Background
Harlan Blackburn sexually assaulted his biological daughter repeatedly over eight years, starting when she was 12 years old and continuing until she was 20. The abuse occurred at multiple residences in Washington and culminated in an incident at the Westin Hotel in Seattle on the victim’s 20th birthday in August 2021. The victim disclosed the abuse to her boyfriend in October 2021 and contacted law enforcement shortly thereafter.
During their investigation, Kent Police Detective Angela Galetti obtained without a warrant the last four digits of Blackburn’s bank card from two sources: a hotel reservation receipt from the Westin Hotel and a purchase receipt from a Lovers store. She used the matching last four digits (“8923”) to connect Blackburn to a purchase of lingerie and sex toys on August 12, 2021—the day before the hotel stay. A jury convicted Blackburn on all eight counts: five counts of incest in the first degree, two counts of rape of a child in the second degree, and one count of rape of a child in the third degree.
The Court’s Holding
The Washington Court of Appeals held that law enforcement’s warrantless acquisition of Blackburn’s last four bank card digits from the Lovers store constituted a manifest violation of his right to privacy under Washington Constitution Article I, Section 7. The court reasoned that bank records and payment information reveal intimate details about a person’s life—including purchasing habits, affiliations, and activities—and thus fall within constitutionally protected private affairs. Following established precedent, the court determined that private financial information cannot be obtained without a warrant, even from third-party merchants.
However, the court held that the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence of guilt was overwhelming and did not depend primarily on the bank card information. Multiple corroborating witnesses testified to the abuse, sexually explicit video evidence from 2019 was admitted, jail recordings captured Blackburn implicitly acknowledging the abuse to his mother, and Facebook messages contained Blackburn’s instructions to the victim to purchase items from the Lovers store. The court concluded that this substantial, independent evidence of guilt rendered the improper admission of the bank card digits harmless.
The court also reversed Blackburn’s conviction on Count 8 (one count of incest in the first degree) for insufficient evidence and remanded for resentencing on five counts, finding that the trial court had imposed sentences exceeding the statutory maximum by applying an offender score that surpassed the guideline range’s contemplated maximum.
Key Takeaways
- Financial information including partial bank card numbers constitutes protected private affairs under Washington Constitution Article I, Section 7, requiring a warrant for law enforcement access.
- Bank records and payment information reveal intimate details of a person’s purchasing habits, affiliations, and activities and cannot be obtained based merely on a business relationship between the customer and the merchant.
- Even when law enforcement violates a suspect’s constitutional privacy rights, admission of such evidence may be harmless if overwhelming corroborating evidence of guilt exists and did not depend on the illegally obtained information.
- Sentencing courts must ensure imposed sentences do not exceed statutory maximums, even when applying offender scores that exceed standard sentencing guidelines.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies Washington law on the privacy protections afforded to financial transaction information. While law enforcement may increasingly need access to purchasing data to investigate crimes, this opinion establishes a clear constitutional floor: the last four digits of a payment card—information that can link a person to specific purchases and reveal patterns of behavior—qualify as private affairs requiring judicial authorization. The ruling prevents routine warrantless requests to merchants for customer payment information based on card numbers alone.
The decision also demonstrates that courts will carefully scrutinize sentencing decisions to ensure compliance with statutory maximums, particularly when offender scores calculated under state sentencing guidelines exceed the range’s architectural assumptions. For prosecutors and defense counsel, the case reinforces that cases with strong corroborating evidence may survive suppression of illegally obtained evidence under a harmless error analysis, but the violation still matters for appellate review and potential future constitutional litigation.