Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

A grand jury indicted defendant Matthew Owen on two counts of second-degree assault for knowingly causing physical injury to another person by means of a dangerous weapon. Citing Oregon v. Barnes, 986 P2d 1160 (1999), the trial court instructed the jury that the state had to prove defendant’s knowledge of the assaultive nature of his actions, and the court declined to give defendant’s requested instructions that would have required the state to prove his mental state concerning the injuries that resulted from his actions. The Court of Appeals affirmed. On review, defendant contended the trial court erroneously instructed the jury. Defendant argued Barnes was incorrectly decided and that the state had to prove either: (1) that he knew that his actions would cause the victim physical injury; or, alternatively, (2) that he knew that his actions were assaultive and that, at least, he negligently caused physical injury by failing to be aware of the risk that his actions would cause such injury. The Oregon Supreme Court agreed with defendant’s alternative argument and, in part, overruled Barnes. However, because the Court concluded that the instructional error was harmless in this case, it affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals and affirmed the judgment of conviction. View "Oregon v. Owen" on Justia Law

Defendant Charles McCarthy moved to suppress evidence that law enforcement officers obtained during a warrantless search of a truck. Defendant had been driving the truck when officers stopped it for a traffic violation. During the stop, the officers developed probable cause to believe that the truck contained contraband. Although the stop occurred on a weekday afternoon near the county courthouse and the officers had mobile phones and a computer, the officers did not attempt to contact a magistrate to obtain a warrant to search the truck. Instead, they searched it without a warrant. At the time of the search, the truck was lawfully parked in a parking lot and defendant had been arrested. In his motion to suppress, defendant argued that the warrantless search was unconstitutional. The state argued the warrantless search of the truck was justified under the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement. The trial court rejected the state’s argument, reasoning that the automobile exception was premised on the existence of exigent circumstances, and the state had failed to prove that exigent circumstances existed at the time the officers searched the truck. The state appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed on the ground that, under Oregon v. Brown, 721 P2d 1357 (1986), exigent circumstances were presumed to exist if a vehicle was mobile when it was stopped by the police, regardless of whether there was an actual exigency after that point. Applying Brown’s “ ‘per se exigency rule,’” the Court of Appeals held that all the state was required to show was that the truck was mobile at the time it was stopped by the officers and that the officers had probable cause to search it. The Oregon Supreme Court overruled Brown’s per se exigency rule and held that, in order to justify a warrantless seizure or search of a vehicle based on exigent circumstances, the state had to prove that exigent circumstances actually existed at the time of the seizure or search. Because the state did not do so here, the Supreme Court concluded the trial court correctly granted defendant’s motion to suppress. View "Oregon v. McCarthy" on Justia Law

On a weekday afternoon in September 2018, a police officer drove his patrol car by an alleyway and saw two men walking away from each other. One man was counting money, and, when he saw the officer, the man “put the money in his pocket and kind of put his head down [and] looked a little nervous.” The other man, Defendant Saul Reyes-Herrera, was walking in the other direction. The officer believed that the two men had “just done some sort of a hand-to-hand transaction,” which he thought was “possibly a drug deal.” The officer then drove into the alleyway, ahead of where defendant was walking, and parked the patrol car. The officer did not activate his overhead lights or his siren. Instead, he got out of his car, “took a couple steps towards [defendant], waved and said hi.” In his uniform, the officer approached defendant, stating defendant was free to leave, but asked whether defendant had bought drugs from the man observed counting his money. Defendant responded "no," but detecting a slight Spanish accent, the officer asked again, in Spanish, "no drogas?" Defendant responded "no" again, but the officer then asked in English whether he could search defendant. Defendant responded in Spanish, “sí.” Then, while pointing to defendant’s pockets, the officer asked in Spanish, “puedo mirar,” which he understood to mean, roughly, “can I look.” Defendant again responded, “sí,” and “put his hands up on his head.” At that point, the officer began “controlling” defendant’s hands: placing defendant’s hands behind his back to immobilize him, and, while doing so, searched defendant’s pockets. The officer reached into the coin pocket of defendant’s right front pants pocket and found “two baggies that contained a clear crystal substance” that he believed to be methamphetamine. Defendant was arrested, and the state charged him with one count of unlawful possession of methamphetamine. Defendant moved to suppress the evidence of the drugs discovered in his pocket, arguing that he had been stopped without reasonable suspicion in violation of Article I, section 9, and that the discovery of the drugs was the product of that unlawful seizure. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, concluding that the officer had not stopped defendant and that defendant had consented to the search of his pocket. Defendant waived his right to a jury trial, and the court convicted defendant of the charged offense. The Oregon Supreme Court found the officer lacked a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and reversed Defendant's conviction. View "Oregon v. Reyes-Herrera" on Justia Law

At issue in this criminal case was Oregon’s constitutional guarantee that an accused will have the right “to meet the witnesses face to face.” The witness at issue in this case was alleged victim, C. The state had served C with a subpoena to appear at 8:15 a.m. on the first day of defendant’s trial, but she did not appear. Later that morning, the State asked the trial court to conclude that C was “unavailable” for purposes of the exception to Article I, section 11, and, on that basis, to allow the state to rely on hearsay statements in lieu of C’s live testimony at trial. The trial court granted the state’s motion after conducting a hearing that lasted through the morning, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The hearing record reflected, however, that despite the fact that defendant and the state’s own witnesses identified additional measures that were available for producing C as a witness, the State offered no evidence that it had attempted any of those measures after C failed to appear and no evidence or explanation that pursuing those measures would have been unreasonable. Under the circumstances, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded the State failed to show that it had “exhausted all reasonably available means of producing the witness.” Although the Supreme Court recognized that the trial court record below developed without the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Oregon v. Harris, 404 P3d 926 (2017), the State’s failure to make the showing that the Supreme Court required meant that the State failed to prove that C was “unavailable” for purposes of overcoming defendant’s Article I, section 11, confrontation right. View "Oregon v. Belden" on Justia Law

At petitioner Jeremy Antoine's criminal trial for multiple counts of first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree sodomy, his counsel raised a set of challenges to the validity of the indictment and to the manner in which the case had been charged. Counsel argued that the indictment failed to provide adequate notice of the basis for the charges against petitioner and otherwise was defective. Petitioner was convicted and, on appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions. Although the Court of Appeals rejected some of petitioner’s challenges to the indictment on the merits, it held that petitioner’s claims about inadequate notice should not have been raised in a demurrer and, instead, that petitioner “could have moved to discover the state’s election of the specific criminal acts that the state would prosecute at trial, in time for [him] to tailor his defense to those specific incidents.” Petitioner then filed this post-conviction challenge, alleging that trial counsel provided inadequate assistance by failing to move for a pretrial election. The post-conviction court granted relief, but the Court of Appeals reversed that decision, holding that trial counsel did not perform deficiently, given the state of the law at the time of petitioner’s trial. The Oregon Supreme Court found no reversible error in the appellate court's judgment, and affirmed. View "Antoine v. Taylor" on Justia Law

The state charged defendant Homer Lee Jackson, III with the murder of four victims, who were killed over the span of 10 years. DNA consistent with defendant’s was found at the scene of each crime. Before trial, the state moved to cross-admit the crime scene evidence, arguing that the evidence from all four crime scenes, including the DNA evidence, was relevant to each of the four charged crimes. In support of that argument, the state relied on the doctrine of chances. The trial court denied the state’s motion to cross-admit the crime scene evidence. The state petitioned the Oregon Supreme Court for direct interlocutory review of the trial court’s order, contending that the trial court erred in excluding the evidence from the other three crime scenes from defendant’s trial for one of the murders. The state initially argued: (1) the doctrine of chances supplied a theory of relevance for the crime scene evidence concerning the presence of defendant’s DNA near the bodies of three other murdered women; and (2) that the doctrine did not depend on prohibited inferences about defendant’s bad character and resultant propensity to commit criminal acts. In accordance with the Oregon Evidence Code, the Supreme Court initially held that the doctrine of chances, standing alone, was insufficient to make the other crime scene evidence relevant to any charged crime. In supplemental briefing, the state alternatively argued that, even if the doctrine of chances did not by itself supply the basis for the relevance of the DNA crime scene evidence, that evidence nonetheless was relevant to facts in its case by articulating a chain of inferences, ending with “defendant was the killer in each murder.” Keeping the state’s articulated purpose and chain of reasoning for introducing the DNA evidence from all four crime scenes at the forefront and again applying requirements of the Oregon Evidence Code, the Supreme Court further held that the state, "stretching the doctrine of chances beyond its limits," failed to link its proposed use of the other crime scene evidence to the fact it wished to prove at trial in a way that did not rely on a prohibited “bad character” inference. Accordingly, the trial court’s order excluding the evidence was affirmed. View "Oregon v. Jackson" on Justia Law

In 1989, defendant Dayton Rogers was found guilty of multiple counts of aggravated murder in six consolidated cases and sentenced to death. In his initial appeal, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed his convictions but reversed his death sentences and remanded for resentencing.The Court reversed sentences of death in this case and remanded for resentencing on two subsequent occasions, most recently in 2012. In his fourth penalty-phase trial, in 2015, defendant again received a sentence of death in each of the consolidated cases. Appeal to the Supreme Court was automatic. Finding that defendant’s death sentences were unconstitutional, the sentences were reversed and the case remanded to the trial court for resentencing. View "Oregon v. Rogers" on Justia Law

Officers unlawfully seized defendant Kristi DeJong’s residence. Based, in part on information learned during the seizure, they obtained a warrant to search the residence where they discovered evidence of unlawful delivery of methamphetamine. Defendant moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search, contending that it was inadmissible under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. The trial court denied defendant’s motion to suppress that evidence, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, relying on the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision in Oregon v. Johnson, 73 P3d 282 (2003). In this case, the Court of Appeals concluded that defendant’s challenge failed at the first step announced in Johnson: that defendant failed to establish the requisite factual nexus between the unlawful seizure of her residence and the evidence the state discovered during the warranted search. On review, the Supreme Court disagreed with that conclusion and held that defendant established the necessary factual nexus. Further, the Supreme Court concluded the record in this case was legally insufficient to support a finding that the state met its burden at the second step of the Johnson analysis. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals' and circuit court's judgments were reversed, and the matter remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. DeJong" on Justia Law

Defendant David Bartol was sentenced to death for aggravated murder; review by the Oregon Supreme Court was direct and automatic. Defendant made numerous challenges to both his conviction and sentence. The Court rejected all but one challenge to his sentence, based on Article I, section 16, of the Oregon Constitution, which prohibited disproportionate punishments. After defendant was convicted and sentenced, the legislature enacted Senate Bill 1013 (2019), which, among other things, reclassified the criminal conduct that had constituted “aggravated murder,” which could be punished by death, to “murder in the first degree,” which could not be punished by death. Given that determination, the Supreme Court concluded that, although the legislature did not make SB 1013 retroactive as to sentences imposed before its effective date, maintaining defendant’s death sentence would violate Article I, section 16. Therefore, the Court affirmed defendant’s conviction but reversed his death sentence and remanded the case for resentencing. View "Oregon v. Bartol" on Justia Law

After defendant Randall Kragt pled guilty to three counts of first-degree sodomy (Counts 1, 3, and 5), the trial court sentenced him: for Count 1, 60 months in prison; for Count 3, 100 months in prison, concurrent with Count 1; and, for Count 5, 100 months in prison, consecutive to Count 3. For all three counts, the court initially imposed a single post-prison supervision (PPS) term of 240 months, minus the time defendant served in prison. As a result, defendant was effectively sentenced to 200 months in prison and, assuming he served the full term, 40 additional months of PPS. After defendant was released from prison, the trial court amended the part of the judgment of conviction that had imposed a single PPS term. Defendant appealed, arguing the trial court had erred by amending the judgment without notice and a hearing. The Court of Appeals agreed with that argument and reversed. On remand, defendant argued that ORS 144.103(1) required the trial court to impose a single PPS term for all three counts, as the court had done initially, before amending the judgment. The trial court disagreed and entered a judgment that imposed three PPS terms: 180 months for Count 1, 140 months for Count 3, and 140 months for Count 5. Defendant appealed again, arguing that ORS 144.103(1) required a single term of PPS regardless of the number of counts. In a per curiam opinion, the Court of Appeals rejected that argument, relying on its decisions in Norris v. Board of Parole, 238 P3d 994 (2010), rev den, 350 Or 130 (2011), and Delavega v. Board of Parole, 194 P3d 159 (2008). Defendant petitioned for review by the Oregon Supreme Court, which was allowed. The question presented was whether, when sentencing a person convicted of multiple qualifying sex offenses, ORS 144.103(1) requires a trial court to impose a separate term of PPS for each count or whether that statute, instead, requires the trial court to impose a single term of PPS that covers all counts. The Supreme Court agreed with the appellate court. As did the Court of Appeals, the circuit court's judgment was vacated based on a different sentencing issue than the one presented on review, and the matter remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings consistent with the Court of Appeals decision in Kragt II (467 P3d 830 (2020)). View "Oregon v. Kragt" on Justia Law