Sentencing enhancement upheld
In re Personal Restraint of Eastmond, No. 81939-4. The Supreme Court found that a recently established rule regarding sentencing enhancements can not be retroactively applied to cases heard before the rule was created in Williams-Walker.
The rule holds that when a firearm sentence enhancement is imposed in a conviction, if the jury did not actually determine the use of a firearm then prejudice must be presumed as a constitutional error on collateral review. Previously, as the trial court required in in Eastmond, actual prejudice by the jury had to be demonstrated. Following the Recuenco opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006, the courts had recognized that “without an explicit firearm finding by the jury” the imposition of a firearm sentence enhancement violates a defendant’s right to a fair trial per the 6th amendment.
Eastmond, who had been convicted to 36 months imprisonment for burglary and robbery in 2000, had had 120 months added to his sentence for the firearm enhancement.
The Supreme Court, with Justice Susan Owens writing, admitted that the firearm sentence was a constitutional error. However, Eastmond was bound to demonstrate actual prejudice arising from the error, he did not enjoy the benefit of presumed prejudice established in Williams-Walker after the hearing. The standard of “actual prejudice” requires Eastmond to prove that the jury would not have returned the same verdict without the constitutional error. This standard was not satisfied according to the majority opinion.
This ruling was briefly rebuffed by Justices Gerry Alexander and Charles Johnson in dissent, best summarized with an excerpt from the opinion:
“The defendant in this case was sentenced for something the jury did not convict him of. If being sentenced and serving time for something the jury did not find does not amount to actual prejudice, it is hard to imagine what would.”
