The State of Washington v. James M. Thorne, .

Summary

The court upheld Washington’s Persistent Offender Accountability Act and affirmed Thorne’s sentence of life imprisonment without parole. It held that the initiative complied with constitutional requirements governing legislative subjects and amendments, authorized the sentence, did not violate separation of powers, vagueness, equal protection, bill-of-attainer, or cruel-punishment prohibitions, and permitted sentencing-court determinations of prior convictions by a preponderance of the evidence without a separate charging document or jury. Justice Madsen, dissenting, would have required greater state constitutional due-process protections, and Justice Sanders, dissenting separately, would have invalidated the Act as facially cruel punishment.