Court Opinion

ID: 9552591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:13:33.117154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:28:17.186569
License: Public Domain

Becker, J.
(dissenting) — I respectfully dissent. I would grant the personal restraint petition under the Supreme Court’s recent decision in State v. Adel, 136 Wn.2d 629, 965 P.2d 1072 (1998). Adel is the Supreme Court’s most *926recent contribution to the ongoing conversation among the three branches of government about the definition of crimes. In its role as protector of the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Supreme Court requires that the unit of prosecution be clearly defined. “If the Legislature has failed to denote the unit of prosecution in a criminal statute, the United States Supreme Court has declared the ambiguity should be construed in favor of lenity.” State v. Adel, 136 Wn.2d at 634-35.
The Legislature did not refer to location in RCW 69.50.401(a), the statute defining the crime of possession with intent to manufacture. Because there is no language in that statute indicating a legislative intent to punish a person separately for each grow operation maintained in a separate location, this court should apply, as directed in Adel, the rule of lenity.
The petitioner’s two grow operations evinced a single objective—the intention to grow marijuana for commercial purposes. Absent further definition in the statute, it is arbitrary to charge a person who grows 280 plants in two locations with two counts, when a person who grows a thousand plants in one location would be charged with only one count.
The majority worries that allowing conviction on only one count will have the effect of “permitting a drug kingpin to manufacture drugs with impunity” after the police uncover one of the kingpin’s multiple drug manufacturing operations. Majority at 925. That result is no more likely than the possibility, after Adel, that an addict will be permitted to continue possessing drugs with impunity after the police uncover one of the addict’s multiple stashes. The deeper concern underlying the majority’s rationale is a fear that one count is not enough punishment for a drug kingpin. But to address this concern, it is not necessary to allow multiplication of counts. When a harsher penalty is arguably warranted because of egregious facts in a one-count case—for example where there is an unusually sophisticated, high-volume operation, or an operation *927conducted in a residence frequented by children—the State may seek an exceptional sentence. See RCW 9.94A-.390(2) (e).
The unit of prosecution analysis is a significant legal principle. I do not think the Supreme Court intended its articulation of the principle in Adel to be confined to the facts of that case, but that is the effect of today’s decision by this court.
I would reverse one of the petitioner’s convictions and remand for resentencing.