State v. Warren

Summary

The Washington Supreme Court, sitting en banc, affirmed Richard Warren's convictions for first degree child molestation of his eight-year-old stepdaughter and three counts of second degree child rape of his fourteen-year-old stepdaughter, holding that although the prosecutor made several improper closing arguments—most notably repeated statements that reasonable doubt does not mean giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt—the trial judge's prompt, correct, and thorough curative instruction cured the error and Warren failed to show prejudice. The court also upheld the lifetime no-contact order barring Warren from contacting his wife, the mother of the two child victims and a witness against him, as a crime-related prohibition reasonably related to the offenses that survived strict scrutiny because preventing all contact was reasonably necessary to protect her. Justice Sanders dissented in full, arguing the misconduct and cumulative errors required reversal of both convictions and that the no-contact order was unauthorized and unconstitutional; Chief Justice Alexander would have reversed the molestation conviction, and Justice Madsen, joined by Justice Charles W. Johnson, would have applied the federal structural-error rule for defective reasonable-doubt instructions to reverse.