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RCW 9A.04.020

Purposes—Principles of construction.

Known as the Washington Criminal Code

The act spans §§ 9A.04.010 to 9A.98.020 (401 sections).

Applied in 46 court decisions — leading case In the Matter of Charles (1998)

Most recently applied in State v. Bergstrom (January 2022)

1975 1st ex.s. c 260 s 9A.04.020.

How often courts cite this section

197819801990200020102020202240
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) The general purposes of the provisions governing the definition of offenses are:

(a) To forbid and prevent conduct that inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests;

(b) To safeguard conduct that is without culpability from condemnation as criminal;

(c) To give fair warning of the nature of the conduct declared to constitute an offense;

(d) To differentiate on reasonable grounds between serious and minor offenses, and to prescribe proportionate penalties for each.

(2) The provisions of this title shall be construed according to the fair import of their terms but when the language is susceptible of differing constructions it shall be interpreted to further the general purposes stated in this title.

Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.