Court Opinion

ID: 9563413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:39:28.636843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:49.999164
License: Public Domain

*636Hale, J.
(concurring in the result)—I concur in the result, but only because the special verdict3 referred to a deadly weapon instead of a firearm as prescribed by RCW 9.41.025. Once the accused is informed in the information4 that he is charged with an assault by means of a firearm, i.e., pistol, revolver, rifle, etc., and a special verdict is returned that, at the time of the offense, he was armed with a firearm, all of the requirements of the constitution affecting the charge and special verdict are met, and there is no want of due process. The prosecution is not required to plead conclusions of law nor list and prove all of the prior convictions as described in RCW 9.41.025. Prior offenses, in my judgment, may be shown at sentencing, subject to the right in the accused to refute or deny them.
Further, the concepts of criminal law as expressed in United States v. Rizzo, 409 F.2d 400 (7th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 911, 24 L. Ed. 2d 187, 90 S. Ct. 226 (1969), are better left unstated, as assault, first, second and third degree, is peculiarly statutory in this state and does not depend for viability upon conceptualization. If comparisons must be made, assault in the first degree is more akin to an attempted murder in the first degree than it is to either a common-law assault or battery or assault and battery.
Wright, J., concurs with Hale, J.

“To be answered if the defendant is found guilty of Assault in the Second Degree as charged in the Amended Information.
“Was the defendant armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the commission of her offense? Yes Yes No_.”

“And for a Second Count and further cause of action . . . comes now Ronald L. Hendry, Prosecuting Attorney in and for the County of Pierce, State of Washington, and by this information accuses Yolanda Annette Frazier of the crime of Assault in the Second Degree, committed as follows, to-wit: That the said- Yolanda Annette Frazier, in the County of Pierce, in the State of Washington, on or about, the 8th day of September, 1970, did then and there being unlawfully, wilfully and feloniously, commit an assault upon the person of Beverly Ann Johnson under circumstances not amounting to an assault in the first degree, to-wit: did wilfully assault Beverly Ann Johnson with a weapon, instrument or thing likely to produce grievous bodily harm, to-wit: a pistol.”