State Of Washington, V Wallace Pruitt, Iii, 48713-6

Victim Carol Spearance and appellant Wallace Pruitt were in a relationship; after a threesome and later argument on April 11, 2015, Spearance called her daughter and ex-husband in a highly emotional state and reported that Pruitt had assaulted her (including that he put a gun in her vagina and shot her).
Police responded while Spearance was still upset; they recovered a shotgun and .45 ammunition in the home and a bullet fragment in a neighbor’s house.
Pruitt was charged with second-degree assault (with a firearm enhancement), unlawful possession of firearms, tampering with a witness, and multiple violations of a court-ordered no-contact protection order after he contacted Spearance following his arraignment.
At trial Spearance claimed memory problems and disavowed recall of making certain statements; the State sought to admit the statements she made to her daughter and ex-husband as excited utterances under ER 803(a)(2).
The trial court admitted the challenged out-of-court statements, the jury convicted Pruitt on all counts, and the court sentenced him to 120 months. Pruitt appealed arguing (1) erroneous admission of hearsay as excited utterances and (2) insufficient evidence that he knew of the no-contact order; he raised additional claims in a SAG.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of victim’s statements as excited utterances	Statements were admissible because they related to a startling event, were made while Spearance remained under stress, and were spontaneous	Admission erroneous due to lapse of time and victim’s later partial recantation/fabrication	Court affirmed admission: requirements for excited utterance met; passage of time and recantation did not establish fabrication or dissipated stress
Sufficiency of evidence that Pruitt knew of no-contact order (protection order violations)	Certified no-contact order and circumstances established Pruitt was present and aware	Pruitt argued order lacked his signature so it didn’t prove knowledge	Court held certified order language showing the order was imposed in defendant’s presence sufficed for knowledge; evidence was sufficient
Ineffective assistance for not calling Tammie	Trial counsel should have called Tammie to provide exculpatory testimony	Decision not to call her was reasonable trial strategy; record had no showing she had relevant exculpatory testimony	Court rejected IAC claim: tactical decision and no record showing Tammie’s helpful testimony
Authentication of text messages	Texts required service-provider authentication	Testimony from recipient (Curry) about content, style, and patterns adequately authenticated texts under ER 901(b)(10)	Court affirmed admission: testimonial authentication was sufficient

State v. Ohlson, 162 Wn.2d 1 (excited utterance elements: startling event, stress, relation to event)
State v. Strauss, 119 Wn.2d 401 (passage of time is one factor; stress may persist to permit admission)
State v. Young, 160 Wn.2d 799 (recantation does not automatically negate excited utterance absent evidence of fabrication)
State v. Salinas, 119 Wn.2d 192 (standard for sufficiency of evidence review)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (ineffective assistance requires deficient performance and prejudice)