The State of Washington, Respondent v. Laura J. Gunwall, Appellant

Summary

The Washington Supreme Court affirmed Laura Gunwall's cocaine conviction, holding that police violated Wash. Const. art. 1, sec. 7 by obtaining her long distance toll records and installing a pen register without any valid legal process, but that the search warrant affidavit independently established probable cause without that tainted information, so the seized narcotics evidence remained admissible. The court announced six nonexclusive neutral criteria — textual language, differences in texts, constitutional history, preexisting state law, structural differences, and matters of particular state or local concern — governing when to decide a case on independent state constitutional grounds rather than deferring to U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of parallel federal provisions. Applying those criteria, it held that toll records require a search warrant or subpoena, that a pen register intercept is a 'private communication transmitted by telephone' subject to the stricter electronic eavesdropping statutes (RCW 9.73), overruled Bixler v. Hille to the extent inconsistent, and made the new rule prospective only.