After a jury trial, there is often an opportunity to talk with jurors and learn the things they thought were important and often to answer questions that they had about the case or about the evidence. One of the most common questions asked after a case, no matter what the decision was, is whether the defendant had done this sort of thing before. This is especially true in sexual abuse cases. Jurors want to know this information.

But jurors are seldom allowed to know the defendant’s previous criminal convictions. This is because there is concern that a jury might convict a person based on what they had done in the past rather than the present evidence. There is an exception that allows jurors can know of the defendant’s past crimes of dishonesty because it has bearing on whether the defendant is honest and therefore his testimony worthy of belief, but the general rule is that such evidence is not allowed.

A few months ago an important case was decided by the Washington State Supreme Court that ruled a statute unconstitutional. This is not unusual, but the statute was especially enacted by the legislature to make sure juries heard more evidence about the history of a person on trial for a sex offence.

While it has historically been permitted to introduce testimony about prior offenses against the same victim, evidence of offenses against other victims was much more limited. To remedy this and give the jury all the information possible, in 2008 the legislature enacted RCW.58.090. The purpose was to broaden the admissibility of evidence of prior sex offenses. It allowed evidence of prior sex offenses to show “propensity” to commit the same type of crime.

The Supreme Court has ruled this law unconstitutional. The court went through some twisted (in my opinion) logic and ruled since that the statute conflicted with a court Rule of Evidence 404 (b) and because the court rule was created by the court, a law that conflicted with a court rule violated the separation of powers of government and was therefore unconstitutional.

The people, through the legislature, passed a law to make sure juries know certain things about a defendant in a sex abuse trial and the court has decided that juries should not. Makes you wonder who is in charge.