Opinion
No. 60246-2-I.
December 29, 2008.
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court for King County, No. 03-1-01523-3, Richard McDermott, J., entered June 15, 2007.
Affirmed in part and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Anthony Trujillo appeals from the trial court's ruling that he was armed with a deadly weapon when he committed first degree robbery. He argues that the trial court in his bench trial did not find that the knife he used during the robbery had a blade longer than three inches and that imposition of the deadly weapon enhancement was not supported by sufficient evidence. Because a rational trier of fact could find that the blade of Trujillo's knife was longer than three inches, we affirm the trial court's conclusion that Trujillo was armed with a deadly weapon and remand this case to the trial court for the entry of appropriate findings.
FACTS
On May 10, 2003, Anthony Trujillo robbed a Subway store armed with a knife. After they realized that Trujillo intended to rob the store, employees Kelsey Finnick and Kerry Rustad ran into the walk-in freezer and shut the door. Trujillo opened the door, pointed his knife at the employees, and demanded that Rustad return to the cash register to open it. Rustad testified that the knife "wasn't a big knife, it was a pocketknife. I'm not sure what color the handle was, but the blade couldn't have been more than about three inches or so, and about the size of our bread cutting knives." At other points in her testimony, she said the knife was "[a]bout three inches," and that it could have been a little less than three inches. When asked about the handle, Rustad responded that she "didn't look at the handle."
Finnick testified that the knife was
A. . . . pretty long, really skinny, but it was about that long.
Q. And I think you are indicating about five inches, four inches?
A. Four or five.
She said she could see a little bit of the knife's handle.
Daniel DeLeon, a Subway customer, had to jump back to avoid being cut by Trujillo, who swung his knife at DeLeon as he was fleeing the Subway. DeLeon testified that the knife was "under 12 inches, it was like a steak knife probably — seven inches probably." After a bench trial, the trial court concluded that "[t]he State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that during the commission of the Robbery the defendant was armed with a deadly weapon."
DISCUSSION
Trujillo contends that State's evidence was insufficient to support the deadly weapon enhancement because "nothing in the record . . . suggest[s] the knife blade was longer than three inches." RCW 9.94A.533(4) requires the court to impose a deadly weapon sentence enhancement when the offender was armed with a deadly weapon other than a firearm during the commission of a felony. "[A]ny knife having a blade longer than three inches" is a deadly weapon.
RCW 9.94A.602. A knife with a blade three inches or shorter is a deadly weapon if it is "an implement or instrument which has the capacity to inflict death and from the manner in which it is used, is likely to produce or may easily and readily produce death." RCW 9.94A.602.
In assessing a claim for insufficiency of the evidence, we must determine whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, any rational trier of fact could have found the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. A challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence admits the truth of the State's evidence and all reasonable inferences from it. "Circumstantial evidence provides as reliable a basis for findings as direct evidence."
State v. Gohl, 109 Wn. App. 817, 823, 37 P.3d 293 (2001), review denied, 146 Wn.2d 1012 (2002).
Id.
State v. Myers, 133 Wn.2d 26, 38, 941 P.2d 1102 (1997).
The record shows that a rational trier of fact could have found that Trujillo was armed with a knife that had a blade longer than three inches. DeLeon, the witness who came closest to Trujillo's knife, said the knife was about seven inches long. Neither the State nor the defense asked DeLeon to differentiate between blade length and knife length when he was talking about the knife. If DeLeon was conflating the length of the knife with the blade, his testimony alone supports the finding that Trujillo was armed with a deadly weapon. Even if he was actually referring to the length of the whole knife, a rational trier of the fact could still reasonably infer that the blade of a seven inch knife is longer than three inches.
Finnick testified that the "knife" was four or five inches long, but she could only see a little of the handle. A surveillance camera photograph shows that Trujillo's knife did not have an unusually short handle. Although the resolution of the picture does not allow a precise determination of length, a rational trier of fact could find that the length of the blade pictured is longer than the blade that would be on a four or five inch knife with a normal length handle. And the adjectives Finnick used to describe it — "pretty long" and "really skinny" — are consistent with adjectives used to describe knife blades, not knives. Thus, a reasonable trier of fact could have concluded that Finnick was referring to blade length when she testified about the knife.
The handle appears to be about as long as Trujillo's palm is wide.
Trujillo claims that Rustad testified that the blade "`could not have been more than three inches.'" Trujillo not only omits the crucial "about" from Rustad's testimony, but also ends Rustad's quote before the "or so" qualification. Rustad's actual testimony was that "the blade couldn't have been more than about three inches or so." This does not preclude a rational trier of fact from finding that the blade was longer than three inches. After considering the testimony of all three witnesses and viewing the surveillance camera picture, we conclude that a rational trier of fact could have found that the blade on Trujillo's knife was over three inches long.
(Emphasis added.)
Trujillo urges this court to reverse the deadly weapon enhancement because the trial court did not make a finding about the length of the blade when it concluded that Trujillo was armed with a deadly weapon. In bench trials involving a deadly weapon allegation, RCW 9.94A.602 requires that the trial court "make a finding of fact of whether or not the accused . . . was armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the commission of the crime." Both parties agree that the trial court's findings were deficient under CrR 6.1(d), which requires that the trial court sitting as a trier of fact make findings of fact and state those findings separately from conclusions of law. The State contends that we should remand this case for entry of findings based on State v. Alvarez. Alvarez holds that appellate courts should remand a case to the trial court for findings when there is sufficient evidence to support the trial court's legal conclusion. Trujillo argues that Alvarez does not apply because the evidence was insufficient. Because we hold that the record supports the trial court's legal conclusion that Trujillo was armed with a deadly weapon, we remand this case to the trial court to enter appropriate factual findings.
128 Wn.2d 1, 904 P.2d 754 (1995).
Id. at 19.
We affirm and remand for the trial court to enter findings that reflect the facts it found in connection with the deadly weapon enhancement.