## Facts

- Spokane police executed a search warrant on private property while investigating stolen vehicles and arrested Shannon B. Blake.
- During a jail search, a corrections officer found a small bag containing methamphetamine in the coin pocket of Blake’s jeans.
- Blake testified the jeans were recently given to her secondhand and that she did not know the drugs were in the pocket; her boyfriend corroborated she did not use methamphetamine.
- Blake asserted the judicially recognized affirmative defense of “unwitting possession.”
- In a bench trial, the court found Blake possessed the methamphetamine, made no finding that her possession was knowing or intentional, concluded she failed to prove unwitting possession, and convicted her of felony simple possession under RCW 69.50.4013(1).

## Issues

1. Whether RCW 69.50.4013(1), which criminalized simple possession of a controlled substance as a felony without any mens rea element, violates state and federal due process and exceeds the State’s police power by punishing unknowing possession.
2. Whether the affirmative defense of “unwitting possession,” which places the burden on the defendant to prove lack of knowledge, cures any constitutional defect.
3. Whether a court may save the statute by construing it to include an implied mens rea requirement despite longstanding treatment of the offense as strict liability.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court (en banc) held RCW 69.50.4013(1) unconstitutional and void.
- The court ruled that imposing felony liability for unintentional, unknowing possession criminalizes innocent, passive conduct and violates due process and the limits of the police power.
- The court rejected the argument that the unwitting-possession affirmative defense cures the defect because it does not change the statute’s reach and shifts the burden to defendants.
- The court declined to read a mens rea element into the statute, concluding that adding an element is a legislative task, particularly given decades of precedent treating the statute as strict liability.
- Blake’s conviction was reversed and vacated.

## Legal Principles

- Due process limits the use of strict criminal liability for serious offenses carrying substantial penalties and stigma; felony punishment without proof of a culpable mental state is constitutionally suspect.
- A statute that criminalizes unknowing possession as a felony exceeds permissible exercise of the police power by reaching morally blameless, passive conduct.
- A judicially created affirmative defense that requires the defendant to prove lack of knowledge does not cure a statute that facially defines a felony without any mens rea element.
- Courts will not rewrite a criminal statute to add a missing mens rea element where the statutory text and long-settled interpretation reflect legislative omission; correction belongs to the legislature.
- When a criminal statute is declared unconstitutional and void, convictions under that statute are invalid and must be vacated in affected cases.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated Washington’s felony simple-possession statute because it allowed conviction without proof that the defendant knowingly possessed drugs, and it held that neither the unwitting-possession defense nor a judicially implied mens rea could save the law; Blake’s conviction was vacated.


State v. Blake, 197 Wn.2d 170, 481 P.3d 521 (Wash. 2021)