Facts: Petitioner Isiah Hall was convicted of multiple counts of witness tampering after making several phone calls to a witness encouraging them to either decline to testify or to testify falsely while awaiting trial for burglary and assault, of which he was ultimately also convicted in the Superior Court for King County. Hall subsequently appealed his witness tampering convictions, asserting that his conduct constituted a single offense rather than multiple offenses and that convicting him of multiple counts of witness tampering violated the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution’s prohibition against double jeopardy. The Washington Court of Appeals affirmed Hall’s convictions. Hall appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Washington.
Question(s): Does Washington Revised Code §9A.72.120(1), which prohibits witness tampering, define witness tampering as a continuous offense or as an offense that is committed anew with each individual act of witness tampering?
Conclusion: Justice Chambers’ opinion for a unanimous Court held that witness tampering is the ongoing attempt to persuade a witness not to testify or to offer false testimony. Thus, as Hall’s witness tampering was directed at a single witness in an attempt to influence her testimony in a single proceeding, the Court concluded that only a single offense had been committed as to construe §9A.72.120(1) otherwise would produce potentially absurd results (such as allowing defendants to be prosecuted for hundreds or even thousands of counts of witness tampering stemming from a single ongoing pattern of tampering directed at the same witness). As a result, the Court ruled that the trial court’s conviction of Hall on multiple counts of witness tampering constituted double jeopardy.
Docket No. 82558-1 (from Court of Appeals Division I Case No. 60538-1)
Petitioner: Isiah Hall
(Counsel: Jonathan Michael Palmer and Dana M. Lind)
Respondent: State of Washington
(Counsel: Dennis John McCurdy)
Briefs:
Argument: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 1:30pm
[Source: TVW, http://tvw.org]
Audio: Washington Supreme Court
Decided: Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Prevailing Party: Isiah Hall (Petitioner)
Vote: 9-0
Citation: Pending
Court: Madsen1 Court (2010-)
Madsen
Johnson
Alexander
Sanders
Chambers
(Majority)
Owens
Fairhurst
Johnson
Stephens
Note: We post only slip opinion(s) as published at the time of the decision. Please consult Washington Reports printed volumes for the opinion(s) in their final form. Each opinion should appear next to the Justice who authored it.