Three Washington Justice Failures in One Week — No Charges, a Custody Homicide, and a Dead-End Murder Case.

In the space of a single week in late June 2026, Washington State’s justice system produced three outcomes that, taken together, read like a stress test the system kept failing. Two drivers who struck and killed a state trooper as she worked a crash scene will face no criminal charges. The death of a man restrained by Federal Way police was ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner. And the man accused of stabbing a 19-year-old University of Washington student more than 40 times was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Three cases, three different breakdowns: a declined prosecution, an in-custody death, and a competency dead-end. Each is, on its own facts, defensible — prosecutors who cannot prove intent should not charge; a medical examiner’s “homicide” is a clinical finding, not a verdict; and a defendant who cannot assist his own lawyer cannot constitutionally be tried. But all three landed in the same progressive state in the same seven days, and all three end the same way for the people who died: with no one held to account.

This page lays out each case with the named officials, the documented rationale, and the presumption of innocence intact for the man whose criminal case is still pending. Where party affiliation is documented, we note it. Where it is not, we do not invent one.

• 0 charges — neither driver who struck and killed Trooper Tara-Marysa Guting on SR 509 will be prosecuted, Pierce County determined · Source: KOMO News
• Ruled homicide — the King County Medical Examiner classified the death of a man restrained by Federal Way police as a homicide — 'prolonged restraint in prone position' · Source: KOMO; Seattle Times
• 40+ stab wounds — the number of times Christopher Leahy allegedly stabbed UW student Juniper Blessing, 19, according to charging documents · Source: KIRO 7; KOMO
• Unfit for trial — a King County judge found Leahy not competent to stand trial and sent him to Western State Hospital for up to 90 days · Source: KOMO News
• 7 officers + 1 supervisor — placed on administrative leave after the Federal Way in-custody death; the charging decision rests with the King County Prosecutor · Source: KOMO News
• Sept. 24, 2026 — the date Leahy is due back in court for a competency review; if he is never restored, the murder charge can be dismissed · Source: KIRO 7

The throughline is not a single villain. It is the recurring gap between what the public expects the justice system to do — identify who caused a death and hold them responsible — and what the system, as currently built and staffed in Washington, actually delivers. In one case the law’s intent requirement closed the door; in another the medical finding outran the legal one; in the third a constitutional protection stalled the case indefinitely. None of the three outcomes is lawless. All three leave a grieving family with no one in a courtroom answering for the loss.

Washington is governed by Democrats top to bottom — Gov. Bob Ferguson (D), a Democratic legislature, and Democratic-aligned prosecutors in both Pierce and King counties. That is the political geography in which these three cases unfolded, and it is a fact, not an accusation. The question this page asks is narrower and fairer: when the system reaches a dead end three times in a week, is each dead end truly unavoidable, or are some of them choices and gaps that could be closed?

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Washington State Patrol Trooper Tara-Marysa Guting, a recent academy graduate, was killed on December 19, 2025, while investigating a crash on the State Route 509 on-ramp at Port of Tacoma Road. She had nearly finished her work and was crossing the on-ramp on foot when she was struck by a Mazda CX-50 merging onto the freeway. The first impact left her in the roadway, where she was struck a second time by another vehicle.

In June 2026, the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office — led by Mary Robnett, who first won the office with Democratic backing — announced that neither driver would be charged. The first driver was traveling below the posted speed limit, showed no signs of impairment, pulled over immediately, and remained at the scene; he told Tacoma detectives he never saw the trooper until impact. Per the declination memo, “the State cannot prove (the driver) realized he hit Trooper Guting.” The second driver — reported as an 86-year-old Tacoma man identified through a Crime Stoppers tip, with Guting’s uniform fibers later found under his SUV — could not be charged with felony hit-and-run involving death because the Pierce County Medical Examiner could not determine whether Guting was still alive when that second vehicle struck her.

“The law does not contemplate a scenario when it is unknown whether Trooper Guting was alive or deceased at the time the second driver struck her.”

Pierce County prosecutor's declination memo, as reported by KOMO News

Read narrowly, the decision is a faithful application of statutes that require proof of knowledge and causation beyond a reasonable doubt. Read more broadly, it exposes a gap: a uniformed officer was run over twice on a public freeway and the law, as written, produced no charge against anyone. That is not a prosecutor inventing an excuse — it is a statute that the people who write Washington’s laws could choose to revisit.

On March 14, 2026, at about 11:33 a.m., Federal Way police responded to a report of a disorderly person at St. Francis Hospital, in the 34000 block of Ninth Avenue South. Dispatchers advised that hospital security personnel had sustained unknown injuries and were already holding the man down. Officers applied restraints; the man suffered a medical emergency shortly afterward and died at the scene despite immediate treatment. Seven officers and one supervisor responded, and all eight were placed on administrative leave under department policy.

In June 2026, the King County Medical Examiner ruled the manner of death a homicide, with the cause listed as “cardiac arrest, prolonged restraint in prone position in the setting of alcohol withdrawal syndrome.” Obesity and chronic alcohol use were noted as contributing factors. The decedent’s name had not been publicly released as of this writing.

“Prolonged restraint in a prone position” is not an obscure phrase. Prone-restraint asphyxia has been the subject of police-training warnings, in-custody-death litigation, and peer-reviewed medical review for years. A homicide ruling that turns on it puts the burden squarely on the prosecutor to decide whether the restraint crossed a criminal line — and on the department to explain why eight responders could not de-escalate an intoxicated man without a fatal hold.

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Juniper Blessing, a 19-year-old transgender University of Washington student, was found dead on May 10, 2026, in the laundry room of the Nordheim Court student-housing complex near campus. According to charging documents, she was stabbed more than 40 times. Christopher Leahy, 31, of Bellevue, was charged with first-degree murder; prosecutors allege the killing was premeditated but say the attack appears to have been random — that Leahy did not know Blessing and that there is no evidence she was targeted for being transgender. A judge set bail at $10 million. Leahy is presumed innocent.

On June 29, 2026, King County Superior Court Judge Joe Campagna found Leahy not competent to stand trial after a forensic evaluation concluded he could not understand the proceedings or assist in his own defense. The judge ordered him committed to Western State Hospital for up to 90 days of competency-restoration treatment. Leahy is scheduled to return to court on September 24, 2026, when the court will review whether his competency can be restored.

This is the constitutional floor working as designed: a defendant who genuinely cannot comprehend his trial cannot be tried. But it also opens the most unsettling exit of the three. If restoration succeeds, the case proceeds. If Leahy is found permanently incompetent, the murder charge can be dismissed, and he could instead be routed into civil mental-health commitment — a track whose duration and conditions are governed by treatment, not by the gravity of a 40-stab-wound killing. For Blessing’s family, “unfit for trial” can become a permanent absence of any verdict at all.

Three deaths, three legitimate-on-paper reasons no one is being held accountable, all in one Washington week. A trooper run over twice with no charge against either driver. A man dead under police restraint, his death ruled a homicide, with the charging decision still pending. A student stabbed dozens of times by a man a court has now declared too impaired to face a jury. Each outcome can be defended in isolation. The pattern is harder to defend: a justice system that, again and again, reaches the edge of accountability and stops — on intent it can’t prove, on a clinical ruling that isn’t a verdict, on a competency standard that can run out the clock entirely.

We will hold each of these open. We will update this page if Pierce County revisits the trooper statute, if the King County Prosecutor charges — or declines to charge — in the Federal Way custody death, and when Leahy’s competency is reviewed on September 24. The presumption of innocence stays intact for everyone not yet convicted. So does the question the families are entitled to ask: if not here, where does the accountability live?

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