State v. Washington

I am unable to agree with division III and the result. The holding is inconsistent with prior decisions of this court and well-reasoned decisions of other courts. It relieves the State of its duty to establish a foundation for admissibility of the defendant’s statements and excuses the trial court from its duty to make a determination of the voluntariness issue without a tenable basis for doing so.

Here the defendant made a pretrial motion to suppress his alleged oral statements to two detectives. He invoked the fifth, sixth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution. The…