Governor Gregoire Appoints Susan J. Craighead to King County Superior Court

For Immediate Release: September 6, 2007

OLYMPIA � Governor Chris Gregoire today announced the appointment of Susan J. Craighead of Seattle to the King County Superior Court. She will fill the position being vacated by Judge Michael Spearman.

�Susan Craighead�s esteemed academic and professional background and her active involvement in the Washington justice system will serve her well on the bench,� said Governor Gregoire. �She will be a strong and thoughtful judge for the people of King County.�

�I am excited for Susan and I know that she will be a fair judge,� said Anne Ellington, a member of the Washington state Court of Appeals and former King County Superior Court presiding judge. �Governor Gregoire has made an excellent appointment for this position.�

Craighead has been a commissioner for the Washington state Court of Appeals since 2002 and, prior to that, was a staff attorney for the Seattle-King County Public Defender Association. She was the law clerk for Justice Shirley Abrahamson at the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and worked as a courts reporter and staff writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Craighead has also worked for the Federal Defenders of San Diego and the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center.

She is a member of the Washington Board for Court Education and the Appellate Education Committee and is the chair of the Task Force on Expediting Dependency/Termination Appeals She is the co-chair of the King County Bar Association�s community legal service committee and was previously a member of the Appellate Mandate Work Group.

Craighead was on the board of the Program for Early Parent Support (PEPS) and on the advisory board of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. She was a member of the select committee on adolescents in need of long-term placement, was active in SEIU Local 6 as a public defender and in 1999 attended the National Legal Aid and Defender Association�s death penalty training.

Craighead received her Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She received a master�s degree in international relations from the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar, and received her Juris Doctorate degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

Craighead resides in Seattle with her husband and eight-year-old son.

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