Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in Constitutional Law
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The issue before the Supreme Court in this case was the purported conflict between two statutes relating to the issuance of a writ of mandamus: ORS 34.110, which precludes issuance of the writ if the relator has a plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law, and ORS 34.130(3), which states that a writ of mandamus "shall be allowed" by a court or judge on the petition for the writ. After plaintiff filed a petition for an alternative writ, the court declined to issue the writ and instead dismissed plaintiff's petition, relying on the existence of an adequate remedy at law. Plaintiff appealed to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed without opinion. Upon review of the circuit court record, the Supreme Court concluded that that the circuit court permissibly dismissed plaintiff's petition. View "Oregon ex rel Portland Habilitation Center v. Portland St. Univ." on Justia Law

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In his criminal case, defendant unsuccessfully sought an order compelling the victim to produce the hard drive of her laptop computer so that the defense could obtain a forensic examination of the hard drive. After his conviction, defendant requested that the trial court order that an already-existing copy of the hard drive, preserved in a related civil case, be placed under seal in the trial court record of defendant's criminal case, for purposes of appellate review. The trial court granted that motion and rejected the victim's claim that the order violated her right as a crime victim under Article I, section 42, of the Oregon Constitution to refuse a discovery request. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court's order did not violate the victim's rights under Article I, section 42. Accordingly, the Court affirmed. View "Oregon v. Bray" on Justia Law

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In two criminal cases consolidated for purposes of opinion, each defendant's conviction was based, for the most part, on eyewitness identification evidence. In "Oregon v. Lawson," the Court of Appeals concluded that, despite the state's use of unduly suggestive pretrial identification procedures, under the test first articulated by the Supreme Court in "Oregon v. Classen," (590 P2d 1198 (1979)), the victim's identification of defendant Lawson had been reliable enough to allow the jury to consider it in its deliberations. In "Oregon v. James," (again relying on "Classen") the Court of Appeals similarly concluded that, although the witnesses had been subject to an unduly suggestive police procedure in the course of identifying defendant James, those identifications had nevertheless been sufficiently reliable, and were therefore admissible at trial. The Supreme Court allowed review in each of these cases to determine whether the Classen test was consistent with the current scientific research and understanding of eyewitness identification. In light of the scientific research, the Court revised the test set out in Classen and adopted several additional procedures, based generally on applicable provisions of the Oregon Evidence Code (OEC), for determining the admissibility of eyewitness identification evidence. View "Oregon v. Lawson" on Justia Law

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The issue before the Supreme Court in this case was whether a physician's conclusion that defendant physically abused a child met the requirements for admissibility of scientific evidence. The child in this case, C, was approximately 18 months old when he arrived at the emergency room with multiple injuries, including a golf-ball-sized lump on his forehead and a fractured skull. The state accused defendant of causing C's injuries and charged him with two counts of criminal mistreatment and first- and third-degree assault. To prove first-degree assault, the state had to show that defendant had caused C "serious physical injury," defined as injury that "creates a substantial risk of death." The jury convicted defendant of third-degree assault and two counts of criminal mistreatment. The jury acquitted defendant on the charge of first-degree assault, but found him guilty of the lesser-included offense of second-degree assault. Like first-degree assault, second degree assault requires a finding that the inflicted injury created a substantial risk of death. Upon review of the trial court record, the Supreme Court concluded that the expert's diagnosis was not limited to determining the cause of C's injuries, but included a conclusion that C's injuries were the result of child abuse. That aspect of the expert's diagnosis addressed a second disputed issue, whether defendant's actions were intentional or accidental. Because the Court could not conclude that there was little likelihood that the admission of the expert's diagnosis did not affect all of defendant's convictions, the Court also could not conclude that the trial court's error was harmless as to the convictions for first degree mistreatment and third-degree assault. The decision of the Court of Appeals was therefore reversed, and the case remanded to the trial court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Sanchez-Alfonso" on Justia Law

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This case concerned an employment discrimination dispute between Portland State University (PSU) and Portland State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (the Association). Those entities entered into a collective bargaining agreement that included a dispute resolution process for alleged violations of the agreement. That dispute resolution process included a "Resort to Other Procedures" (ROP) provision that permitted PSU to decline or discontinue a grievance proceeding if an Association member brought a claim regarding the same matter in an agency or court outside of PSU. PSU invoked that provision to halt a grievance proceeding after an Association member filed discrimination complaints with two outside agencies. The Association subsequently filed a complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB), alleging in part that PSU had engaged in an unfair labor practice by discontinuing the contractual grievance proceeding. ERB concluded that PSU's invocation of the ROP clause constituted unlawful discrimination. It therefore declined to enforce the ROP clause and ordered PSU to submit to the grievance process. On PSU's appeal, the Court of Appeals determined that ERB erred by applying the wrong legal standard in ordering PSU to submit to the grievance process, and it therefore reversed and remanded the case for ERB's reconsideration. The Association sought review of that decision. Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals's decision, concluding that ERB correctly held that the ROP clause at issue in this case imposed a form of employer retaliation for protected conduct that reasonably would impede or deter an employee from pursuing his or her statutory rights. "The resulting harm is neither theoretical nor trivial, but qualifies as a substantive difference in treatment. The ROP provision is therefore facially discriminatory . . . Accordingly, ERB properly declined to enforce that illegal contract provision. " View "Portland St. Univ. Ass'n of Univ. Professors v. Portland St. Univ." on Justia Law

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At issue in this case was the lawfulness of a portion of the City of Portland's Willamette River Greenway Plan that regulates uses of industrial and other urban land along a portion of the Willamette River known as the "North Reach." Specifically, the issue was whether the City of Portland (city) had authority to regulate development within the North Reach. Petitioners represented various industrial interests within the affected area of the city's plan. They contended that the law permitted the city to regulate only "intensification" or "changes" to existing uses and otherwise does not permit the regulation of existing industrial or other urban uses or other changes to such uses within the North Reach. The Land Use Board of Appeals rejected that argument, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Upon review, the Supreme Court likewise rejected petitioners' argument and affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. View "Gunderson, LLC v. City of Portland" on Justia Law

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Defendant petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision in "Oregon v. Leistiko," (282 P3d 857 (2012)). He argued that the Court erred in two respects: (1) in stating that he had not pursued two issues on review that he had raised in the Court of Appeals; (2) in not deciding whether the admission of evidence of an uncharged rape affected the jury's determination that he had committed crimes other than rape. The Court allowed the petition and after review of defendant's contentions of error, modified the original opinion. View "Oregon v. Leistiko" on Justia Law

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The issue before the Supreme Court in this case centered on the legal standard for the mental state of criminal negligence and, when tested by that standard, whether the record in this case was sufficient to support defendant's conviction of criminally negligent homicide. Defendant, while driving a tractor-trailer truck, collided with the victim's catering truck from the rear. The collision pushed the victim's truck into the oncoming lane of traffic where it was struck by a logging truck. The victim died at the scene. The state charged defendant with criminally negligent homicide. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress evidence of the manner in which he had been driving 10 to 15 minutes before the collision. The trial court denied the motion. Defendant then waived his right to a jury and proceeded with a bench trial. At the close of the state's case, defendant moved for a judgment of acquittal, which the court denied. The trial court subsequently convicted defendant. Defendant appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion. Finding no error in the trial court's interpretation of the standard for criminal negligence, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Oregon v. Lewis" on Justia Law

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In this case, the Supreme Court reviewed a trial court's orders declaring defendant's son, "Z" (a 19-year-old man who suffers from autism and developmental disabilities) not competent to testify at trial and excluding from evidence a video involving out-of-court statements made by Z and drawings made by Z. Z was called to testify at Defendant's aggravated murder trial accused of killing Z's caregiver William Mills. Finding that the State bore the burden to preserve alternative arguments supporting the admissibility of any part of evidence given by Z, and the State did not meet this burden at trial, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision to exclude all of the evidence in question here. Furthermore, the Court determined that the decision not to admit the video testimony was not an abuse of the trial court's discretion. The Court affirmed both of the trial court's orders. View "Oregon v. Sarich" on Justia Law

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This case was an automatic and direct review of death sentences imposed after a "penalty phase" trial. Defendant raised 33 assignments of error. Five of them the Supreme Court said merited discussion: specifically, defendant's claims that (1) the adoption of Article I, section 40, of the Oregon Constitution violated the "separate vote" requirement of Article XVII, section 1, of the Oregon Constitution; (2) the so-called "third question," which asked whether defendant's conduct was "unreasonable in response to the provocation, if any, by the deceased," was unconstitutional; (3) the trial court erred by refusing to admit evidence relevant to the third question or failing to pose the question to the jury; (4) the trial court erred in empanelling an "anonymous" jury; and (5) the trial court erred in allowing the state's expert to testify about defendant's consensual homosexual experience as a teenager. The Court discussed, but rejected, three of the five arguments; defendant's position as to the fourth and fifth were well taken. The Court concluded that that the trial court erred in empanelling an "anonymous" jury without finding, as required by the Court's decision in "State v. Sundberg," (247 P3d 1213 (2011)), that there were strong and particular grounds for believing that the jurors' identities needed to be protected. Because that error was not harmless, the Court vacated the death sentences and remanded the case to the circuit court for a new penalty-phase trial. Furthermore, the Court concluded that the trial court erred in denying defendant's motion to exclude evidence of defendant's homosexual experiences as a teenager. View "Oregon v. Rogers" on Justia Law