State v. Widrig
| Decision Date | 22 August 2013 |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE OF WASHINGTON, Respondent, v. ROBERT LEE WIDRIG, Appellant. |
SLDDOWAY, J. — Robert Widrig's ex-wife's home was burglarized while she was out of town with her and Mr. Widrig's sons, and a jury found that he was responsible. He was convicted of residential burglary, second degree theft, and a dozen counts of second degree animal cruelty for releasing his ex-wife's and sons' show rabbits from their pens. He appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. He also contends that the trial court erred in refusing to declare a mistrial after it discovered that a handbook of Washington court rules was inadvertently left in the jury room during the jurors' deliberations.
The evidence was sufficient to support the jury's verdict and the record supports the trial court's conclusion that Mr. Widrig has failed to demonstrate any prejudice from the presence of the rule book in the jury room. We affirm.
Katrina Riexinger and Robert Widrig were married for almost 30 years. Late in the marriage—in 2005—Mr. Widrig moved to Las Vegas to work construction because the money was good. Initially, he returned home to Cle Elum for three- to four-day visits at a time. Trips home became increasingly infrequent and he eventually quit returning at all, having become romantically involved with Tamara Rowland, whom he met in Las Vegas.
By the time Ms. Riexinger filed for divorce in early 2007, three of the couple's sons were adults; Ms. Riexinger was appointed the primary residential parent of their youngest son. In the decree of dissolution, the trial court awarded Ms. Riexinger the family home while Mr. Widrig was awarded his tools and a number of other items of personal property.
The decree of dissolution was entered on September 15, 2008 and ordered Mr. Widrig to pick up any personal property awarded him that remained at the family home by October 15. By the time of entry of the decree, Mr. Widrig had moved back to the Pacific Northwest and was living on property owned by his parents in North Bend. Following entry of the decree, Mr. Widrig gave Ms. Riexinger a list of items he wanted from the home. He arranged a date to pick them up in late September, but then canceled.
After he canceled the planned pick up of property and despite the deadline imposed by the decree, Ms. Riexinger decided to go forward with a trip to Disneylandthat she had planned with her sons, leaving on October 5 and expecting to return on October 13. Her parents agreed to watch her house and feed the family's cats and a dozen Netherland pedigree show rabbits that were raised as a hobby by Ms. Riexinger and the boys.
On October 10, Ms. Riexinger received a frantic call from her mother, Marilyn Riexinger, who had arrived with her husband at their daughter's house for the first of their customary twice-a-day house-sitting visits and discovered some of the family's outside cats indoors, and the rabbits all released from their pens and gone. Ms. Riexinger asked her mother to call the police. Cutting the vacation short, she began the drive back to Cle Elum.
Cle Elum police officer Jennifer Rogers responded to Marilyn Riexinger's report of a burglary and drove to the home, where Marilyn1 and other family members were trying to find and capture the rabbits. Marilyn had not been able to determine how the burglar entered her daughter's home, but showed Officer Rogers around and said that at a minimum, her grandson's computer was missing. Marilyn told Officer Rogers that when she and her husband left the prior evening the rabbits were in their closed pens located in an outside shed; a light was on and music was playing in the shed, as usual. Marilyn and her husband had closed the shed door and latched it before they left. Upon arriving thatmorning, they found the shed door open, the lights and music off, each of the individual pens open and the rabbits missing. It would later be determined that an electrical cord that ran from the shed to a somewhat obscure outlet had been unplugged.
After completing her investigation at the house, Officer Rogers returned to the police station and was writing up her report when she was notified by a central dispatch agency for county law enforcement that Robert Widrig had just contacted the agency to request "civil stand by" at his ex-wife's home, so that he could go there and pick up his belongings. Report of Proceedings (RP) at 229. Officer Rogers called Mr. Widrig and explained that she had just returned from Ms. Riexinger's home after investigating a burglary. She considered Mr. Widrig a suspect and asked him his whereabouts for the prior 24 hours. Mr. Widrig told her that he had been in North Bend the entire time and had not been to his ex-wife's home in over a year. When the officer told him the rabbits had been released, suggesting a personal, malicious motive on the part of whoever committed the crime, Mr. Widrig stated that he did not know Ms. Riexinger and the boys still had rabbits and insisted that he had "no problem" with his ex-wife. RP at 233.
During the course of the conversation, Mr. Widrig told the officer that his mother could verify that he had been in North Bend. Officer Rogers was willing to speak with Ms. Widrig, so Mr. Widrig handed the phone to his mother. According to the officer's notes, he stated, while handing his mother the phone, "'[Y]ou can verify I was here last night and today, right?'" RP at 235. Ms. Widrig then told the officer that her son hadbeen at her home mowing the lawn from 11 a.m. to 3 or 3:30 p.m. the prior afternoon. She also told the officer that her son had gone to bed about 11 p.m. the night before but then corrected herself and said that he had been feeding his chickens at that time and had gone to bed later. Ms. Widrig did not attempt to account for her son's whereabouts at any other time during her conversation with the officer.
After Ms. Riexinger returned to Cle Elum, Officer Rogers met with her and walked through the home again. Ms. Riexinger had noticed on her return that the family room window appeared to have been propped open and a ladder along the fence had been moved. Ms. Riexinger had by then determined that the only items missing other than the earlier-reported laptop and the rabbits were a new Coleman lantern and a ziplock bag that contained her wedding ring and other jewelry she had received from Mr. Widrig. She kept the bag of jewelry in a dresser drawer in her bedroom. The property missing was valued at $14,000. Among items pointed out to Officer Rogers that had been left untouched in the burglary were a flat screen TV, DVDs, video games and systems, and a box of Ms. Riexinger's other jewelry.
By the time Ms. Riexinger returned to Cle Elum, 9 of the 12 rabbits had been captured; the other 3 were never found. One of the rabbits had a broken back and all of them were very stressed. Two of the rabbits that had been found never recovered, and died.
The next development in the case occurred a little over a month later, when Officer Rogers received a "pawn hit." RP at 246. She had asked the King County Sheriff's Office to notify her in the event any jewelry was reported by pawn businesses in the county to have been pawned by Mr. Widrig or Ms. Rowland, who had moved to North Bend and was living with Mr. Widrig. Two rings pawned at an Auburn pawn shop by Ms. Rowland proved to be Ms. Riexinger's wedding ring and anniversary ring.
Ms. Rowland had provided the pawn shop with a false address and Officer Rogers was unable to locate her there, but she later contacted Ms. Rowland at Mr. Widrig's mother's North Bend home. Ms. Rowland admitted that she had traveled to the Auburn pawn shop with Mr. Widrig and pawned the rings at his request, after Mr. Widrig claimed to have forgotten his identification. Mr. Widrig was thereafter charged with residential burglary, second degree theft, and the animal cruelty counts.
The charges against Mr. Widrig proceeded to trial in May 2011. Mr. Widrig never challenged that the burglary, theft, and animal cruelty had occurred, but denied that he had anything to do with them. He did not testify. His mother's testimony supported the likelihood that he was at her home during most if not all of the time frame in which the crimes occurred. His mother also claimed that her son gave her rings and other property for safekeeping in 2007 when he first returned from Las Vegas, and that she understood it to be property he had picked up from Ms. Riexinger upon his initial return. Ms. Widrigtestified, as did Ms. Rowland, that Ms. Widrig gave her son a box of items to pawn, in which the rings were included.
Evidently the jury did not believe the defense witnesses. It found Mr. Widrig guilty on all counts.
The day after the jury returned its verdict, the court wrote to the lawyers to report the following development:
The court conducted a hearing at...
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