State Supreme Court Rejects Due Process Claim for Drug Court Fee Refund After Blake

The Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a woman who completed Snohomish County’s drug court program was not entitled under federal due process protections to a refund of her $900 participation fee after the state’s felony drug possession law was declared unconstitutional.

The September 10 decision in State v. Peterson drew four separate views. Five justices agreed that federal due process did not require the refund, while the court divided over the procedure for seeking relief and whether it should decide the dispute at all.

Karen Kathleen Peterson had already received the $900 under a trial court order. The state is not seeking to recover it, according to the lead opinion.

The case concerns a different category of payment from the fines and other court-imposed financial obligations that people can recover after their drug possession convictions are vacated under State v. Blake. Peterson was never convicted. She paid the fee to enter a program that ended with dismissal of her charge.

Prosecutors charged Peterson with felony possession of a controlled substance in August 2015.

According to the opinion, she agreed to enter Snohomish County’s Adult Drug Treatment Court program, waive her rights to a speedy trial and a jury trial, and pay a nonrefundable $900 participation fee.

If she were terminated from the program, the agreement provided for a trial before a judge based on stipulated facts. In exchange for successful completion, the prosecutor agreed to seek dismissal with prejudice.

Peterson graduated in July 2017, and the court dismissed the charge with prejudice, ending the prosecution.

Four years later, the Supreme Court decided Blake, striking down Washington’s strict liability felony drug possession statute. The decision entitled people convicted under that law to have their convictions vacated and recover legal financial obligations paid because of those convictions.

Peterson sought a refund and an order vacating her already-dismissed charge. Snohomish County Superior Court granted her request, but the Court of Appeals reversed.

Writing the Supreme Court’s lead opinion, Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud distinguished Peterson’s payment from the assessments addressed in Nelson v. Colorado, a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring refunds of money collected because of invalidated convictions.

Peterson’s fee arose from her agreement to participate in drug court, Gordon McCloud wrote. The later Blake ruling did not invalidate that agreement.

“It was Peterson’s valid agreement, not the charges, that carried the fees,” she wrote.

Justice Colleen Melody joined the lead opinion. Chief Justice Debra Stephens, Justice Charles W. Johnson and Justice Pro Tem. Barbara Madsen agreed that Peterson was not entitled to a refund under federal due process, but disagreed with the lead opinion’s interpretation of the court rule she used to seek relief.

That rule, CrR 7.8, allows defendants to ask a court for relief from certain judgments, orders or proceedings.

Justice Gordon McCloud concluded that Peterson could use the rule to challenge the order requiring her to pay the drug court fee, even though her constitutional argument ultimately failed.

Justice Stephens wrote that the provisions Peterson relied on required a judgment, which had never been entered in her case. She would have affirmed the Court of Appeals in full.

Justice Steven González dissented, joined by Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis. He wrote that the trial court had inherent authority to refund money stemming from an unconstitutional charge and had properly exercised it.

“I see no meaningful distinction between granting a refund to someone convicted under an unconstitutional statute and denying a refund to someone else who successfully obtained dismissal of their charge under the same unconstitutional statute,” González wrote.

He also disputed the lead opinion’s characterization of Peterson’s decision as voluntary, pointing to the prison sentence and fine she faced if convicted under the former law.

Justice Salvador Mungia, joined by Justice G. Helen Whitener, would have dismissed the case without reaching those questions. Because Peterson had received her money and the state was not asking for it back, he wrote, the dispute was moot. He concurred only in the result.

Justice Theodore J. Angelis did not participate.

The lead opinion declined to decide whether CrR 7.8 authorizes courts to vacate charges that were dismissed without a conviction. Peterson had abandoned that request as a separate remedy and was pursuing it only as a means of obtaining the refund.

The decision does not eliminate refunds of legal financial obligations paid because of convictions invalidated under Blake. It rejects Peterson’s claimed federal due process right to reimbursement of the fee she paid to avoid a conviction.