State v. Sorenson

James Ramsey Sorenson was charged with the crime of assault in the first degree but found guilty of the lesser included offense of assault in the second degree. Specifically, the information alleged that Sorenson “did make an assault . . . with a deadly weapon as defined by RCW 9.95.040, to-wit: a knife, . . .” By a special verdict, the jury found that Sorenson was armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the commission of the offense.

The evidence would permit the jury to find that three strangers, one of them Sorenson, met in the bar of a Belle-vue restaurant and began playing “liar’s…