Washington v. Farnsworth (Majority, Concurrence and Dissent)
Annotate this CaseIn 2009, Charles Farnsworth, Jr. and James McFarland were suffering heroin withdrawals and had no money to purchase more. The pair made a plan to "rob" a bank. They were arrested and charged with first degree robbery. The jury was instructed on both first degree theft and first degree robbery; it unanimously convicted Farnsworth of first degree robbery and, per the jury instructions, it did not consider the lesser-included crime of first degree theft. The trial court found that the conviction was his third strike under the Persistent Offender Accountability Act (POAA) and sentenced Farnsworth to life in prison without the possibility of release. The main question raised by Farnsworth's appeal of that sentence was whether certain conduct constituted a "threat of force," making the crime a robbery, not a theft. Specifically, the question centered on whether Farnsworth's handwritten note demanding money from a bank teller contained an implied threat of force. "Although the note did not convey an explicitly threatening message, we believe it was laden with inherent intimidation. … As Farnsworth's partner in crime explained, they were well aware that banks generally instructed their employees to react to such notes as if they contained an explicit threat; in fact, the pair relied on that knowledge and fear to commit this crime. In this context, we hold that there is sufficient evidence that the pair's conduct implied a threat of harm." Furthermore, the Court concluded no errors at trial court accumulated to deprive Farnsworth of a fair trial. The Court therefore affirmed Farnsworth's conviction for first degree robbery.
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