King married Anne van Patten Grilk (born 1921) on July 8, 1944, in Boulder, Colorado. They had a son, Samuel Pailthorpe King, Jr., and two daughters, Louise King Lanzilotti and Charlotte "Becky" King Stretch.[4]
King was nominated by President Richard Nixon on May 22, 1972, to a seat vacated by Judge Cyrus Nils Tavares on the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 28, 1972, and received his commission on June 28, 1972. He served as Chief Judge from 1974 to 1984. Although there were two judgeships authorized for the district, the other judge, Dick Yin Wong, died in 1978. King had to try all the cases except for occasional help from visiting mainland judges. Walter Meheula Heen was nominated in January 1981 via a recess appointment, but was not confirmed, so by the end of 1981 King was back to being the only judge until Harold Fong was confirmed in 1982.
Notable cases
From The New York Times, "His favorite and longest-running case involved protecting a small finch-billed bird, the palila, by removing wild goats and sheep from the slopes of a volcano. He ruled in 1979 that the bird had standing to sue in federal court and monitored the bird’s welfare for the rest of his life."[6] In 1973, King presided over the case that convicted suspected organized crime leader Wilford Kalaauala "Nappy" Pulawa and five others for income tax evasion.[7] After taking senior status, he continued to hear cases, including a murder trial depicted in the book And the Sea Will Tell that took place on remote Palmyra Atoll. The trial moved to California because of pre-trial publicity, and included defense lawyers Vincent Bugliosi and Leonard Weinglass.[8] King's other high-profile rulings include one "barring federal authorities from using a telescope to peer into a home without a warrant and upholding a state land-reform law that allowed residential leaseholders to buy land from landlords, including the Bishop Estate."[9]
