Court Opinion

ID: 9564165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:55:24.991605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:15.343545
License: Public Domain

Williams, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent from that part of the majority opinion reversing the conviction of Thomas Van-noy. The excised confessions of Williams and David Van-noy relate how they, with one John Clark, planned and carried out the robbery of the service station. The station operator described the events of the robbery in almost precisely the same detail. Thomas Vannoy was in no way mentioned or included in the confessions or in the operator's testimony. He was connected with the crime by two police officers who drove by just as he was getting into the driver's seat of the getaway car containing David Vannoy and Williams. (Clark was killed during the robbery.) Thomas Van-noy drove the car away at excessive speeds the wrong way up a one-way street, nonstop through two stop signs and across severed uncontrolled intersections.
Thomas Vannoy argues that the use of "we" several times in the confessions and the statements by each *476defendant referring to conversations in and flight to "the" car implicate him. I do not so read the confessions. The antecedents of the "we" were Williams, David Vannoy, and Clark, not Thomas Vannoy. The inclusion of the word "the" does not identify Thomas Vannoy. No direct inference reasonably can be drawn from the references to the car that Thomas Vannoy or anyone was waiting in it. Nor does the language imply guilty knowledge on Thomas' part. As was said in State v. Ferguson, 3 Wn. App. 898, 906, 479 P.2d 114 (1970):
Separate trials should be required only in those instances in which an out-of-court statement by a codefendant expressly or by direct inference from the statement incriminates his fellow defendant. Only then does the inability to cross-examine the codefendant become constitutionally prohibited.
(Citation omitted.) The judgment of conviction of Thomas Vannoy should be affirmed.
Reconsideration denied March 25,1980.
Remanded by Supreme Court to Court of Appeals.