Piety Ann Clark reported to police that Wayne Baines, her part-time caregiver, had raped her several times. Baines was charged with first-degree rape. He eventually agreed to plead guilty to two counts of fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation, a gross misdemeanor. He entered an Alford plea, asserting his innocence. His lawyer explained that he had made the plea bargain to avoid the risk of a first-degree rape conviction.

Clark then sued Baines for the tort of sexual battery. Baines responded with a counter-claim for malicious prosecution, based on Clark's suing him in tort. Clark obtained a partial summary judgment, dismissing the malicious prosecution claim because Baines had pled guilty in the criminal case. Baines appealed the dismissal, eventually to the Washington Supreme Court.

In Washington, an action for malicious prosecution can provide a remedy for a wrongfully initiated suit, whether civil or criminal. A showing of probable cause for the suit, though, defeats an action for malicious prosecution.

The question in this case was whether Baines' Alford plea precluded him from arguing that the crimes to which he had pled guilty, sexual assaults, had never occurred. Washington courts do not apply issue preclusion, also known as collateral estoppel, when to do so "would work an injustice on the party against whom collateral estoppel is to be applied." This "depends primarily on whether the parties to the earlier proceeding received a full and fair hearing on the issue in question."

The supreme court concluded that an Alford plea, unlike a criminal trial, does not provide a full and fair hearing on the issues in the case. Accordingly, an Alford plea does not preclude later litigation of the issues. Baines' guilty pleas did not block him from taking his malicious prosecution counter-claim to trial.

The court noted the realities that can lead innocent persons to forego criminal trial and enter an Alford plea. "[A] criminal defendant faces powerful coercive forces when deciding whether to: (1) contest criminal charges and risk prolonged incarceration if he or she is found guilty or (2) plead guilty to reduced charges in exchange for a lesser sentence."

Such coercive forces led to Alford pleas by defendants in some of the notorious child sex abuse prosecutions of the 1980's and '90's, such as the Little Rascals day care case in North Carolina and the "child sex abuse ring" cases in Wenatchee, Washington.

The concurring opinion in Clark v. Baines noted that, even though a defendant's statements in an Alford plea will not preclude his denying a sexual assault, they may be admissible against him at trial to help the plaintiff prove he did commit one.