Opinion ID: 2582487
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Commission of Murders as part of a common scheme or plan (RCW 10.95.020(10))

Text: ¶ 42 As discussed above, to prove the common scheme or plan aggravating factor, the State was required to show that Yates devise[d] an overarching criminal plan and use[d] it to perpetrate separate but very similar crimes. CP at 4106, Jury Instruction 20. Relying on additional evidence from the Spokane murders, [16] the State showed that Yates devise[d] an overarching criminal plan to lure into his vehicle white or light-skinned women who worked in prostitution (predictably due to drug addiction), negotiate a sex act, kill them by shooting them in the head with a small caliber handgun (encasing their heads in plastic bags to ensure their deaths and to prevent their blood from saturating his vehicle), undress their bodies for purposes of finding the money they were carrying, and transport their bodies to dump sites in secluded areas. The State argued that the murders of Mercer and Ellis constituted separate but very similar crimes committed pursuant to that overarching plan. Id. Mercer and Ellis, women who worked in prostitution to support drug habits, were shot in the head with a small caliber handgun; their heads were encased in plastic grocery bags; and their bodies were transported from the scene of the killing to a dump site. 65 VRP at 6924-26; Br. of Resp't at 21. ¶ 43 Yates does not dispute the State's evidence; rather, he rests his challenge on the unpersuasive contention that the trial court incorrectly defined common scheme or plan in jury instruction 20. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, we hold that any rational trier of fact could have found that Yates's murders of Mercer and Ellis were part of a common scheme or plan. Brown, 132 Wash.2d at 607, 940 P.2d 546; RCW 10.95.020(10).