Standing in judgment

Former 2nd District Court Judge Ida R. Leggett, the first black woman to be appointed to the bench in Idaho, not only presided over one of the state’s most notorious crimes but was herself the target of racially motivated attacks.

Leggett, now 70, was last known to live in western Washington near her children. She voluntarily resigned her legal status in both Idaho and Washington and is not believed to be practicing law anywhere else.

But in February 1996, Leggett, who was a District Court judge in Lewiston at the time, made national headlines when she sentenced convicted murderer Ken Arrasmith to life without parole for gunning down Luella and Ron Bingham.

Leggett said during sentencing she could understand the “anguish and rage” Arrasmith, 44, felt upon learning his daughter had been raped and abused by the Clarkston couple.

But the judge said the courts had to send a message that no amount of rage justified killing two unarmed people.

“The best you can do when there is frustration and anger and a lack of understanding from everyone around you is just step back,” Leggett said. “This is not the wild, wild West, regardless of what anyone says. We don’t make heroes of people who shoot other people.”

Seven years later, during testimony in connection with a civil lawsuit, Leggett said she had received racially motivated death threats while at Lewiston and claimed a cross had been burned in her lawn.

Leggett was appointed to Lewiston’s 2nd District Court in 1992 by Gov. Cecil Andrus. She left the bench in November 1998. The threat came about seven or eight months prior to her decision to leave the bench, Leggett testified.

She was born and raised in a small town in the middle of Alabama. Her father was a sawmill worker and her mother a schoolteacher. These were the days in Alabama of separate water fountains. Her parents paid a poll tax to vote. There was a white and a black entrance to the courthouse. Young Ida was not allowed to use the all-white city library, which was a blow to a child who liked to read. She adjusted by reading everything that she could get her hands on. One of the magazines that she found as a 7-year-old was an issue of Ebony with an article about Thurgood Marshall arguing Brown v. Board of Education. Leggett asked her mother about Thurgood Marshall, and was told that he was going to change the schools because he could argue in court. That was when Leggett decided to become a lawyer and help change the schools as well.

She graduated from her segregated high school and went on to Tuskegee Institute. After a year and a half, she married and dropped out of school. She became a mother, and then single mother, to three young children before she returned to college.

When she sought financial aid a counselor told her that because she had married and become a mother she had chosen her career and funds were not available for another career. Leggett found a way, without the financial aid, and returned to college later, graduating from the University of South Florida in Tampa, the first integrated school she had attended.

Leggett applied to a number of law schools and received a telegram offering a fellowship to Gonzaga Law School. She had to pull out a map to see where Washington was, but agreed to accept the offer. With her three children, she moved to Spokane and attended summer terms, finishing law school in two and a half years. She also worked for the U.S. attorney in Spokane, and after graduation, accepted a clerkship with Chief Justice William Williams of the Washington Supreme Court.

Two years later Leggett received a call from a Gonzaga classmate to move to Coeur d’Alene to start a new law firm.

She accepted and practiced civil law there for several years. When asked how she felt as an African-American woman lawyer opening a new practice in a state that was well known at the time for the activism of white supremacists, she said she didn’t think about barriers until after she was established and earning a living.

Within a couple of years, the young lawyer came to the attention of the governor of Idaho and she soon found herself appointed as a member of the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole. In this position, she found herself in a new role as decision-maker, seeking and finding consensus and convincing her fellow board members.

In 1992, Andrus appointed Leggett as a trial court judge in Lewiston. Leggett enjoyed litigation, but decided being a judge better fit her personality.

In Lewiston Leggett was highly visible as an African-American woman, a woman professional, and an African-American woman judge. The lack of privacy made her vulnerable to threats and she received them. She felt unable to fully relax from her professional role while in public. If she was working in her yard, she could not run down to the local hardware store in her working clothes without everyone noticing and talking.

In 1998 Leggett decided the isolation and fishbowl nature of her life was too much. She resigned her position as judge and moved to Seattle to be nearer her daughter and grandchildren.

Leggett said she found the strength to accomplish what she did because of her strong family. She was never pushed to accomplish but she always understood that she was expected to live up to her potential. She was also taught independence at an early age. Her family told her she could do anything that she wanted to do, but to plan on doing it on her own. “Find a way,” she was told. “Never count on anyone doing it for you.”

Sources: Lewiston Tribune, Spokesman Review, Idaho Bar Association, Washington State Bar Association.

Hedberg may be contacted at kathyhedberg@gmail.com or (208) 983-2326.