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In Fisher Broadcasting v. Seattle, five Supreme Court justices held that the Seattle Police Department  violated the Public Records Act (PRA) when it denied  a KOMO TV reporter’s request for “a list of any and all digital in-car video/audio recordings that have been tagged for retention” by officers, including “officer’s name, badge number, date, time and location when the video was tagged for retention.”    The SPD denied the request because it was “unable to query the system in the way [the KOMO reporter] requested.”   However, the SPD later granted a similar request by another party and produced logs of retained dashboard documents in their original Microsoft SQL Server format.
Continue Reading Police Dash Cam Footage Subject to Public Disclosure (with exceptions)

In State v. Coley, the Washington Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that defendants bear the burden of proof for establishing they are incompetent to stand trial after they complete therapeutic treatment designed to restore them to competency.  While the right to be competent during a criminal trial is grounded in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Court primarily looked to Washington’s codification of that right at RCW Chapter 10.77.  The Court found that legislature intended that the burden of proof fall on the party seeking to establish incompetency at all stages of trial, even after a prior finding of incompetency.
Continue Reading You’re All Better Now: Courts Will Presume Defendants Are Competent After Treatment

In Campbell v. State of Washington Employment Security Department, a unanimous Washington Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Department of Employment Security (Department) that a school teacher who quit his job in June 2010, to accompany his wife in February 2011 to Finland on her Fulbright grant, did not qualify for unemployment benefits under RCW 50.20.050(2)(b)(iii) because it was unreasonable to quit seven months before the planned relocation.
Continue Reading Don’t Quit Too Soon

State v. Cates
Court of Appeals Case No.:  68759-0-I
Supreme Court Case No.:  89965-7
Issue(s):

  1. A community corrections officer (CCO) may not search a probationer’s home or personal effects without a warrant unless the officer has reasonable cause to believe the probationer violated a condition of community custody or committed a crime.  Did the Court of Appeals err in affirming a community custody condition that requires Mr. Cates to “consent” to searches by his CCO, merely upon the CCO’s request, without specifying that the search must be based on reasonable cause?  Should this Court overrule State v. Massey, on which the Court of Appeals relied, which allows trial courts to impose community custody conditions that require probationers to submit to CCO searches without specifying that the search must be based on reasonable cause?  RAP 13.4(b)(4).

Continue Reading Petitions for Review – June 5, 2014

In State v. Jordan, a unanimous Washington Supreme Court ruled that a trial court properly increased a defendant’s prison sentence because he had been previously convicted of manslaughter in Texas, even though Washington has more forgiving self-defense laws than Texas.   The court held that sentencing judges may properly consider the fact that a defendant…

In State v. Andre Luis Franklin, five State Supreme Court justices reversed a defendant’s convictions after concluding the trial court erred in excluding evidence to further the defendant’s “other suspect” defense.  The defendant, Franklin, was in pseudo-relationships with two different women, Hibbler and Fuerte, and the women had a history of jealousy with one another.  Soon after Franklin loaned some money to Fuerte, Fuerte began receiving emails from an unknown email address threatening to post compromising pictures of her online.  These emails were purportedly from Franklin.
Continue Reading State v. Franklin – State Supreme Court Divided Over Discretion

The Supreme Court unanimously held in State v. Trochez-Jimenez (No. 88557-0) that Miranda and its progeny do not apply when a suspect requests an attorney during an interrogation conducted outside the United States by foreign authorities regarding a foreign crime. Based on that holding, the Court rejected Trochez-Jiminez’s argument that statements he made during custodial interrogation should have been suppressed. Given the lack of case law supporting Trochez-Jimenez’s argument, the Supreme Court’s holding is not surprising.
Continue Reading A Tough Day For Miranda Rights: Supreme Court Holds (1) That Miranda Does Not Apply To Interrogations Outside The United States By Foreign Authorities Regarding A Foreign Crime, And (2) That An Equivocal Invocation Of The Right To Remain Silent Is No Invocation At All

In the Matter of the Personal Restraint of Gomez, the Washington Supreme Court rejected a collateral attack on a mother’s conviction for killing her child through abuse. The Court ruled that the Spanish-speaking client did not deserve a new trial even though her lawyer only spoke English and also represented the child’s father in a dependency proceeding. Perhaps lost in translation or clouded by the lawyer’s conflicting duties to the father was the fact that the mother may not have abused the child and that the child might have died because he suffered epilepsy. Finality trumped process in this case and may have kept an innocent person in prison.


Continue Reading No comprende? No problema. Washington’s Supreme Court accepts poor performance by defense lawyer who didn’t speak the same language as his client

In Wilkinson v. Chiwawa Cmtys. Ass ‘n, the Washington Supreme Court determined that homeowners may offer their home to short-term vacation renters without violating community covenants restricting lots to single-family residential use.  In so holding, the Court looked to the full text of the covenants and found that the drafters anticipated short-term rentals by dictating the size of rental signage that residents could hang.  Though duration was absent from the discussion of rentals, the court held that “silence as to duration does not create ambiguity.”  If this language is picked up in future contract interpretation cases, it could provide useful clarification about the application of the context rule of interpretation announced by the Court in 1990’s Berg v. Hudesman and debated by lawyers ever since.
Continue Reading Vacationers Are Welcome, Property Restrictions Aren’t: Washington’s Supreme Court Narrowly Reads Covenants

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Welcome to the Stoel Rives Appellate Law blog, dedicated to providing those in appellate law practices regular updates on significant decisions from courts of appeal within our regions of practice. It is our goal to build out this blog to be a handy resource for both keeping up to date on new decisions and quickly locating information about past decisions.