Abstract
When an appellate court finds an error to have occurred during a proceeding, the error is not yet subject to correction. In order to merit a remedy, the error must have been sufficiently prejudicial to the aggrieved party’s case. Drawing the line between correctable and non-correctable errors is not an easy task, for it often requires guessing at what was in the minds of jurors and trial judges. To cope with this task, courts have devised various rules and tests for deciding whether an error was likely prejudicial or not. These standards often go by names such as “harmless error,” “clear error,” “structural error,” and other similar phrasings.
While courts across the common law tradition have used these standards for over 200 years, their study has been historically neglected. It is only in the last 50 or 60 years that courts and commentators have earnestly begun systematizing, rationalizing, and studying standards for reversal on appeal. The catalysts that brought critical attention to these standards were the United States Supreme Court’s 1967 opinion in Chapman v. California and Justice Roger Traynor’s resulting 1970 book The Riddle of Harmless Error. Since then, there has been tremendous growth in the study of prejudice standards. However, to date, this study has not yet reached Washington State.
The purpose of this Article is to bring Washington into this important and developing conversation. To that end, this Article surveys the prejudice standards used by Washington’s appellate courts. It discusses their history, their current usage, and areas where clarification is required.
Part I of this Article addresses the most common prejudice standard: harmless error. Part II addresses the constitutional harmless error standard. Part III concerns a unique subset of constitutional error—structural error. Finally, Part IV addresses the cumulative error doctrine.
Recommended Citation
Andrew B. Van Winkle, Prejudice Standards in Washington’s Appellate Courts, 48 SEATTLE U. L. REV. 123 (2024).
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