State of Washington v. Hayden Mackenzie Walsh, 34396-1

Background

On Jan. 19, 2016, Angela Saenz told apartment manager Christopher Schuler that her boyfriend, Hayden Walsh, held a screwdriver to her throat, took her keys, threatened to "bash" her head, and prevented her from leaving; Schuler called 911.
West Richland police arrived within minutes; officers interviewed Schuler, Walsh, and Saenz. Saenz initially gave statements to police and later signed a written statement repeating her account.
At trial Saenz recanted, testifying she fabricated the January 19 statements to trigger a mental-health evaluation for Walsh; she denied the assault and other statements she had made earlier.
Schuler testified (without defense objection) about Saenz’s initial statements; officers were largely prevented from repeating Saenz’s statements at trial by hearsay objections, but one officer (Heid) was allowed to testify that Saenz said an assault occurred.
The jury convicted Walsh of second-degree assault and unlawful imprisonment (both domestic violence); defense raised ineffective assistance for failure to object to Schuler’s testimony, hearsay for Heid’s testimony, and a jury instruction issue about unanimous deliberations.

Issues

Issue	State's Argument	Walsh's Argument	Held
Ineffective assistance for failure to object to Schuler repeating Saenz’s out-of-court statements	Schuler’s testimony was admissible as excited utterances; any objection would have been overruled, so counsel’s failure to object was not deficient	Trial counsel was ineffective for not objecting to hearsay testimony from Schuler	No ineffective assistance; Schuler’s testimony admissible under the excited-utterance exception, so counsel’s failure to object was not prejudicially deficient
Admission of Heid’s testimony repeating Saenz’s statement (hearsay / Crawford concerns)	The State conceded the excited-utterance exception did not apply to Heid’s report because Saenz was not distraught when interviewed; but the error was harmless given other untainted evidence	Heid’s testimony was improper hearsay and violated confrontation rights	Admission of Heid’s testimony was error, but harmless beyond a reasonable doubt given overlapping admissible evidence (Schuler, Saenz’s written statement, other testimony)
Jury instruction re: deliberations with all 12 jurors present	No specific instruction required absent evidence an alternate participated or that jurors deliberated separately	Court should have instructed that jurors must deliberate together only when all 12 present per State v. Lamar	No reversible error; no evidence an alternate deliberated and no showing jurors failed to deliberate as a whole
Cumulative error warranting new trial	Errors were minimal and not prejudicial in combination	Cumulative effect of errors denied Walsh a fair trial	No cumulative error; only one harmless error found

Key Cases Cited

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) (ineffective-assistance two-prong test)
State v. Briscoeray, 95 Wn. App. 167 (1999) (admission of victim’s spontaneous statements to apartment guard under excited-utterance exception)
State v. Magers, 164 Wn.2d 174 (2008) (standards for excited-utterance admissibility)
State v. Lamar, 180 Wn.2d 576 (2014) (requirements and limits on juror substitution and deliberation practices)
Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) (Confrontation Clause framework)
State v. Hendrickson, 129 Wn.2d 61 (1996) (appellate review of ineffective-assistance claims)
State v. Anderson, 171 Wn.2d 764 (2011) (harmless-error standard for constitutional errors)