State v. Presba

Melissa Presba (defendant) was driving with a suspended license when a state trooper pulled her over for speeding. Instead of using her own name, Presba gave her neighbor Shyla Dashiell’s maiden name, date of birth, and Social Security number. Nobody appeared for hearings on the speeding ticket, and Washington suspended Dashiell’s license and issued a warrant for her arrest. Dashiell went to considerable effort to fix the problem, recover her license, and change her Social Security number. Dashiell also faced ongoing difficulties with her financial accounts and her driver’s license because her credit and driving records were flagged as being used for fraudulent purposes. Presba was charged with identity theft, forgery, and driving with her license suspended. Her attorney argued that the legislature limited the purpose of the identity-theft statute to financial crimes and that Presba had committed only the lesser included offense of criminal impersonation. The trial judge compared the language of the two statutes and noted that a person could violate the criminal-impersonation statute by assuming a false identity without violating the identity-theft statute, which required using a real person’s identity. The judge also noted that financial crimes seemed to be what motivated enacting the identity-theft statute, but that the legislature did not limit the statute to those circumstances. A plain reading of the statute showed that using a real person’s means of identification to facilitate another crime sufficed, and the judge concluded Presba had done just that. Presba appealed her conviction, arguing the evidence did not suffice to prove identity theft.