Personal Restraint Petition Of Nicholas Daniel Hacheney ( 2019 )

Filed
Washington State
Court of Appeals
Division Two
September 24, 2019
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
DIVISION II
In the Matter of the No. 53274-3-II
Personal Restraint of
NICHOLAS DANIEL HACHENEY,
Petitioner.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
MELNICK, J. — Nicholas Hacheney seeks relief from personal restraint imposed as a result
of his 2008 conviction for first degree murder. He was sentenced to 320 months of confinement,
including a 240-month mandatory minimum term of confinement under former RCW
9.94A.120(4) (1997). Under that statute, an offender cannot earn early release credits during that
240-month term. In State v. Cloud, 95 Wn. App. 606, 617-18, 976 P.2d 649 (1999), this court held
that Initiative 593, which was codified as former RCW 9.94A.120(4), was unconstitutional as it
violated the single subject requirement of article II, section 19 of the Washington State
Constitution. Hacheney argues that the constitutional infirmity of former RCW 9.44A.120(4) was
not remedied until after the Cloud decision, which was after the date of his crime, so the prohibition
on earning early release credits during the mandatory minimum term of confinement was
unconstitutional as to him.
But as the Cloud court noted, former RCW 9.94A.120(4) had been reenacted before its
decision, and it expressed no opinion as to the validity of the reenacted statute. 95 Wn. App. at
No. 53274-3-II
618 n.26. Between its original enactment in 1994 and the date of Hacheney’s crime, December
26, 1997, former RCW 9.94A.120(4) was reenacted in Laws of 1995, ch. 108, § 3, Laws of 1996,
ch. 93, § 1, and Laws of 1997, ch. 69, § 1, ch. 121, § 2, ch. 144, § 2, ch. 338, § 4, and ch. 340, § 2.
Laws of 1997, ch. 338 was titled: “AN ACT Relating to offenders . . . reenacting and amending
RCW 9.94A.030, 9.94A.120.” Thus, by the time of Hacheney’s crime, former RCW 9.94A.120(4)
had been validly reenacted and was no longer constitutionally infirm. Pierce County v. State, 159
Wn.2d 16, 40-41, 148 P.3d 1002 (2006).
Hacheney does not present grounds for relief from restraint. We therefore deny his
petition.
A majority of the panel having determined that this opinion will not be printed in the
Washington Appellate Reports, but will be filed for public record in accordance with RCW 2.06.040,
it is so ordered.
MELNICK, J.
We concur:
MAXA, C.J.
LEE, J.
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