Court Opinion

ID: 9549899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:26:09.348288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:02.339613
License: Public Domain

Agid, J.
(concurring) — I fully agree with the majority’s disposition of the discovery issue. I concur in the result on the negligence issue only because it is compelled by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Petersen v. State, 100 Wn.2d 421, 671 P.2d 230 (1983), and Taggart v. State, 118 Wn.2d 195, 822 P.2d 243 (1992). I continue to believe those decisions ignore the reality of what officials exercising the cursory supervision permitted by state and local law can do to "control” the behavior of dangerous or, as here, potentially dangerous criminals. The huge caseloads and limited resources available to supervising city, county and state officials simply do not permit them to keep track of, much less control, every potentially dangerous defendant. In my view, the ability to control that the Court has imputed under the Restatement (Second) op Torts § 315 (1965) is particularly illusory where, again as here, only the court can terminate probation. But, as the majority says, Petersen holds this is irrelevant. Majority at 56. Finally, I note that, while Krantz had been charged with a sexually-motivated crime in King County, he had not been convicted. Are parole and probation officers to ignore the basic tenet of our criminal justice system that a defendant is presumed innocent? But until the Supreme Court looks again at the unworkable, impractical assumptions about our criminal supervision system that underlie Petersen and Taggart, I agree that this case must go to trial.
Review granted at 134 Wn.2d 1024 (1998).