State v. Coma

This petition for a writ of certiorari is based upon only one proposition of law; namely, that the Washington State Board of Prison Terms and Paroles was not required to impose a mandatory minimum sentence in the absence of a specific finding by a trial judge or a special verdict by a jury indicating that the petitioner was armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the commission of the crimes charged in the information.

The question as to the scope of the Board’s authority in this instance arose out of the following sequence of events.

The petitioner, Dennis Coma, was charged on two counts of…