The State of Washington v. Covell Paul Thomas

Summary

The Washington Supreme Court affirmed Coveil Paul Thomas's convictions for first degree murder, residential burglary, and first degree unlawful possession of a firearm, holding that errors in the "to convict" and accomplice liability instructions — which never required jury findings that Thomas acted with premeditated intent or knew he was facilitating the charged crimes — were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because overwhelming evidence showed he conceived the robbery plan, brought the gun, drove and burned the victim's van, and was a major participant. Applying Apprendi and Ring, however, the court refused to perform a harmless error analysis to uphold the aggravated first degree murder conviction or the death sentence, because the aggravating-factors special verdict form ("the defendant or an accomplice") would have allowed the jury to impose death even if the aggravators applied only to accomplice Rembert, and curing that defect through appellate fact-finding would improperly increase the penalty beyond the statutory maximum of life with the possibility of parole; the court therefore reversed the aggravated conviction and the death sentence and remanded for a new trial on the aggravating circumstances or for resentencing. The court also found no Brady violation in the State's nondisclosure that Rembert would not testify, upheld Rembert's "he shot him in his head" statement as an excited utterance posing no confrontation-clause problem, and found no abuse of discretion in excluding "other suspect" and polygraph evidence about initially suspected Daryl Lynch, in admitting Ducharme's friends' prior consistent statements, and in resolving Thomas's pro se challenges. Justice Madsen, concurring in part and dissenting in part and joined by Justices Johnson and Sanders, dissented from the excited-utterance holding, arguing the statement came too long after the murder amid too much deliberate intervening conduct and motive to fabricate to qualify, and that its admission violated the confrontation clause and ER 802.