State v. Tate

The defendant, Louis E. Tate, was convicted by a jury of the crime of second-degree burglary. Defendant’s appeal raises the question of whether the court was in error in refusing to allow him to impeach the state’s primary witness through the use of her plea of guilty to another felony charge. She had entered her plea of guilty to the charge of forgery after the time of the alleged burglary. The plea had been accepted by another judge of the Yakima County Superior Court before her testimony in this case but a deferred sentence was not imposed until after she had testified as chief prosecution…