Court Opinion

ID: 9536430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:59:48.943767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:29.580081
License: Public Domain

Andersen, J.
(concurring) — As to the witness tampering issue, I concur with the majority's reasoning and conclusion. I write separately, however, to emphasize the aversion the law has, and should continue to have, to entertaining an appeal or petition by a criminal defendant who has flaunted the authority of a court's judgment or order and fled its jurisdiction, as well as to express disagreement with the rationale of the majority in deciding to consider the merits of the petition before us.
As the majority recognizes, our law is well settled that a defendant who flees the jurisdiction of our courts thereby waives the right to petition or appeal.3 Accordingly, we have consistently refused to review the conviction of one who has fled.4 As United States Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter observed some decades ago: "If legal questions brought by a litigant are to remain [in an appeals court], the litigant must stay with them. When he withdraws himself from the power of the Court to enforce its judgment, he *87also withdraws the questions which he had submitted to the Court's adjudication." State v. Johnson, 105 Wn.2d 92, 97, 711 P.2d 1017 (1986) (quoting Eisler v. United States, 338 U.S. 189, 192, 93 L. Ed. 1897, 69 S. Ct. 1453 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)).
The United States Supreme Court long ago recognized that one who flees the jurisdiction of the court abandons his or her right to prosecute an appeal, since no court is bound to submit to the contempt of its authority. Allen v. Georgia, 166 U.S. 138, 141, 41 L. Ed. 949, 17 S. Ct. 525 (1897). I entirely concur with the principle that one who has scorned the authority of our legal system shall be deemed to have waived any pending appeal. The petitioner in this case was convicted of attempted rape, then defied a court order to make restitution to his victim. Such egregious conduct is a serious defiance of the court's order. I see no reason in law or equity why limited judicial resources should be expended to complete the petition or appeal of litigants who have defied a court's order and absented themselves from the court's authority.
The majority opinion would create a case by case exception to the general view and permit a "sufficiency of the evidence" review. The majority offers no justification for such an exception and I do not perceive it to be either necessary or wise judicial policy.
I do, however, share the majority's concern lest the Court of Appeals published decision misconstruing the witness tampering statute impart confusion to the bench and bar in future cases. It is not to this petitioner, however, but to the integrity and light of the common law that we owe a duty to review an erroneous decision. I do not subscribe to the majority's notion of a case by case sufficiency of the evidence exception to the above principles. It is only on the specific and limited basis stated, then, that I concur with the majority's decision to reach the merits of this particular petition.
*88In sum, I concur in the decision to review this case but do so on a different basis than the majority. I fully concur, however, in the holding and rationale of that portion of the majority opinion which corrects the interpretation of the witness tampering law.
Durham, J., concurs with Andersen, J.

State v. Mosley, 84 Wn.2d 608, 528 P.2d 986 (1974); State v. Handy, 27 Wash. 469, 67 P. 1094 (1902).

State v. Johnson, 105 Wn.2d 92, 711 P.2d 1017 (1986) (appeal dismissed for failure to appear for probation revocation hearing); State v. Nason, 20 Wn. App. 433, 579 P.2d 366 (1978) (court dismissed appeal when defendant was still at large at the end of a court ordered grace period); State v. Beck, 23 Wn. App. 640, 598 P.2d 400 (1979) (appeal dismissed upon escape of defendant and reinstatement refused upon his return to custody).