State Of Washington, V Edwin Tom Santos, 49561-9

Officer Mezen encountered three men standing by a parked vehicle on a roadside; he later discovered the vehicle was stolen but did not charge Santos with any theft-related offense.
Mezen located the men in a nearby store, arrested Santos on an outstanding warrant, and conducted a search incident to arrest.
Mezen found a smoking pipe in Santos’s pants pocket that he recognized as commonly used for methamphetamine.
A crime lab analyst scraped residue from inside the pipe and, after testing, concluded the residue contained methamphetamine; she testified she could not identify the substance by sight alone.
Santos was charged and convicted of possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine); the trial court admitted Mezen’s testimony that the vehicle was stolen and refused Santos’s proposed unwitting-possession jury instruction.
Santos appealed, arguing (1) the stolen-vehicle testimony was improperly admitted and (2) the court erred in denying an unwitting-possession instruction.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (State)	Defendant's Argument (Santos)	Held
Admissibility of testimony that Santos was standing by a stolen vehicle	Testimony was res gestae evidence completing the chain of events and thus relevant	Evidence was irrelevant to meth possession and unfairly prejudicial	Even if admission was erroneous, the error was harmless given overwhelming evidence of possession and lack of nexus to the theft
Denial of an unwitting-possession jury instruction	No sufficient evidence to support unwitting-possession defense; strict-liability offense and defendant failed to meet preponderance standard	Evidence (small amount of residue; analyst couldn’t ID by sight) supported reasonable inference Santos unwittingly possessed the substance	Court did not err: evidence insufficient to permit a reasonable juror to find unwitting possession without speculation

State v. Weaville, 162 Wn. App. 801 (Wash. Ct. App. 2011) (defining relevance standard)
State v. Grier, 168 Wn. App. 635 (Wash. Ct. App. 2012) (res gestae admissibility principles)
State v. Brown, 132 Wn.2d 529 (Wash. 1997) (res gestae completes the story of the crime)
State v. Tharp, 96 Wn.2d 591 (Wash. 1981) (link-in-the-chain res gestae rationale)
State v. Beadle, 173 Wn.2d 97 (Wash. 2011) (nonconstitutional evidentiary error requires reversal only if it materially affected outcome)
State v. Ashley, 186 Wn.2d 32 (Wash. 2016) (harmless-error standard for erroneously admitted evidence)
State v. Rodriguez, 163 Wn. App. 215 (Wash. Ct. App. 2011) (minor-significance test for harmless error)
State v. Bradshaw, 152 Wn.2d 528 (Wash. 2004) (possession of controlled substance is strict liability; unwitting possession is an affirmative defense)
State v. George, 146 Wn. App. 906 (Wash. Ct. App. 2008) (facts that can support unwitting-possession instruction)
State v. Buford, 93 Wn. App. 149 (Wash. Ct. App. 1998) (small residue alone insufficient to support unwitting-possession instruction)
State v. Otis, 151 Wn. App. 572 (Wash. Ct. App. 2009) (trial court must instruct on defendant’s theory when evidence supports it)