State v. McCraw

898 P.2d 838, 127 Wash. 2d 281
CourtWashington Supreme Court
DecidedJuly 20, 1995
Docket61544-6
StatusPublished
Cited by101 cases

This text of 898 P.2d 838 (State v. McCraw) 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. McCraw, 898 P.2d 838, 127 Wash. 2d 281 (Wash. 1995).

Opinions

Alexander, J.

This case is before us on direct review of a sentence that was imposed by the Spokane County Superior Court on Sean McCraw for attempted first-degree escape. The State asserts on appeal that the sentencing court erred in determining the standard range sentence for McCraw’s current conviction, arguing that it wrongly considered some of McCraw’s prior convictions as one offense for purposes of calculating the offender score. We affirm.

When Sean McCraw, then age 25, was sentenced in Spokane County Superior Court for attempted first-degree escape, he had already compiled a substantial adult criminal record, as follows:

Sentencing Date Offense
1. July 17, 1987 Second-degree theft
2. April 26, 1988 Second-degree burglary
3. April 26, 1988 Third-degree assault
4. November 15, 1989 Second-degree burglary
5. November 15, 1989 First-degree possession of stolen property
6. August 22, 1991 Second-degree possession of stolen property
7. March 17, 1992 Second-degree burglary
8. June 22, 1992 Residential burglary
9. June 22, 1992 Residential burglary

Each of McCraw’s prior convictions was for a crime that occurred on a different date. With the exception of the second-degree burglary conviction for which he was sentenced in March 1992, all of the prior convictions were in Spokane County Superior Court.

[284]*284The genesis of McCraw’s conviction for attempted first-degree escape, his current offense, was in June 1992. In that month, he began serving concurrent 69-month sentences for convictions in Spokane County Superior Court for two residential burglaries. Those sentences had been ordered to run concurrently with a 43-month sentence for second-degree burglary that had been imposed by the Lincoln County Superior Court in March 1992. On August 17, 1993, less than four months after he was transferred from McNeil Island Corrections Center to Airway Heights, a minimum security facility near Spokane, McCraw walked away from an offsite work crew assignment. Two days later, McCraw was apprehended in Royal City. He was thereafter charged in Spokane County Superior Court with attempted first-degree escape. McCraw subsequently entered a plea of guilty to that charge.1

"When McCraw appeared before a judge of the Spokane County Superior Court for sentencing on the attempted first-degree escape charge, the State contended that the sentencing court should count each of McCraw’s prior adult felonies as a separate offense in calculating the offender score. The State based its contention on the fact that although McCraw had served some of the sentences for those prior convictions concurrently with other sentences, none of those prior adult offenses encompassed the same criminal conduct and each occurred after 1986.2 Under the State’s reasoning, McCraw’s offender score was [285]*2859, the maximum offender score, and the standard sentence range was 47 x/4 months to 63 months.3

McCraw’s counsel disagreed with the State and asked the sentencing court to impose an exceptional sentence downward, or, alternatively, to calculate McCraw’s offender score by counting as one offense some or all of his nine prior offenses for which the sentences were served concurrently. The sentencing court declined to impose an exceptional sentence. It did, however, accept McCraw’s recommendation to consider as one offense some of the prior multiple offenses for which he had served concurrent sentences, concluding that it had the discretion to combine, or not combine, any of McCraw’s concurrently served sentences. The sentencing court identified three groups of McCraw’s prior multiple convictions for which he served concurrent sentences: two convictions in 1988 (second-degree burglary and third-degree assault); two convictions in 1989 (second-degree burglary and first-degree possession of stolen property); and three convictions in 1992 (second-degree burglary and two counts of residential burglary). For reasons articulated at sentencing, the sentencing judge chose to count each of the above mentioned groups of concurrently served sentences as one offense for purposes of determining McCraw’s offender score. This determination was significant because it resulted in an offender score for McCraw of 5 and a standard sentence range for attempted first-degree escape of 16 x/2 to 21 3/4 months. The sentencing court imposed a sentence of 21 3 U months.

The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether the current sentencing court had the discretion to count as one offense those offenses for which the sentences were served concurrently, but which the original sentencing court did not deem to be the same criminal conduct.

[286]*286To resolve the issue we must look to RCW 9.94A.360(6), which the parties agree is the pertinent statute. It provides, in relevant part:

(6) In the case of multiple prior convictions, for the purpose of computing the offender score, count all convictions separately, except:
(a) Prior adult offenses which were found, under RCW 9.94A.400(l)(a), to encompass the same criminal conduct, shall be counted as one offense, the offense that yields the highest offender score. The current sentencing court shall determine with respect to other prior adult offenses for which sentences were served concurrently whether those offenses shall be counted as one offense or as separate offenses, and if the court finds that they shall be counted as one offense, then the offense that yields the highest offender score shall be used[.]

(Italics ours.) RCW 9.94A.360(6). It is readily apparent that the first sentence of subsection (a) of this statute has no application here because there was no showing that any of the prior sentencing courts had determined that any of McCraw’s offenses encompassed the same criminal conduct.4 In fact, the Spokane County Superior Court judge who sentenced McCraw for his last three prior convictions specifically found that those offenses did not constitute the same criminal conduct. Although the record on appeal does not contain similar findings by any of the other prior sentencing courts, it is unlikely that any of those courts found that the offenses that resulted in those concurrently served sentences encompassed the same criminal conduct because, as noted above, the offenses did not take place on the same day.

The second sentence of the statute cited above does [287]*287bear on the issue at hand. It refers to the duty of a sentencing court to count prior multiple offenses for which sentences were served concurrently as either one offense or separate offenses.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
898 P.2d 838, 127 Wash. 2d 281, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mccraw-wash-1995.