A person commits robbery when he or she unlawfully takes personal property from the person of another or in his or her presence against his or her will by the use or threatened use of immediate force, violence, or fear of injury to that person or his or her property or the person or property of anyone. Such force or fear must be used to obtain or retain possession of the property, or to prevent or overcome resistance to the taking; in either of which cases the degree of force is immaterial. Such taking constitutes robbery whenever it appears that, although the taking was fully completed without the knowledge of the person from whom taken, such knowledge was prevented by the use of force or fear.
RCW 9A.56.190
Robbery—Definition.
Known as the Washington Criminal Code
The act spans §§ 9A.04.010 to 9A.98.020 (401 sections).
Applied in 201 court decisions — leading case State v. Thorne (1996)
Most recently applied in United States v. Tyren Cervenak (April 2025)
2011 c 336 s 379; 1975 1st ex.s. c 260 s 9A.56.190.
How often courts cite this section
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.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.