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Appellate panel hears dispute over admission of prior-restraint testimony in State v. Fategate
Summary
At oral argument in State v. Fategate, appellant counsel argued testimony that the defendant had previously restrained the victim improperly functioned as propensity evidence; the state said the defendant’s own recorded statements tied prior acts to intent. The court submitted the case for decision.
A three-judge panel of a Washington appellate court heard oral arguments in State v. Fategate over whether brief testimony that the defendant previously restrained the victim was improperly admitted as character evidence and whether separate assault convictions raise double-jeopardy or same-conduct concerns.
Appellant counsel Colin Patrick, identifying himself as counsel with the Washington Appellate Project, told the court he reserved three minutes for rebuttal and argued the trial court erred by admitting testimony that Raymond Fategate had "previously restrained" the victim to make her listen. Patrick said the testimony was "highly potent and uniquely problematic" because it was brief, open-ended and lacked the additional factual detail courts require before admitting prior acts for a non-propensity purpose. "It is in fact highly potent and uniquely problematic because it does not have any details," Patrick said, arguing the evidence invited jurors to infer propensity rather than prove a legitimate intent element.
Deputy Prosecutor Michael Safestrom of Island County responded that the defendant himself, on a recorded exhibit used at trial, explicitly connected prior incidents to the charged conduct and thereby supplied the factual link courts describe as the "abnormality" or similarity among acts. Safestrom told the panel the defendant "told the victim as he was assaulting her why he was doing it," and that the recorded statements were admissible to show the defendant’s state of mind. "This is what I end up doing," Safestrom said, summarizing the content the state attributed to Exhibit 1.
The panel probed both sides on where the line is drawn between permissible intent evidence and impermissible propensity inference. The judges asked whether a limiting instruction for jurors and the defense theory (mistake or intoxication) changed the analysis, and whether the prior testimony—because it could imply multiple prior instances—was so open-ended that it primarily suggested a pattern of conduct. At one point the court noted officers had walked in and seen the defendant sitting on the victim and asked whether that contemporaneous observation, plus an explanation, made the prior reference probative rather than merely prejudicial.
Safestrom also addressed sentencing issues, arguing the assaults the jury found were distinct incidents that occurred at different times and thus did not satisfy the four-part same-criminal-conduct test (time, place, victim and intent) the defense relied on. Patrick countered that admitting the prior incidents without adequate limiting facts would effectively permit the jury to punish the defendant for his past conduct rather than for what he did in the charged moment.
After closing remarks the court took the case under advisement and announced no immediate decision.
The arguments focused on well-established tensions in evidence law: whether and when prior misconduct can be used to show intent or rebut a defense without inviting an overbroad propensity inference that a defendant "did it before, so he did it now." Both sides cited controlling precedents during argument, including the line of cases discussed as Wade and Powell; the transcript also contains references to cases the parties named as "Saltieri" and "West Wood."
