At trial, Mr Wade was found guilty of all four charges against him. He was sentenced as a habitual offender to four consecutive terms of life imprisonment. He was also fined $5,000 for each conviction.

On appeal, Mr Wade argued that the four separate offences he had been charged were based on the same set of facts and constituted only one crime. As such, he argued that the trial court had erred in imposing four separate sentences.

The Court of Criminal Appeals held that in order to prove that Mr Wade had committed each of the separate offences, the state had to prove that Mr Wade had entered into a separate agreement for each offence, each with a separate object. The Court found that the State's evidence only established that Mr Wade had entered into one agreement, to obtain the contents of the safe. The fact that Mr Wade and the other men contemplated engaging in conduct which would constitute other criminal offences did not mean that they were guilty of separate conspiracies; they did not enter into separate agreements for these offences.

The Court of Criminal Appeal ordered that the case be remanded to the trial court with a direction that the trial court set aside three of the defendant's conspiracy convictions and the corresponding sentences. The Court specifically directed the trial court to set aside the defendant's conviction for conspiring to commit burglary in the first degree as one of the three offences because the premises in question were premises of a business, not a dwelling as required for proof of the offence.

Mr Wade also argued on appeal that the prosecutor had improperly elicited testimony about a prior unrelated offense from a witness. The Court of Appeals rejected this argument and agreed with the trial judge that the evidence which included a reference to a prior unrelated offense was admissible.

The Court also ordered that Mr Wade be resentenced on the remaining conviction.