State v. McEnroe

¶1 The State charged Joseph McEnroe and Michele Anderson with aggravated first degree murder and seeks a sentence of death for each of them. In January of this year, roughly five and a half years after *378the State filed its notices of intent to seek the death penalty, the trial court ruled that the absence of “ ‘sufficient mitigating circumstances to merit leniency,’ ” RCW 10.95-.060(4), is an essential element of the crime of capital murder in Washington and, hence, that the State must allege the absence of sufficient mitigating circumstances in the charging information. The trial court…