State v. Roswell

¶1 — Washington has enacted certain criminal statutes that raise the level of a crime from a misdemeanor to a felony based upon the defendant’s prior criminal convictions. These prior convictions are elements of the charged crime that the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt. We held in State v. Oster, 147 Wn.2d 141, 147, 52 P.3d 26 (2002), that a trial court did not abuse its discretion in bifurcating the “to convict” instruction with respect to prior criminal offenses in order to protect a defendant from possible prejudice. We are asked to extend our holding in Oster and hold that a…