to run until 2021.
The Washington Department of Corrections later reconstructed those years in a critical incident review completed on February 15, 2010.
When he arrived, the department classified Clemmons at its lowest risk level, then overrode that score to a higher one because of his Arkansas aggravated robbery conviction. The paperwork was completed late, on July 27, 2004, outside the time the department's own policy allowed. In February 2006, after almost two years without a major violation, he was reclassified to the lowest level again and moved to the department's Offender Minimum Management Unit, a caseload that required no regular contact. From April 2006 to June 2008 the file records no contacts at all, which the review found consistent with the policy of the time.
The review found a deeper gap in what the department knew about him. Several of his convictions, among them a 1988 robbery and theft, a 1989 burglary and a juvenile theft, were absent from Washington's record of his criminal history. Scored again with a complete record, the review concluded, his classification "would have resulted in a High Violent (HV) designation, rather than his Moderate (MOD) classification." The department's fact sheet, issued on December 1, 2009, called the supervision "relatively uneventful" until May 2009.
That month the picture changed quickly. On May 9, 2009, the Pierce County Sheriff's Office arrested Clemmons in Pierce County on charges that included malicious mischief and third degree assault. He was released on bond the next day and did not report to the department, which treated him as an absconder. Washington sent Arkansas a violation report on May 20, Arkansas issued a nationwide warrant on May 28, and on June 1 Washington closed its supervision, as the compact rules provided once an offender had absconded and the sending state had a warrant out.
Clemmons was taken into custody again in Pierce County at the start of July on the Arkansas warrant and on a new and more serious felony charge. On July 16 Arkansas rescinded its warrant and asked Washington to reopen supervision. For a week the Washington compact office pressed Arkansas to reissue it, and on July 23 it wrote to say it was concerned that the rescission might breach the compact's rules. Clemmons posted bail on July 24.
The department then looked for a way to hold him on its own authority. It reopened his supervision on August 7 after asking the Attorney General's Office for guidance, issued a Secretary's Warrant on August 19, and took him into custody on August 20. On September 1 Washington asked Arkansas to issue a warrant of its own; Arkansas declined. At a department hearing on September 10, the violations arising from the May arrest were found, and a hearing officer recommended that Clemmons be returned to Arkansas or, if Arkansas would not take him, serve 120 days in confinement. Arkansas asked Washington to keep supervising him and said it would decide what to do once the new charges were resolved. On October 2 it issued a warrant valid only inside Arkansas, which the review noted was never entered into the national crime database. Three days later the department completed a fresh risk assessment that moved him to its High Non-Violent category.
He finished the 120-day sanction on November 8, 2009, and stayed in the Pierce County Jail on the pending charges. In all he faced eight felony charges in Pierce County, set in two groups, with bail fixed at $150,000 and $40,000; the prosecutor's office had objected that the amounts were too low. On November 23 a supervising officer confirmed that Clemmons was still in the jail. That night he posted bail, through a bail bond company in Chehalis, and was released.
The State later set out, in its case against the man charged as his accomplice, what Clemmons said in the days that followed. Shortly after his release he joined an aunt for Thanksgiving dinner and spoke there of his hostility toward the police. The Washington Supreme Court's 2015 opinion records that he described what he would do if officers came looking for him. Darcus Dewayne Allen, a friend who also worked for Clemmons, was among those at the table.
Mark Renninger was a sergeant with 13 years in law enforcement, first with the Tukwila Police Department and then with Lakewood. Outside his own department he served as chief financial officer and on the board of directors of the Washington State Tactical Officers Association, and he taught in its training programs. A resolution adopted by the Washington State Senate in his honor recorded that his peers called him "exceptionally competent and tactically proficient."
Tina Griswold had also given 13 years to policing, with the Lacey Police Department and then Lakewood. At Lacey she served on the department's high-risk tactical team, and earlier in 2009 the Lakewood chief of police had given her a Lifesaving Award. The same resolution described her passion for politics and called her "an outstanding advocate for taxpayers."
Ronald Owens had 12 years of service, with the Washington State Patrol before he joined Lakewood. Fellow officers knew him as Ronnie. He felt, the resolution said, a personal connection to the community where he both worked and lived, and off duty he rode dirt bikes.
Greg Richards had eight years in uniform, with the Kent Police Department and then Lakewood. His peers remembered him as "a great cop and a proud family man." He played the drums and raised money for charity.
All four had come to Lakewood from other agencies, carrying careers that had begun elsewhere, and on the morning of November 29, 2009, they were together in Parkland, a few miles from the city they served, when they were killed. The Washington Supreme Court, in its later opinions, described the facts of the four deaths as undisputed and treated Clemmons as the man responsible for them. That attribution was never tested at a trial of Clemmons himself.
Clemmons was killed by a Seattle police officer in Seattle on December 1, 2009. He was 37. With his death, the criminal law had no case left to bring against the man to whom the killings were attributed, and it turned to those who had been with him before and after.
Allen was arrested shortly after Clemmons died. The Pierce County prosecutor charged him with four counts of aggravated first degree murder, on the theory that he had acted as Clemmons's accomplice that morning. Allen said he had not known that Clemmons meant to kill anyone. The State initially alleged several aggravating circumstances and in the end relied on one: that the victims were police officers performing their official duties, that the defendant knew they were officers, and that their status was not itself an element of the crime.
The trial was held in Pierce County Superior Court in Tacoma in 2011. Because accomplice liability in Washington turns on whether the defendant knew that the principal would commit the crime, the jury had to decide what Allen knew. In closing argument the deputy prosecutor first read the jury the correct definition of knowledge from the court's instruction and then, immediately, told the jurors that "for shorthand" he would call it "should have known." He repeated that phrase throughout his argument and his rebuttal, and a slide shown to the jury read "You are an accomplice if: ... you know or should have known," with the last three words in bold. Allen's counsel objected; the trial judge overruled the objections in front of the jury, saying, "It's argument." During deliberations the jury sent out a question: "If someone 'should have known' does that make them an accomplice?" With the agreement of both sides, the judge referred the jurors back to their instructions.
The jury convicted Allen of four counts of first degree murder and returned a special verdict finding the aggravating circumstance. Relying on that finding, the trial court imposed an exceptional sentence of 400 years. In a divided opinion published in 2014, the Washington Court of Appeals agreed that the prosecutor's remarks had been improper but held that they did not amount to prejudicial misconduct, and it affirmed.
The Washington Supreme Court reversed on January 15, 2015. Sitting en banc, the court held that the prosecutor had committed prejudicial misconduct by misstating the standard on which the jury could find that Allen acted with knowledge. The opinion noted that the correct statement of the law at the start of the argument carried little weight after the prosecutor had recast it, and that the jury's own question showed the misstatement had reached the deliberations. It sent the case back for a new trial. Because the issues were likely to come up again, the court also decided two others. It held that the police officer aggravator could apply to an accomplice, but only if the jury's findings rested on the accomplice's own conduct. And it addressed the T-shirts that spectators had worn at the trial, which read "You will not be forgotten, Lakewood Police" over the four officers' names, warning that any message displayed in a courtroom had to be scrutinized for whether it argued for a defendant's guilt.
The retrial took years to reach a courtroom. The first, in the fall of 2022, ended in a mistrial. So did the second, in February 2023. On April 11, 2023, Allen pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the second degree, an offense carrying a maximum of 10 years. The recommended sentence was no more than 120 months, time he had already spent in custody, and he was released the same day.
Seven people in all were accused of helping Clemmons. Their cases moved faster than Allen's, and most of them were over within two years.
Clemmons's sister was the first to be sentenced. She was convicted of rendering criminal assistance, not for helping her brother directly but for helping Allen in the hours after the killings. In June 2010 a Pierce County Superior Court judge sentenced her to five years in prison, rejecting the prosecution's request for an exceptional sentence of ten. She left prison in July 2012 after serving about half of the term, under a state law, since repealed without retroactive effect, that allowed nonviolent offenders with good behavior to earn release at the halfway point.
Quiana Williams pleaded guilty in September 2010 to five counts of rendering criminal assistance and was sentenced to five years.
Four more defendants went to trial together in Tacoma before the same judge, and the jury returned its verdicts in December 2010. Clemmons's aunt and Eddie Lee Davis were each convicted of first degree rendering criminal assistance and of a further offense under the state's possession laws, and Davis of a second such offense. A third man, D.D., was convicted only on the possession counts and acquitted of helping Clemmons; his convictions were reversed on appeal in 2013. Clemmons's half-brother was acquitted of every charge and released on the judge's order.
The jury had also found, by special verdict, that the assistance "involved a destructive and foreseeable impact on persons other than the victim," and the trial court used that finding to impose exceptional sentences. On January 14, 2011, Davis was sentenced to 10 years and the aunt to six. The Court of Appeals set aside the use of that aggravating factor on the other charges, and another factor on all of them, but left the exceptional sentences for rendering criminal assistance in place.
The Washington Supreme Court decided the two appeals together on December 24, 2014. The justices split three ways. Eight of the nine held that the aggravating factor could not, as a matter of law, justify an exceptional sentence for rendering criminal assistance, because the victim of that crime is society at large, not any particular person; the one dissenting justice would have upheld the sentences on the ground that the officers' families had suffered harm beyond that of the general public. A separate majority of five held that the evidence did not show that either defendant had controlled the item taken from one of the officers, which had been in their "passing possession" only, and so the possession convictions could not stand. The court reversed the Court of Appeals and sent both cases back to Pierce County Superior Court for further proceedings.
Two official responses to the case changed Washington law and practice within a year.
The Department of Corrections review of February 15, 2010, commissioned by the department's secretary, found that the department "followed laws and policies that were in place at the time of Clemmons' supervision." It described the gaps in his early supervision as "systemic agency issues" that later policy changes had addressed, among them a 2009 state law that focused supervision on higher-risk offenders and the end of the minimum management caseloads. It recommended that the department press for changes to the interstate compact rules so that transfer files would carry full criminal histories and offense details, and so that a receiving state could return an offender and issue its own violation warrants. It also recommended a statewide automated system, built with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, to alert officers when an offender was released from a county jail, and that every risk assessment document that all of the offender's convictions had been counted.
The second response went to the state constitution. Article I, section 20, guaranteed bail in every case except capital offenses where the proof was evident or the presumption great. At the request of the governor of Washington, legislators introduced House Joint Resolution 4220 in January 2010 to allow judges to deny bail in a wider class of cases. The Senate passed the amended resolution 48 to 0 on March 4, 2010, and the House 92 to 4 on March 8. As sent to the voters, it allowed bail to be denied for offenses punishable by the possibility of life in prison, on a showing by clear and convincing evidence of a propensity for violence that created a substantial likelihood of danger to the community or to any person, subject to limits the legislature would set. At the general election of November 2, 2010, Engrossed Substitute House Joint Resolution 4220 was approved by 2,082,465 votes to 378,634, or 84.62 percent.
Clemmons was never charged with the four deaths, and no court ever reached a verdict on his responsibility for them. The attribution rests on the findings and recitals of the courts that tried the people around him; in its 2014 opinion the Washington Supreme Court described the facts of the killings as undisputed.
Darcus Allen maintained at his 2011 trial that he did not know Clemmons intended to kill anyone. The murder verdicts against him were reversed in 2015, two later juries could not agree, and his final conviction is for conspiracy to commit murder in the second degree, entered on his own plea. He was never finally convicted of murder.
The charges pending against Clemmons in Pierce County in 2009 were never tried and remain unproven.
1989: Convicted in Arkansas, at 17, of aggravated robbery and other offenses; sentenced in all to 108 years.
May 3, 2000: The governor of Arkansas reduces the sentence to 47 years, making him eligible for parole.
August 1, 2000: Released on parole in Arkansas.
July 2001: Returned to prison on a parole violation and a new robbery charge; a concurrent 10-year sentence follows.
March 29, 2004: Reports for parole supervision in Washington under the interstate compact.
February 2006: Moved to the Department of Corrections' minimum management caseload.
May 9, 2009: Arrested in Pierce County; released on bond the next day and treated as an absconder.
July 2009: Taken into custody on the Arkansas warrant and a new felony charge; Arkansas rescinds its warrant on July 16; released on bail July 24.
August 20, 2009: Taken into custody on a Department of Corrections Secretary's Warrant.
November 8, 2009: Completes a 120-day sanction; held on the pending Pierce County charges.
November 23, 2009: Released from the Pierce County Jail on bail.
November 29, 2009: Sgt. Mark Renninger and Officers Tina Griswold, Ronald Owens and Greg Richards of the Lakewood Police Department are killed in Parkland; the deaths are attributed to Clemmons.
December 1, 2009: Clemmons is killed by police in Seattle.
February 15, 2010: The Washington Department of Corrections completes its critical incident review.
March 2010: The legislature passes House Joint Resolution 4220 on bail.
June 2010: Clemmons's sister is sentenced to five years for rendering criminal assistance to Allen.
September 2010: Quiana Williams pleads guilty to five counts of rendering criminal assistance; sentenced to five years.
November 2, 2010: Voters approve the bail amendment with 84.62 percent of the vote.
December 2010: A Tacoma jury convicts Clemmons's aunt and Eddie Lee Davis; a third defendant is convicted on possession counts only; Clemmons's half-brother is acquitted.
January 14, 2011: Davis sentenced to 10 years, the aunt to six.
2011: Darcus Allen convicted of four counts of first degree murder; exceptional sentence of 400 years.
2014: The Court of Appeals affirms Allen's conviction in a divided opinion.
December 24, 2014: The Washington Supreme Court reverses the exceptional sentences and possession convictions of Davis and the aunt.
January 15, 2015: The Washington Supreme Court reverses Allen's convictions for prosecutorial misconduct and orders a new trial.
Fall 2022: Allen's first retrial ends in a mistrial.
February 2023: His second retrial ends in a mistrial.
April 11, 2023: Allen pleads guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the second degree; sentenced to time served and released.