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 State v. Johnson, the Washington Supreme Court provided two rulings.  First, it unanimously held that a charging document does not need to provide legal definitions of all the concepts within it to provide constitutionally sufficient notice to the defendant. Second, it ruled 7-2 that a jury must only be given a general criminal law definition of “reckless” to convict a defendant if it is also instructed as to the particular form of recklessness charged.  Justice Gordon McCloud assumed her now customary role of dissenter to the second ruling.


Continue Reading The Court Assumes that Husbands Know It’s Illegal to Hold their Wives Captive for 3 Days

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

The Washington Supreme Court unanimously held in In re Disciplinary Proceeding Against Robert B. Jackson (No. 201,017-2) that substantial evidence supported the hearing officer’s findings that Robert Jackson engaged in fraud, deceit, conflicts of interest, and other serious ethics violations and that disbarment was the appropriate sanction.
Continue Reading Stranger Than Fiction: Attorney Who Formed A Business Named, Of All Things, “RPC LLC” Is (Unsurprisingly) Disbarred For Repeatedly Violating The RPCs

The Washington Supreme Court unanimously held in State v. Medina (No. 89147-8) that petitioner Mario Medina was not entitled to credit for time served for five years of required service in two King County Community Center for Alternative Programs (CCAP): one that required Medina to report in person to the Yesler Building daily as an alternative to total confinement and one that required him to report only by phone. The Court’s statutory and double jeopardy analysis is neither controversial nor surprising. The equal protection analysis, in contrast, arguably misses the point, which is that differences in wealth necessarily lead to two sets of sentencing ranges: one for those who are able to procure pretrial release and one for those who cannot. Such a classification violates equal protection principles.
Continue Reading Defendants Are Not Entitled To Credit For Time Served For Required Pretrial Constraints By Statute, Equal Protection Principles, Or Double Jeopardy Protection Even Though Differences In Wealth Arguably Lead To Two Sets Of Sentencing Ranges.

Washington’s vested rights doctrine guarantees that a land development proposal will be processed under the laws and regulations in effect at the time a complete permit application is filed.  In Town of Woodway v. Snohomish County, the Washington Supreme Court confirmed that the vested rights doctrine applies even where land use plans and development regulations are later found to be invalid.
Continue Reading Vested Developer Rights Can Survive Even When Land Use and Zoning Laws Are Later Found Invalid

In a unanimous decision, the Washington Supreme Court clarified Washington’s Criminal Court Rules by holding that it is within the trial court’s discretion to provide preliminary rulings on jury instructions during trial. The Court then affirmed Ronald Mendes’s second degree murder conviction after rejecting his argument that he was “compelled” to testify in his defense.
Continue Reading Discretion Prevails: Trial Courts May Rule on Jury Instructions When Asked…or Not

From our colleague Karin Jones:

In State v. Sweat, the Washington Supreme Court held that a court may impose a sentence above the standard range for a domestic violence conviction where the defendant has engaged in a past pattern of abuse towards other individuals.Continue Reading Wash. S. Ct. Continues to Get Tough with Domestic Violence Offenders

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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.