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 In Re Personal Restraint of Stockwell, the Supreme Court unanimously (7 judges, with 2 concurring) determined that an involuntary guilty plea may only be overturned on collateral attack if the petitioner shows actual and substantial prejudice from the circumstances surrounding the plea.  This decision is the latest in the Court’s self-described “course correction” towards a more stringent standard for granting relief after convictions have been finalized.  While concurring, Justice Gordon McCloud, joined by Justice Stephens, wrote separately to complain that the majority defined too stringently the prejudice required to prevail on personal restraint petition
Continue Reading Does the Right to Counsel for Personal Restraint Petitions Mean Anything?