State v. Badda

411 P.2d 411, 68 Wash. 2d 50, 1966 Wash. LEXIS 702
CourtWashington Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 24, 1966
Docket37709
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 411 P.2d 411 (State v. Badda) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Washington Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Badda, 411 P.2d 411, 68 Wash. 2d 50, 1966 Wash. LEXIS 702 (Wash. 1966).

Opinion

Hill, J.

This is an appeal by Edward Badda from his second conviction of participation in the robbery of the Kenmore Lanes Bowling Alley by four men in the early morning of February 8, 1961.

On Badda’s appeal from his first conviction, he was granted a new trial because of an accumulation of trial errors. The details of the crime and the identity of the confessed and alleged participants appear in the opinion on the first appeal (State v. Badda, 63 Wn.2d 176, 385 P.2d 859 (1963)).

As that opinion shows, Badda and Dolan McCollum had been tried together and convicted. At that trial, the only testimony connecting Badda with the robbery was that of one of the participants, Vernon Milton Hedrick, Jr., who was 17 years of age at the time of the robbery. At the second trial, Hedrick again testified, and McCollum (who had not appealed his conviction) was brought from the reformatory as a witness and also testified to Badda’s participation in the robbery.

While there are two assignments of error that raise the issue as to whether the state met its burden of proof, there can be no question but that the fact of the robbery was established by evidence independent of that given by *53 the two accomplices; and the testimony of Hedrick and McCollum, who were participants in the robbery, was sufficient, if believed by the jury, to establish the participation of Badda therein. The jury was given the customary accomplice instruction: that they should act upon the testimony of an accomplice with great care and caution and subject it to careful examination. These assignments of error are clearly without merit.

Badda urges that his constitutional right to have compulsory process to compel the attendance of witnesses in his behalf was violated by the refusal of the presiding judge of the superior court to issue a certificate summoning an out-of-state witness.

The desired witness was Edgar Covert, who had been named with Badda and McCollum in the original information but who had been granted a separate trial. Covert testified at his trial for the same robbery with which Badda was charged that he (Covert) did not know where Badda was on the night and early morning of the robbery. On the separate trial of Covert, the jury disagreed, and the state dismissed the charges against him.

On February 11, 1964, six weeks before the date of trial (March 24), Badda’s counsel asked the presiding judge of the King County Superior Court to sign a certificate to the Michigan authorities, recommending that Edgar Covert, then in Detroit, be taken into immediate custody and delivered to an officer of the state of Washington. The presiding judge at that time wrote on the proposed certificate:

[R] efused on the ground that no showing has been made that the witness will not respond to a subpoena. There has been no showing that it is necessary to take the witness into custody and to send an officer after him.

The refusal was specifically “without prejudice to making a new request for a certificate upon a proper showing of necessity.” The request was never renewed until the time of trial.

A stipulation was then prepared and, after the appellant *54 and his counsel had each said that it was “agreeable” to them, the trial judge said to the jury:

The parties, ladies and gentlemen, have been confronted in this case at this particular time with a problem of having the presence of a witness desired to be called by the defendant. To avoid unnecessary delay and expense, the parties have stipulated, as follows, and I will read this stipulation to you:
“That Edgar Covert’s testimony at the time that he was on trial for the crime alleged in the information in this case was to the effect that Edgar Covert did not know where the Defendant Edward Badda was on the night of February 7 and the morning of February 8, 1961 [the time of the robbery].”
That is the stipulation of the parties. You will take it to be evidence in the case to be considered along with and as you consider other evidence in the case.

There was no showing of any kind that Covert could have testified to anything more than that had he been present.

There was no denial of any timely request for compulsory process, nor was there any showing that Covert’s absence was prejudicial to Badda’s defense.

Error is assigned to allowing the witness McCollum to testify. McCollum, who had been convicted with Badda on the first trial and was serving his sentence at the Washington State Reformatory, was produced as a witness by the state. Error is claimed because his name had not been included on the list of witnesses furnished to the defendant by the state.

The state urges that inasmuch as Badda was being retried on the information charging both McCollum and himself with robbery, it was not necessary to endorse Mc-Collum’s name on the information as a witness, or to include it on the list furnished the defendant. For authority, the state relied on State v. Cooper, 26 Wn.2d 405, 417, 174 P.2d 545 (1946). In that case, the fact that two defendants were jointly charged was said to be notice to each that the other might be a witness. However, the parties were there being tried together and the holding was proper. In this case, only one of the persons charged was on trial; the named *55 codefendant had been convicted of the offense charged and was not subject to further trial for the offense; he was in no sense a codefendant. Under such circumstances, there was no notice to the defendant that his former codefendant was going to be a witness against him.

Our most recent extensive discussion of the statute 1 relating to notice as to witnesses is in State v. Thompson, 59 Wn.2d 837, 843, 370 P.2d 964 (1962), 2 where we considered the effect of a failure to comply. We there said a consideration of the cases indicates that

compliance with the statute is not mandatory, and that, in order to constitute grounds for reversal, such a failure to comply must result in either an abuse of discretion by the trial judge or some substantial injury to the defendant.

In the instant case, when McCollum was produced as a witness, defense counsel asked for a recess to enable him to interview the witness. This he was given and, after talking with McCollum, no objection to his becoming a witness was interposed. Counsel now complains bitterly that had he known McCollum was going to testify he might have shown that McCollum was insane and not competent to testify.

This suggestion of McCollum’s insanity is sheer fantasy— based on his testimony on cross-examination that his father had attempted to get him sent to a mental institution to avoid his having to go to the reformatory. Counsel has ballooned this into a charge that his client is being railroaded to the penitentiary on the testimony of an insane person.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
411 P.2d 411, 68 Wash. 2d 50, 1966 Wash. LEXIS 702, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-badda-wash-1966.