Worth More Dead

emotions for people in Seattle.”
    He wanted people in Seattle to forget the double murder. He was working hard on an appeal of his sentence. The premise of his appeal was that he had not received a fair trial because the jurors heard Dr. Christian Harris say that he was not insane at the time he killed Larry Sturholm and Debra Sweiger.
    Pawlyk and his court-appointed attorneys took that tack for a decade, moving to higher and higher courts. The man who wrote to friends and supporters was perfectly sane, civilized, and even courtly in his correspondence. He said that his jurors were “good folks” and that three of them had even written to him.
    It was almost as if he had been able to erase his responsibility for the murders of two people who had been much loved. When one of his jurors was quoted as saying (about Pawlyk) that “everyone can be driven to that edge [where they snap]” and that she would now “gladly invite him into her living room,” it was very difficult for the victims’ family members and for those of us who knew the details of what happened during that “snap.”
    Pawlyk remained in the Walla Walla prison for six years. Then his request to be transferred to the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe was granted. He was exhilarated; his appeal was headed for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, just one step below the Supreme Court.
    At the reformatory in Monroe, a medium-custody institution at the time, he shared a nine-by-six-foot cell with another prisoner. He had put on weight from the starchy diet served in prison and developed high blood pressure but otherwise was doing well.
    Pawlyk continued to tutor other prisoners each morning, this time for Edmonds Community College extension courses, and to help men obtain their GEDs, and he worked eight hours a day for an outside industry. His tutoring, he said, “gives me a great deal of satisfaction in seeing changes in guys as they learn. Education is the best program to reduce recidivism.”
    He announced to friends in 1998 that he was vice president of the Lifers group, which sponsored positive programs in justice and corrections with Seattle University. He also belonged to a book club that brought authors into the prison for discussions. He took a sign-language class so he could communicate with deaf inmates, and he was in a group that helped two needy children.
    Pawlyk had many visits from navy buddies who had graduated in his 1963 class at the Naval Academy. Photos of those visits were published in the newsletters that went out to scores of retired naval officers. His brother came to the Monroe Reformatory and the two men were allowed a trailer visit, where he enjoyed a semblance of freedom in one of the mobile homes kept on the prison grounds for family visits.
    In 2001, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals turned down William Pawlyk’s appeal. But he was determined to be free. He applied to the state Clemency and Pardons Board in 2004 after serving fifteen years in prison—only fifteen years of a life sentence. Governor Gary Locke was leaving office, and about eighty prisoners sought clemency and pardons. Pawlyk had built himself a superior prison résumé of good deeds and public service. His plea was set to be heard in late October 2004 in Olympia, the state capital.
    Lee Yates, now assigned to the Appellate Department of the King County Prosecutor’s Office, revisited the case he prosecuted some fifteen years earlier when he argued against clemency.
    Pawlyk, who testified by phone, submitted a stack of letters from friends, prison officials, and even a few jurors who all felt he would never re-offend.
    At long last, Pawlyk finally apologized for what he had done. In his letter to the board, he wrote, “Having reflected much upon the horrible magnitude of what my actions wrought, I deeply regret the anguish and grief inflicted on the family and friends of Debbie and Larry. They didn’t deserve to die.”
    Norm Maleng, the King County Prosecutor, said he had already considered William Pawlyk’s crime-free life before the murders when he chose in 1991 not to ask for the death penalty. “The crime Mr. Pawlyk committed was among the most horrific in King County during my tenure. The life sentence he received was—and still is—commensurate with his brutal, premeditated, and prolonged act of violence against two unarmed people.”
    Debra Sweiger’s brother was shocked that his sister’s killer would even be considered for