Right to proceed pro se

Division I:

Prosecutorial error – A prosecutor commits misconduct during voir dire by eliciting details about potential jurors’ experiences with sexual abuse in front of other potential jurors instead of focusing on whether they can be impartial. The fact that the prosecutor asked fewer follow-up questions to the juror who answered questions in private suggested the prosecutor’s voir dire strategy was to taint the other jurors with bias against the defendant. Here the error did not require reversal. State v. Coleman, Jr., No. 86629-0-I (Aug. 18, 2025, unpublished).

Division II:

Right to proceed pro se – A trial court abuses its discretion when it denies a defendant’s motion to proceed pro se if the defendant’s decision is unequivocal, knowing and voluntary, the defendant is mentally competent, and the defendant has not abandoned his request. The error in denying the defendant’s motion required reversal. State v. Chhim, No. 59710-1-II (Aug. 19, 2025).
Extrinsic evidence in the jury room – When the jury is improperly exposed to extrinsic evidence in the jury room, the trial court must ask whether the evidence objectively could have affected the jury’s verdict. If so, the defendant is entitled to a new trial under CrR 7.5(a)(1). State v. Chhim, No. 59710-1-II (Aug. 19, 2025).

Division III:

Search warrants – A search warrant authorizing the seizure of “Any data that may be kept on any of the seized digital devices in any format to include but not limited to intact files, deleted files, deleted file fragments or remnants related to the purchase, possession, receipt and distribution of controlled substances and or stolen property.” Is overbroad because it allows the seizure of evidence related to crimes for which there is no probable cause, in this case sex crimes. State v. Hampton, No. 39943-5-III (Aug. 19, 2025).

Public records – Legal advice in a legal memo that counsel sent to the county planning director was attorney client privileged. The county did not waive the privilege by reproducing a checklist from the memo, briefly mentioning the checklist at a public meeting, using the checklist to determine whether water was legally available for land use permitting, or by providing the requester a redacted version of the checklist in an attempt to comply with the PRA. A record need not be prepared in anticipation of litigation, or be relevant to a controversy, to be attorney client privileged. Methow Valley Citizens Council v. Okanogan County, No. 40747-1-III (Aug. 19, 2025, unpublished).

Foreign case of interest:

Selective enforcement – Evidence of historical racial segregation and “overpolicing” of Black people; and disproportional stops of African American drivers vis-à-vis the overall population, was insufficient to prove the police had a discriminatory motive to stop a Black driver who had the same falsified temporary license plate as several other drivers spotted that night. First, historical evidence prior to 1990 is irrelevant to a stop conducted in 2020. Second, statistical disparities generally cannot show that any one decision was motivated by racial animus unless race can be isolated from other confounding variables such as poverty, residence in a high-crime area of town, and existing arrest warrants. Also, the comparison of drivers stopped was compared to the general population, not the racial makeup of drivers. United States v. Moore, No. 24-4201 (4th Cir. Aug. 1, 2025).
(Editor’s note: Although the egregious nature of the defendant’s behavior which led to his arrest, makes the statistics less important to the final outcome, this case is included for the cogent, well-reasoned discussion of the proper use of statistics in selective enforcement claims and the roundup of the relevant case law.)