Tri-City judge steps down from 1974 Pasco bombing case

A judge offered Tuesday to remove himself from hearing new arguments in the 1974 Franklin County Courthouse bombing because of his connections to the prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Judge Alex Ekstrom was scheduled to hear a defense request for DNA testing on what’s left of the bomb materials.

Ricky Anthony Young — who is serving a life sentence for killing Judge James Lawless with the pipe bomb — argues that his request for the testing should be granted because the science did not exist when he was tried 40 years ago.

Young, 64, was convicted of first-degree murder because his partial fingerprints were found on bomb fragments.

He has long maintained that law enforcement did not get the right guy, and now has the backing of the Innocence Project Northwest.

Ekstrom told the attorneys that when he reviewed the case file he realized he was working in the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office in the early 2000s when DNA testing previously had been requested.

The judge, a 1997 University of Washington law school graduate, also told the attorneys Tuesday that he had been a student of Professor Jacqueline McMurtrie, who founded the Innocence Project Northwest.

Deputy Prosecutor Teresa Chen decided it would be a good idea to have a different judge on the case and asked for Ekstrom’s recusal. Another judge will be assigned to hear the DNA arguments.

This story was originally published January 26, 2016 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Tri-City judge steps down from 1974 Pasco bombing case."