By EMRY DINMAN

Staff Writer

MOSES LAKE — Dave Larson, candidate for the Washington state Supreme Court, stopped in Moses Lake last week on a 32-stop tour of Central and Eastern Washington.

A trial lawyer for 23 years, Larson has spent the last 12 years as a trial judge on the Federal Way Municipal Court. He is running against incumbent Raquel Montoya-Lewis, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2019, in what will be his third race for a seat on the state’s highest court.

He’s running on a platform of empowering trial court judges to better handle the pressing issues facing the state, including mental health, addiction and homelessness, he told the Herald in a recent interview.

“As I look around Moses Lake, there’s problems with addiction and mental illness and homelessness, and the local courts are responsible for dealing with this when it becomes criminal behavior,” Larson said. “(Trial judges) are equipped to handle local issues, but this is a regional issue.”

As a justice on the state Supreme Court, Larson said he would push to develop a statewide system of therapeutic courts that local judges would be able to access if they wanted to. Those therapeutic courts allow judges to remove a defendant’s case from a criminal trial track and allow those individuals to instead seek treatment.

“If I in my court have to create a therapeutic court on my own, it’s very difficult, but if I can plug into a system that’s already there — because the state right now is building this mental health system — I could plug into this system and make it so I can use therapeutic methods early,” Larson said. “Then maybe I can reach that first-time offender before they’re out of control.”

“Because right now we have a revolving door,” Larson added. “And if we have a revolving door where people continue to cycle through, people lose confidence in the system.”

It’s important that any such system be fashioned in a way that allows trial court judges to access it if they wish without infringing on their autonomy, Larson said.

The son of a dairy farmer, Larson’s election to the Supreme Court would also bring more diversity of perspective and philosophy to the court, he said. Pointing to his tour in communities east of the Cascades, the Federal Way judge said that he would not dismiss the concerns of residents of Central and Eastern Washington.

“There are folks out there who don’t have confidence in the court because they believe it’s driven by a philosophy that’s not held by everybody, which leads to mistrust in some decisions,” Larson said.