Longtime deputy prosecutor yanked from Franklin court and isn’t returning. What happened?

A longtime Franklin County deputy prosecutor has been pulled from the courtroom and will retire after more than 28 years with the department.

Dave Corkrum, 69, a fixture in the Franklin County Courthouse, told the Tri-City Herald this week that he initially was told he was being fired but he’s reached a deal allowing him to use his accrued time and retire at the end of January.

Franklin County Prosecutor Shawn Sant told the Herald he can’t talk about the reasons for Corkrum’s sudden departure because it’s a personnel matter.

“I will share we are in the process of finalizing mutually agreeable terms of separation of employment with Dave Corkrum. We wish him well in his future endeavors,” Sant said in a written statement.

Corkrum later told the Herald that he was already planning to retire in 2025 but that changed abruptly Nov. 5 when Sant came into a Franklin County courtroom during a busy criminal docket and announced that all of Corkrum’s cases needed to be continued.

Corkrum went with Sant to his office and says he was told he was firing him.

He says he was told that the mother of a crime victim had been in the courtroom earlier the same day and was upset that Corkrum didn’t speak to her before agreeing to a delay in the criminal case.

She left the courtroom and reportedly complained to Sant, who went to the courtroom and pulled Corkrum from his caseload.

Since then, Corkrum said the feelings in heat of the moment have eased and he and Sant reached the agreement for him to retire a couple months sooner than he’d planned.

Franklin County court fixture

Corkrum has practiced law in the county since he earning his law license in 1983.

Corkrum grew up in Pasco, the son of former County Commissioner and longtime Auditor Neva Corkrum and Stevens Junior High teacher Phillip Corkrum.

After law school, he returned to Franklin County to work in the prosecutor’s office under then-Prosecutor Jim Rabideau.

He then became a public defense attorney for 10 years before rejoining the prosecutor’s office when Steve Lowe was elected.

After Sant’s election in 2014, Corkrum continued working for him.

Until recently, Corkrum served as the chief criminal deputy, including leading the prosecution of several murder suspects. Most recently, he helped Sant at the sanity hearing of Joshua D. Davis, who is accused of killing a Pasco school bus driver in 2021.

“We all serve at the will of the elected prosecutor,” explained Corkrum. “There’s no real safety net like a union.”

Past sanctions

Though Corkrum has been a central figure at the prosecutor’s office and successfully handled several high-profile cases, the prosecutor’s office was sanctioned twice last year for not properly turning over paperwork in two criminal cases. In both instances, he was the lead prosecutor for the county.

In early 2023, Judge Diana Ruff fined the prosecutor’s office $1,000 after Corkrum failed to turn over a list of witnesses and other information on time, as required by court rules to defense attorneys for Joe Cruz Garza.

Cruz Garza was accused of violating a court order by allowing Breanna Gooldy to stay at his trailer. She ended up dying in the cold outside of his trailer.

Then, in August 2023, the prosecutor’s office had to pay $5,000 for failing to turn over a list of witnesses before Pedro Bucio’s murder trial.

Corkrum said in court at the time that he was overwhelmed trying to keep up with the number of cases and amount of work in the prosecutor’s office.

When fully staffed, the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office has seven attorneys handling felony cases. It’s not clear how many of those spots were filled at that time.