State v. Leyda

Summary

The Washington Supreme Court held that value is not an essential element of second degree identity theft or third degree theft and therefore need not be alleged in the charging document. The court further held that the unit of prosecution under RCW 9.35.020 is a single proscribed act involving one person's identification or financial information, rather than each subsequent use of that information. It reversed three of Steven Leyda's four identity theft convictions and remanded for resentencing, while affirming the third degree theft convictions.

Holdings

1. Value is not an essential element of third degree theft and need not be alleged in the charging document.
2. Value is not an essential element of second degree identity theft and need not be alleged in the charging document.
3. The unit of prosecution is any one act of knowingly obtaining, possessing, using, or transferring a single person's means of identification or financial information with the requisite criminal intent; subsequent uses of that same information as part of the same course of conduct do not create separate identity-theft offenses.
4. Leyda's four identity-theft convictions could not stand because the State divided one course of conduct involving one victim's single credit card into four offenses. He could properly be convicted of only one count of second degree identity theft.

Questions Presented

1. Whether value is an essential element of second degree identity theft and third degree theft that must be alleged in the charging document.
2. Whether RCW 9.35.020 permits a separate identity-theft conviction for each use or attempted use of one victim's single means of identification or financial information.
3. Whether Leyda's multiple identity-theft convictions violated the federal and Washington constitutional prohibitions against double jeopardy.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded