Judge Aimée Sutton was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee to a seat on the King County Superior Court bench in February 2019.  She will stand for election to retain her seat in November.

Judge Sutton is originally from Boston but moved to Seattle more than 30 years ago and graduated from Garfield High School. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, she spent several months in Ecuador conducting a survey of public health institutions in Quito.  Working there for the U.S. Agency for International Development, she also conducted a program for evaluating an economic development project on macroeconomic education in the Ecuadorian university system. Judge Sutton is fluent in Spanish and is Foreign Service certified to conduct work in Spanish-speaking countries. While completing coursework toward a Masters Degree in Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, she worked at the Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson Center. In her work there, she edited academic books to be published by Smithsonian Press and organized logistics for seminars involving international academics and diplomats.

A return to Seattle brought work at Microsoft and Getty Images, and then after paying off college loans, it was off to law school !  Judge Sutton became an accomplished trial attorney with more than 15 years of experience at all levels of Washington State and Federal courts.  In the Superior Court, she litigated everything from child support enforcement to Class A felonies.  Her broad range of experience in this court includes drug court, mental health court, adult and juvenile felonies, and child dependencies.   Her deep experience with the work of the Superior Court has made her uniquely prepared to take on any trial court assignment with skill and a full understanding of the work involved.

Judge Sutton has also been an Adjunct Professor at Seattle University Law School and a leader in statewide organizations such as the Latina/o Bar Association of Washington which she served as president from 2017-18, the WSBA Criminal Law Section Executive Committee, and the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She has been an acknowledged leader in the legal community with a track record of weaving common connections into action to improve the justice system and stand up for those who are marginalized in our society.

Judge Sutton lives in Seattle with her two teenage children.