Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

The issue before the Oregon Supreme Court in this matter was whether defendant Charles Kincheloe's conviction should be reversed in light of Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S Ct 1390 (2020), which held that only a unanimous jury can find a defendant guilty of a serious crime. Defendant was charged with several offenses, including first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy, and fourth-degree assault. Defendant’s case was tried to a twelve-person jury in 2018, prior to Ramos. While formulating jury instructions, the trial court asked defendant whether he wished to object to the instruction that the jury could return a nonunanimous verdict, stating, “All the defense attorneys are doing that now.” Defense counsel responded, “That’s fine.” There was no further discussion of the issue. The jury was instructed that “10 or more jurors must agree on the verdict.” The jury found defendant guilty as charged. Defendant requested that the trial court poll the jury. The poll revealed that the jury had unanimously convicted defendant of the sodomy and assault charges but that it had divided eleven to one on the rape count. Defendant appealed, assigning error to the nonunanimous jury instruction and to the receipt of the nonunanimous verdict. Defendant conceded that he had not preserved that assignment of error, and he asked the Court of Appeals to conduct plain error review. In his briefing to the Oregon Supreme Court, defendant argued that his exchange with the trial court was sufficient to preserve an objection to the nonunanimous jury instruction. The state conceded that defendant’s single conviction based on a nonunanimous verdict had to be reversed, but it argued the instructional error was harmless with respect to the two convictions based on unanimous verdicts. Even assuming that defendant preserved an objection to the jury instruction, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded that error was harmless as to the two convictions based on unanimous verdicts. Defendant's convictions were therefore affirmed without the Court addressing whether defendant adequately preserved an objection to the nonunanimous jury instruction. View "Oregon v. Kincheloe" on Justia Law

The issue before the Oregon Supreme Court in this matter was whether defendant Isidro Flores Ramos' conviction should be reversed in light of Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S Ct 1390 (2020), which held that only a unanimous jury can find a defendant guilty of a serious crime. Defendant broke into a home and sexually assaulted a nine-year-old girl. Defendant was charged with first-degree unlawful sexual penetration, first-degree sexual abuse, attempted first-degree rape, first-degree burglary, and coercion. Before trial, he filed a motion requesting that the jury be instructed that it needed to be unanimous to convict. The trial court denied that motion. The jury returned guilty verdicts on each of the five counts. The trial court polled the jury; the poll indicated the jury had reached a unanimous guilty verdict on all counts except for the attempted first-degree rape count. On that count, only ten jurors voted to convict. Defendant did not object to the manner in which the trial court polled the jury, and defense counsel indicated that he was satisfied by the poll. Defendant appealed. As relevant here, he assigned error to both the use of the nonunanimous jury instruction and the receipt of the nonunanimous verdict—assignments of error that he had preserved in the trial court. He argued that those errors required reversal of all his convictions. In a decision before the federal Supreme Court's Ramos decision, the Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion. Because the jury returned four unanimous verdicts, the Oregon Supreme Court determined those convictions could stand; however, pursuant to Ramos, the fifth, nonunanimous conviction was reversed. View "Oregon v. Flores Ramos" on Justia Law

Defendant Gerardo Morales was indicted on various sex crime charges and, after the trial court set bail, defendant’s mother paid $20,000 as security for defendant’s release prior to trial. The notice defendant’s mother signed when depositing the security funds on defendant’s behalf stated that “[t]he Court may order that the security deposit be applied to any fines, costs, assessments, restitution, contribution, recoupment, or other monetary obligations that are imposed on the defendant.” Defendant was represented by court-appointed counsel at trial, after which the jury found defendant guilty of several sex offenses. Following those convictions, the State requested that defendant be required to pay attorney fees for his court-appointed counsel. Defendant objected on the ground that the court could not find that he had the ability to pay attorney fees. The State argued that when a third party makes a security deposit on behalf of a criminal defendant, that third party was informed that fees or fines might be paid out of that deposit. For that reason, the State argued, those funds were available to pay court-ordered fees and the defendant therefore had the “ability to pay” such fees out of the security amount. The court found defendant did not have the ability to pay, but nevertheless imposed $5,000 in attorney fees and ordered it to be paid out of the money deposited by defendant’s mother as security for his pretrial release. On appeal, the Oregon Supreme Court held that because the trial court determined defendant did not have the ability to pay, it erred in imposing the fees on the basis of the third party's security payment alone. View "Oregon v. Morales" on Justia Law

Defendant Micus Ward was convicted of aggravated and felony murder. After being arrested for that crime, and before being appointed counsel, defendant was twice interrogated while in custody. The trial court suppressed the statements that defendant made during the first interrogation, because the court determined that officers conducting that interrogation continued to question defendant after he invoked his right to remain silent. But the trial court refused to suppress defendant’s statements from the second interrogation, because it determined that the officers who conducted that interrogation obtained a valid waiver of defendant’s Article I, section 12, rights. The trial court thus suppressed statements that defendant made during the first interrogation but not those he made during the second interrogation. A jury found defendant guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On review, taking into account the totality of the circumstances, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded the State failed to prove that defendant validly waived his rights before the second interrogation. Accordingly, the Court concluded the trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress, and further concluded the error required a reversal of defendant’s conviction and a remand for a new trial. View "Oregon v. Ward" on Justia Law

Petitioner Ernie Perez pled guilty in 2005 to two aggravated murders that he had committed at the age of fourteen. In 2016, he filed a petition for post-conviction relief raising constitutional claims premised on the Oregon Supreme Court’s interpretation of ORS 419C.349, a statute governing when a juvenile defendant could be waived into adult court, in Oregon v. J. C. N.-V., 380 P3d 248 (2016). The post-conviction court concluded that petitioner’s claims were barred by the claim preclusion rule in ORS 138.550(3) because petitioner could reasonably have raised those claims in an earlier petition that he had filed in 2008. For similar reasons, the post-conviction court held that the claims were barred by the statute of limitations set out in ORS 138.510(3). The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Oregon Supreme Court granted certiorari review to address petitioner's argument that his claims could not reasonably have been raised prior to J. C. N.-V., thereby allowing him to escape the statute of limitations in ORS 138.510(3). The Supreme Court determined petitioner’s claims were indeed barred by ORS 138.550(3) because he failed to show that he could not reasonably have raised those claims at the time of his 2008 petition. The Court therefore affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the post-conviction court. View "Perez v. Cain" on Justia Law

While defendant Francis Weaver was awaiting trial for murder, the state entered into a plea agreement with one of his codefendants, Michael Orren - a potential witness in defendant’s case. The plea agreement required Orren, if called by defendant as a witness, to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination and not to testify on defendant’s behalf. If Orren complied with the agreement, the state would seek a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years. However, if Orren testified for defendant, even truthfully, the state could seek a death sentence or a sentence of life without parole - two sentencing options that were otherwise taken off the table by Orren’s plea agreement. Defendant attempted to call Orren as a witness, and Orren invoked privilege. Defendant sought to at least place Orren’s plea agreement before the jury, but the trial court ruled that he could not. The jury found defendant guilty of murder and other crimes, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. On appeal, defendant argued the state's conduct interfered with his right to call witnesses under Article I, section 11, and the Sixth Amendment. To this, the Oregon Supreme Court concurred, finding defendant's right to compulsory process was violated. Defendant's convictions were reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Weaver" on Justia Law

Defendant Austin Haltom was convicted of second-degree sexual abuse, defined in ORS 163.425(1)(a). In Oregon v. Simonov, 368 P3d 11 (2016), in the context of analyzing ORS 164.135(1)(a), the statute criminalized using a vehicle “without consent of the owner;” the Oregon Supreme Court held that the “without consent” element of that offense was part of the “essential character” of the conduct that the statute proscribed, and therefore had to be treated as a “conduct” element for purposes of determining the minimum mental state that attaches to the element when the statute fails to specify a mental state. Relying on the fact that general provisions in the Criminal Code appear to contemplate at least a knowing mental state for any “conduct” element of a crime, the Supreme Court held that the state was required to prove that a defendant charged under ORS 164.135(1)(a) knew that the vehicle’s owner had not consented to its use at the relevant time. The Court rejected the state’s argument that the “without consent” element was a “circumstance” element to which a minimum mental state of “criminal negligence” would attach. In Haltom's case, he contended that the "does not consent" element in ORS 163.425(1)(a) played a similar role to that of the “without consent” element in the unauthorized use of a vehicle statute at issue in Simonov, and that, insofar as ORS 163.425(1)(a) did not specify a mental state that attaches to the “does not consent” element, both the analysis and ultimate conclusion in Simonov applied and established that “knowingly” was the minimum mental state that attached to the “does not consent” element. Thus, he argued that, to convict him under ORS 163.425(1)(a), the state was required to prove that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with the victim knowing that she did not consent and that the trial court therefore erred when it denied his request for an instruction to that effect and entered a judgment of conviction based on a jury finding that he had merely been reckless with respect to the victim’s consent.After review, the Supreme Court concluded the trial court erred and that the judgment of the trial court, and the Court of Appeals decision affirming that judgment, had to be reversed. View "Oregon v. Haltom" on Justia Law

During defendant Isaiah Payne's trial for third-degree sexual abuse, the complainant denied including a racial description of defendant in her statement to police and accused defense counsel of trying to make her look racist. The author of the police report testified that he had included that racial description in quotation marks because it was a direct quote from the complainant. Based on the difference between the officer’s testimony and the complainant’s testimony, defendant requested the uniform witness-false-in-part jury instruction. The trial court denied that request, and the jury found defendant guilty. The Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that, even if the trial court had erred in failing to deliver the requested witness-false-in-part instruction, any error was harmless. The Oregon Supreme Court granted certiorari review to address whether a trial court had to give a requested witness-false-in-part jury instruction if there was evidence to support a conclusion that a witness consciously testified falsely. Based on the Supreme Court's statutory construction of the phrase “all proper occasions” in ORS 10.095, the Court concluded the trial court should have given the instruction. The Court concluded it was not a harmless error by the trial court. The Supreme Court therefore reversed the Court of Appeal and remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Payne" on Justia Law

Defendant Olan Williams was charged with two counts of first-degree sodomy. The jury was instructed that it could return a nonunanimous guilty verdict. Defendant did not object. The jury acquitted defendant of one count and convicted him of the other. The trial court polled the jury, revealing that the guilty verdict was nonunanimous. The trial court received both verdicts without objection by defendant. After defendant was sentenced, he moved for a new trial, challenging Oregon’s nonunanimous jury law, as applied to him, on Equal Protection Clause grounds. In Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S Ct 1390 (2020), the United States Supreme Court held that, contrary to longstanding practice in Oregon, the United States Constitution required “[a] jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict.” Many Oregon convictions based on nonunanimous verdicts were on appeal in a variety of procedural postures. In this case, the state conceded that, notwithstanding problems with defendant’s presentation of the issue to the trial court and to the Court of Appeals, the Oregon Supreme Court should have reversed defendant’s conviction, so long as it exercised its discretion to consider the error. The Oregon Supreme Court exercised its discretion to consider the error and accepted the state’s concession. The petition for review was allowed, limited to the issue of the appropriate disposition of this case in light of Ramos v. Louisiana. The decision of the Court of Appeals was reversed. The judgment of the circuit court was also reversed, and the case was remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Williams" on Justia Law

Defendant Adrian Ulery was charged with two counts of first-degree sexual abuse, and he exercised his right to trial by jury. He did not object to the jury being instructed that it could return a nonunanimous guilty verdict; his list of requested jury instructions included the uniform criminal jury instruction for a verdict in a felony case, an instruction that, consistent with Oregon law, informed the jury that ten votes to convict, from a jury of twelve, were sufficient for a guilty verdict. The jury convicted defendant of both counts. At defendant’s request, the jury was polled, revealing that both verdicts were nonunanimous. The trial court, without objection from defendant, received the verdicts. Defendant appealed, assigning error to the jury having been instructed that it could return a nonunani- mous verdict and to the receipt of nonunanimous verdicts. Defendant acknowledged that he had not preserved the issue in the trial court, but he requested plain error review. In Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S Ct 1390 (2020), the United States Supreme Court held that, contrary to longstanding practice in Oregon, the United States Constitution required “[a] jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict.” After Ramos issued, the state, through a letter to the Oregon Supreme Court and a notice filed in this case, conceded that, because defendant’s convictions were based on nonunanimous verdicts, they could not be sustained in light of the Supreme Court’s holding in Ramos. The state also conceded that the issue would qualify as plain error under ORAP 5.45(1) and advised the Oregon Court that, if it were to exercise its discretion to correct the unpreserved error, the Court should reverse defendant’s convictions and remand for a new trial. The Oregon Supreme Court accepted the state’s concession, exercised its discretion to review the error, and reversed defendant’s convictions. View "Oregon v. Ulery" on Justia Law