Under the mandatory joinder rule, two or more criminal offenses must be joined if related. Under Andress felony murder charges were invalidated, and many were retried on lesser offenses for the murders. The Defendants (consolidated cases) claimed this violated the mandatory joinder rule. The State contends that this fits into the exception to the MJ rule — that is, to meet the ends of justice.
The court applied the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ requirement of CR 60(b) analogously and determined that Andress was definitely extraordinary.
However, one of the requirements of application is that the extraordinary circumstance be “extraneous to the action of the court.” Here, the court skims over and says it was in fact extraneous.
I beg to differ. Just because it wasn’t the trial court, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the court. After all, it was the Washington Supreme Court that took on Andress.
That said, I still agree with the result.