Opinion ID: 2588657
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: pre-existing state law

Text: [¶ 13] The six factors identified in Saldana were taken from State v. Gunwall, 106 Wash.2d 54, 720 P.2d 808, 811 (1986). Saldana, 846 P.2d at 622 (Golden, J., concurring). The Gunwall court gave the following justification for looking to pre-existing state law to help determine the relative breadth of state constitutional protections: Previously established bodies of state law, including statutory law, may also bear on the granting of distinctive state constitutional rights. State law may be responsive to concerns of its citizens long before they are addressed by analogous constitutional claims. Preexisting law can thus help to define the scope of a constitutional right later established. Gunwall, 720 P.2d at 812. [¶ 14] The appellant's investigation into Wyoming's pre-constitutional law focuses upon portions of the territorial criminal code in effect just prior to statehood. He cites numerous statutes in outlining the complaint and warrant, indictment, arrest, preliminary hearing, and arraignment procedures established in that code. [3] Unfortunately, there is little in the appellant's analysis, or in the Revised Statutes of Wyoming of 1887 for that matter, that does much to aid us in comparing the Sixth Amendment to Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 10. In fact, the almost complete lack of any mention of a defendant's right to counsel in the 1887 code may be the most revealing aspect of this analysis. No statement of, or recognition of, any exceptional right to an attorney can be found. The only references to the defendant's attorney occur in Wyo. Rev.Stat. ch. 8, §§ 3258 and 3259 (1887), which deal with the service of a grand jury indictment upon a defendant or his attorney, and the bringing of the defendant into court, where an attorney will be appointed for him if he is indigent. Since the succeeding sections detail the formal responses to the indictment available to the defendantmotion to quash, plea in abatement, demurrer, and plea on the meritsit seems clear that the statutory intent is to allow the defendant to have the advice of counsel in making these plea decisions. Wyo.Rev.Stat. ch. 8, §§ 3260-3275 (1887). See James v. State, 27 Wyo. 378, 196 P. 1045, 1046 (1921). There is nothing in the 1887 criminal code from which we could conclude that, in the state constitution adopted a few years later, the framers meant something broader in their use of the phrase in all criminal prosecutions than did the framers of the United States Constitution.