Norm Maleng

IN A LENGTHY, DETAILED PROFILE two years ago in the Washington Law & Politics magazine, the writer described his subject this way:

"One thinks of prosecutors as lean, mean sons of bitches, particularly if, like (Norm) Maleng, they've held office for 24 years. Instead he was a man for whom the word avuncular could have been invented."

There is also another adjective for this longtime prosecuting attorney of King County (Seattle), who has prosecuted or overseen the prosecution of thousands of criminals including Gary Ridgway, the notorious Green River Killer. The word is spiritual.

Norm Maleng spiritual? Yes. It comes through as he describes his philosophy of office management, his concept of justice, how he agonized for three weeks over whether to seek the death penalty or agree to life without parole for Ridgway, and how he finally reached his decision.

It's evident in what he calls his "five-second test" for evaluating people.

"We have a large office," Norman Maleng explains, "with about 500 people (240 attorneys and 260 administrative staft) and hiring interviews are a large part of our administrative side. When you're hiring, you've already seen the applicant's resume and academic record. So I don't sit around in interviews spending a lot of time on that. What I want to know is what is in that person's soul or heart and I can get an almost instantaneous sense of what type of person I'm dealing with. I like to have people who have a smile on their face, an optimistic spirit, a passion for their work and a passion about life. These are the qualities you can pick up instantly about anyone. That's my five-second test."

Many of those who passed Maleng's five-second test and worked in his office have gone on, with his advice, encouragement and assistance, to some of the most prestigious and powerful political and legal posts in the state, including the governorship and many of the judgeships on the King County Superior Court bench.

When a new prosecutor or staff person joins his office, Maleng calls him or her into his office, looks the new employee in the eye and says, "There's only one rule in this office." At this, Maleng says, "They look at me kind of funny, not sure of what's coming next. Then I tell them that we're all on a first-name basis here and that I will call them by their first names and I expect them to call me 'Norm'."

Maleng says, "When you're a prosecutor, you have a lot of important responsibilities and you're a leader in the criminal justice system. Your most important priority in the office is to be able to relate to the people in the office, because they're the ones out there doing the work. So I place a very high premium on establishing a first-name relationship with people in the office."

A close attorney friend told an interviewer, "Norm wears his emotions on his sleeve. He's a very empathetic individual. And I think the reason for that ... was going through his daughter's death." Karen Maleng was struck and killed by a car in February 1989, one month before her 13th birthday, at the bottom of a snowy hill after sliding down the hill with another girl on a large inner tube. Friends and associates say that tears well up in Norm Maleng's eyes and his emotions come to the surface whenever he mentions her.

Maleng's chief of staff, Dan Satterberg, says, "He has a lot of human compassion and that's not far below the surface. He's someone who will talk to a total stranger about grief and loss and suffering because he's been through it personally." These total strangers, according to friend and former U.S. Attorney Mike McKay, include families of homicide victims.

"He goes over to their homes," McKay told the author of the Law & Politics profile, "and sits in their living rooms with them and cries with them. And tells them, 'I know what it's like to lose a family member.' You don't see any press releases about these visits. It's a personal thing."

A lot of what Norm Maleng is -- his achievements as the best-known prosecutor in Washington state, a national reputation, his disarmingly friendly manner, his straight-shooter attitude, and his personal, compassionate approach to the search for justice -- goes back to growing up on a small dairy farm operated by his Norwegian-born parents in the rural Acme Valley in northwestern Washington.

DOWN ON THE FARM -- The future prosecuting attorney of King County (Seattle), Washington, was 17 and a member of the Future Farmers of America when he posed with his favorite cow, Lassie May, on his family's farm in the state's rural Acme Valley. (Photo courtesy of Norm Maleng.)

His daily activities included getting up in the early morning hours to milk the cows, then going to school, coming home, milking the cows again at night and doing his homework. His older brother Henry, a logging truck driver, told an interviewer, "Folks didn't have much money, but we ate good."

There were only 60 in Norm Maleng's high school graduating class, and he ranked at the top. Somehow, he found time to become deeply involved with the Future Farmers of America (FFA), where, in addition to learning more about agriculture, he benefited from the organization's character-building activities and also became an effective public speaker, winning several competitions at the state level.

During this period, he decided he wanted to become either a preacher or a lawyer. When, at 18, he arrived at the University of Washington, this marked the first time he had been away from home for more than a few days. He did so well in economics, scoring at the top of his class, that he briefly considered going for a doctorate in economics. He also joined the university's army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) unit, becoming a second lieutenant on graduation. He received a degree in economics and then served his three-year commitment at Fort Meade, Maryland. He liked the army so much that he was torn between making the military his career, getting a doctorate in economics or going to law school. "I decided," he recalls, "that I did not want to wake up one day being 50 years old without having fulfilled my boyhood dream, so I left the army after three years and went to law school."

In 1966, with his law degree in hand, Maleng was hired as a staff attorney to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, then chaired by the late Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington. He later returned to Seattle to work in private practice for three years before joining the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office in 1972 as chief deputy of the Civil Division. He was 32. He moved rapidly up the ranks. Six years later, he ran for the top job and was elected. With one exception -- 1998, when the Seattle Times editorially persuaded several candidates to run -- he has been re-elected six times without opposition.

"I believe," he says, "the most important thing for a prosecutor to do is to be a leader in the community, working within the government structure." He has established a number of innovative programs in his office, ranging from a nationally recognized sexual assault prosecution program to a victims assistance unit, a specialized homicide investigation and prosecution unit to an advocacy system for victims of domestic violence, and a Kids' Court, which helps child victims of sexual assault understand the courtroom. In addition, he has led legislative efforts at the local and state level to bring about a number of reforms in the state's criminal justice system.

A past vice president of NDAA, Maleng is currently serving a one-year term as chair of the American Bar Association's influential Criminal Justice section. One of his principal goals is to increase prosecutor participation in this section. "It's not so much that we have been excluded," he says, "but that we just need broader NDAA representation, so I've recruited a number of NDAA people for the section, including Dick Devine from Chicago; Barbara LaWall of Tucson, Arizona; John Kaye of Freehold, New Jersey; and also Bob Johnson of Anoka, Minnesota, who is returning to the section."

Although his office and administrative responsibilities are too time consuming and demanding for him to be a courtroom prosecutor, Maleng personally took charge of resolving the Green River murders case, and it proved to be one of the most emotionally draining experiences of his 25 years as prosecuting attorney. This episode is treated in an accompanying article on page 30.

For relaxation, Maleng loves to read, especially biographies of American and world leaders -- General Douglas MacArthur and Winston Churchill are among his favorites. However, his primary off-hours time is reserved for his family, his wife Judy and son Mark, 26. "I always tell people who join our office," he says, "that the most important responsibility that we have in life is to our family."

At 65, what's next for Norm Maleng?

"I'm sometimes asked," he replies, "How long are you going to serve? My answer has been to recall the story about when Bob Hope reached his 75th birthday and was asked if he still became nervous before a performance. His response was, 'The time that you don't get nervous is the time to retire,' because getting nervous means that you're getting pumped up with adrenalin and excited about what you're doing."

"I think," he continued, "that you should stay only as long as you're really excited about your work and you have a passion about it. That doesn't mean that every day you have to be excited about every issue that comes across your desk. But it concerns the core of your job -- that you want to go out and change things for the better, and in that respect I continue to be excited about what I'm doing. There's always something exciting around the corner."

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