William L. Dwyer, 72; Judge Ruled on Logging, Baseball

U.S. District Judge William L. Dwyer, a Seattle legal giant whose landmark rulings include halting logging in national forests in the Pacific Northwest and ordering the U.S. Forest Service to adopt a plan for the survival of the spotted owl, has died. He was 72.

Dwyer, who as a trial lawyer representing the state of Washington and King County in the 1970s kept major league baseball in Seattle, died Tuesday of complications of lung cancer.

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease a few years ago, he cut back his work schedule and went on “senior status” in 1999.

But even after being diagnosed with cancer last spring, he continued working until the end of January, the same month Thomas Dunne Books published “In the Hands of the People,” Dwyer’s appraisal of the jury system.

“Among federal judges in the Northwest in modern times, he’s without peer,” said Stewart Jay, professor of law at the University of Washington. “Frankly, I think he’s one of the great federal judges, period. He stands very well among some of the great trial judges of our history.”

“He was a towering figure before he was ever put on the bench,” District Judge Robert Lasnik said.

A liberal Democrat, Dwyer was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in 1987 after 30 years of practicing law in Seattle, where he earned the nickname “Destructo” for his low-key yet relentless way with opponents on the witness stand.

Among Dwyer’s better-known cases as a district judge were the nation’s first federal product-tampering homicide case in 1988. He also overturned the death sentence of one of Washington’s most notorious killers in 1991, and in 1994 declared that the state’s term-limits law was unconstitutional as it applied to members of Congress because it limited voters’ freedom of choice.

But Dwyer was best known for ordering the U.S. Forest Service to adopt a conservation plan for the spotted owl and other species in forest habitat areas.

His 1991 injunction against logging in national forests in Washington, Oregon and Northern California remained in place for three years. In 1994, the Clinton administration drafted the Northwest Forest Plan, which allowed some logging as long as there were sufficient protections for species that depended on old trees.

Dwyer’s ruling earned him the praise of environmentalists and the ire of the logging industry. The decision was even denounced on the Senate floor by Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, who blasted Dwyer’s ruling as being “irresponsible” and “anti-human.”

But Gorton, who reportedly later admitted that any judge would have issued the same ruling, always had the highest respect for Dwyer: It had been Gorton, along with then-Sen. Dan Evans--a fellow Republican from Washington--who had recommended Dwyer for the vacant U.S. District Court seat during the Reagan administration.

“You’re in it to do justice and to uphold the Constitution, and to be fair to everybody,” Dwyer said of his most famous ruling in a 1999 interview with the Seattle Times. “You’re not in it to try to please those who brought about your appointment, or to try to displease those who were opposed to it. None of that has anything to do with it.”

Born in Olympia in 1929, Dwyer grew up in Seattle. As a student at the University of Washington in 1948, he wandered into a freshman law torts class and listened to a colorfully engaging professor discuss the basics of legal reasoning. Dwyer was hooked.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in law from the University of Washington and his law degree from New York University in 1953. After serving three years in the Army in Germany, he returned to Seattle, where he opened a law practice.

Dwyer first came to national attention as a lead trial attorney in 1963 when he represented John Goldmark, an Okanogan County rancher and state Democratic lawmaker who had been falsely accused of being a communist by the John Birch wing of the GOP during the 1962 election

After losing his legislative seat, Goldmark sued his political opponents for libel.

The urbane Dwyer was said to have won over the conservative, rural Okanogan County jury members, many in jeans and dirt-splattered shoes, with his arguments that a decent man had been libeled.

In a tragic twist 22 years later, Goldmark’s son, Charles, a prominent Seattle attorney, and his wife and two young sons were beaten and stabbed to death by a jobless steelworker. David Rice, who told a friend the night of the murders that he was going to kill “the top communist,” was sentenced to death in 1986.

In 1970, Dwyer was hired to represent the state and King County in a lawsuit against the American League and baseball owners. Government officials accused the American League of a breach of contract when it allowed the Seattle Pilots to move to Milwaukee, where they became the Brewers.

A 1976 settlement, after four weeks of a jury trial, led to the creation of the Seattle Mariners.

A bibliophile who read several books at a time, Dwyer conversed easily about history, politics, music and art, and could regale public audiences and dinner-table companions with quotations form Shakespeare and legal philosophers.

“He had a remarkable sense of humor, a quiet wit that he never lost,” said District Judge Barbara Rothstein. “I think everyone here feels a light has gone out in our lives in the courthouse because he was just a wonderful person to have around.”

Dwyer is survived by his wife, Vasiliki; his children, Joanna Dwyer Tiffany of Indianola, Wash., Tony Dwyer of Seattle, and Charles Dwyer of Indianola; and five grandchildren.