Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Defendant was charged with first-degree rape of the victim, a friend who had spent the night on defendant’s couch after an evening of drinking. The victim contacted the police following the incident, and Detective Myers asked the victim if she would send defendant text messages to “try to get [defendant] to make a comment about what had happened between the two of them.” The victim agreed, and Myers instructed her on the content of the messages. The victim sent defendant two text messages. Defendant did not respond to either message. At trial, defendant challenged the admissibility of the text messages and his nonresponse on both constitutional and evidentiary grounds. The trial court concluded that neither objection was well taken, and the jury found defendant guilty. The Court of Appeals affirmed. After review, the Supreme Court concluded that the text messages and defendant’s nonresponse constituted inadmissible hearsay, and that the trial court erred in admitting them. The Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Schiller-Munneman" on Justia Law

Defendant Amanda Newcomb was convicted of second-degree animal neglect after she failed to adequately feed her dog, Juno, resulting in his malnourishment. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress blood test results showing that Juno had no medical condition that would have caused him to be malnourished, which in turn indicated that Juno was malnourished because he was starving. Defendant argued that the state had violated both Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution by failing to obtain a warrant before testing the dog’s blood. The trial court denied the motion and allowed the state to introduce the test results during trial. Defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals, which agreed with defendant that she had a protected privacy interest in her dog’s blood that required the state to obtain a search warrant, unless the circumstances fit within an exception to the warrant requirement, and reversed. The Supreme Court concluded defendant had no privacy interest in the dog's blood under the State or federal constitutions, and reversed. View "Oregon v. Newcomb" on Justia Law

Defendant William Althouse was convicted in 2011 of felony public indecency after previously having been convicted of three other felony sex crimes. Pursuant to ORS 137.719(1), the trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Throughout this litigation, defendant argued that, as applied to him, a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole violated Article I, section 16, of the Oregon Constitution and the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment without opinion. The Supreme Court allowed defendant’s petition for review to consider two issues: (1) whether ORS 138.222(2)(a) barred direct appellate review of a presumptive sentence imposed pursuant to ORS 137.719(1); and, (2) if not, whether defendant’s sentence was unconstitutional as applied. The Court held that defendant’s sentence was both reviewable and constitutional. The Court therefore affirmed the Court of Appeals. View "Oregon v. Althouse" on Justia Law

This case involved a challenge to a juvenile court’s decision to waive its jurisdiction over a 13-year-old boy who was alleged to have committed aggravated murder. Under the relevant statutes, ORS 419C.352 and ORS 419C.349, a youth under age of 15 who is alleged to have committed murder may be waived into adult court only if, at the time of the conduct, he or she “was of sufficient sophistication and maturity to appreciate the nature and quality of the conduct involved.” In this case, the evidence suggested that youth was of “average” sophistication and maturity for his age and was “just as effective” as peers of his age in understanding that his conduct was wrong. The juvenile court found that the statutory “sophistication and maturity” requirement had been satisfied. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the “sophistication and maturity” provision required only an awareness of the physical nature and criminality of the conduct at issue. The Oregon Supreme Court agreed with the youth that the “sophistication and maturity” requirement was more demanding, and reversed both the appellate and juvenile courts. The case was remanded to the juvenile court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. J. C. N.-V." on Justia Law

The Attorney General prepared and filed a modified ballot title following remand from the Supreme Court. In its second trip to the Oregon Supreme Court, two petitioners challenged the modified title. IP 62 applies to public employees (employees) and public employee labor organizations (unions). If adopted by the voters, IP 62 would have amended several provisions of the Oregon Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act. Petitioners Neel and Forest set out two main objections to the modified caption: (1) they claimed that the phrase “limits public employee union members’ obligations” was vague and overbroad and was likely to mislead and confuse voters; (2) the phrase “employees might benefit without sharing bargaining costs" petitioners contended that, as used to describe IP 62, that phrase was “underinclusive, inaccurate, misleading, politically loaded,” and failed to reasonably identify the actual major effect of the proposed initiative measure. The Supreme Court found certain of the objections to be well taken, and referred the modified ballot title to the Attorney General for additional modification. View "Conroy v. Rosenblum" on Justia Law

Defendant took a pickup truckload of scrap metal items from the metal recycling bin of a Washington County microchip manufacturing plant and was subsequently charged with third-degree theft. At the close of the state’s case-in-chief, defendant unsuccessfully moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing that the evidence presented by the state had failed to establish that the items he had taken possessed actual value. Defendant was subsequently convicted of the theft charge. The Court of Appeals affirmed that conviction, holding that the evidence adduced at trial had been sufficient to permit a reasonable juror to find that the items stolen by defendant had indeed possessed some market value. Finding no reversible error with the Court of Appeals' decision, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Oregon v. Waterhouse" on Justia Law

This case arose out of a December 2008 bombing of a bank in Woodburn. After a life-threatening phone call was made to an adjacent bank, and an employee was told that the lives of employees in both banks were at risk, law enforcement officers responded to the scene and discovered the bomb, which they assessed and treated as a hoax device. While law enforcement officers were trying to dismantle the bomb, it exploded. Two law enforcement officers were killed; a third law enforcement officer was critically injured, but survived; a bank employee was also injured. Defendant Joshua Turnidge was convicted on 10 counts of aggravated murder, as well as other felonies, following a joint trial with his father, Bruce, for which the two were sentenced to death. In this automatic and direct review of his convictions and sentences of death, defendant raised 151 assignments of error, supplemented by additional pro se assignments, relating to the pretrial and guilt phases of his trial. Finding no reversible error on any of defendant's challenges, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed defendant's convictions and sentences of death. View "Oregon v. Turnidge" on Justia Law

This case arose out of a December 2008 bombing of a bank in Woodburn. After a life-threatening phone call was made to an adjacent bank, and an employee was told that the lives of employees in both banks were at risk, law enforcement officers responded to the scene and discovered the bomb, which they assessed and treated as a hoax device. While law enforcement officers were trying to dismantle the bomb, it exploded. Two law enforcement officers were killed; a third law enforcement officer was critically injured, but survived; a bank employee was also injured. Defendant Bruce Turnidge was convicted on 10 counts of aggravated murder, as well as other felonies, following a joint trial with his son, Joshua, for which the two were sentenced to death. In this automatic and direct review of his convictions and sentences of death, defendant challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support four of the 10 aggravated murder convictions. Additionally, he raised numerous challenges to other trial court rulings. Finding no reversible error on any of defendant's challenges, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed defendant's convictions and sentences of death. View "Oregon v. Turnidge" on Justia Law

Defendant John Sines came to the attention of law enforcement after his housekeeper anonymously called the child protective services division of the Department of Human Services (DHS) and said that she suspected that defendant might be sexually abusing his adopted daughter. The housekeeper’s suspicions had been raised after finding an unusual “discharge” on several pairs of the child’s underwear, and she told DHS that she had considered taking a pair for authorities to examine. In response to a question from the housekeeper, the DHS employee who handled the call said that he would be able to connect the housekeeper with someone in law enforcement who could analyze the underwear and confirm or refute her concerns. The DHS employee told the housekeeper several times that he could not tell her to take the victim’s underwear. The next day the housekeeper obtained a pair of the victim’s underwear, and the following day she turned it over to the police. Based on that evidence and other statements by the housekeeper, police obtained a warrant and searched defendant’s house, after which defendant was arrested and charged with a number of sex crimes. Defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the search and seizure of the underwear was denied, and he was convicted on four counts of first degree sexual abuse. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the trial court had erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress. The issue this case raised for the Oregon Supreme Court's review was whether a private citizen’s seizure of criminal evidence was subject to suppression at trial as the fruit of an unlawful government search. The Court of Appeals concluded that, although the underwear had been procured by a private person, there was nevertheless sufficient contact between state officials and the private person that the warrantless search and seizure constituted state action, in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. The Supreme Court reversed, acknowledging that this was a "close case:"Contacts between private individuals and state officers before a private search always require careful examination to determine whether, given all the circumstances, the state officers provided such affirmative encouragement and authorization to the private individuals so as to render them agents of the state. In this case . . . we hold that they did not." View "Oregon v. Sines" on Justia Law

In 2011, a 12-year-old girl, A, reported that defendant Jesus Prieto-Rubio, a member of her extended family, had sexually abused her the previous day. The following day, Detective Rookhuyzen went to defendant’s home and interviewed him. Defendant admitted that he had been in the same room with A, but he said that he did not remember what had happened there. Rookhuyzen arrested defendant for his abuse of A. At the station, Rookhuyzen interviewed defendant again. He asked defendant primarily about A. But he also asked whether any other children had come to defendant’s home. Defendant mentioned another child, K, but only by first name. The state ultimately charged defendant with first-degree sexual abuse of A. Defendant retained counsel to defend him on that charge. Over the next several weeks, Rookhuyzen continued to investigate, locating two of defendant's nieces who separately reported that defendant had touched her inappropriately. The nieces reported that the separate incidents occurred at least eight months before defendant allegedly abused A. The issue in this case centered on the extent to which the same constitutional provision prohibits the police from questioning a represented defendant charged with a crime about other, uncharged offenses. Defendant argued that police violated the right to counsel by questioning about other, uncharged offenses if those matters were in any way “factually related” to the crime for which he had obtained counsel. According to defendant, that is what happened in this case, and so the trial court should have suppressed certain statements that he made to police without the assistance of counsel. The Supreme Court concluded that the appropriate test for determining the permissible scope of questioning of a criminal defendant who is represented by counsel was whether it is objectively reasonably foreseeable that the questioning will lead to incriminating evidence concerning the offense for which the defendant has obtained counsel. In this case, the charged and uncharged offenses were so closely related that it was reasonably foreseeable that questioning defendant about the uncharged offenses would elicit incriminating evidence about the charged offense. As a result, that questioning violated defendant’s state constitutional right to counsel. View "Oregon v. Prieto-Rubio" on Justia Law