Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

At issue before the Oregon Supreme Court in this case wa whether the hydroelectric water right for a hydroelectric power plant that has not operated for 26 years was subject to conversion to an in-stream water right, upon a finding that such conversion would not injure other existing water rights. The holder of a hydroelectric water right stopped operating the associated hydroelectric power plant in eastern Oregon (the “project”) in 1995 and the project was decommissioned; afterward, the holder leased the water right to the state for use as an in-stream water right. That lease was periodically renewed over the last 21 years, and the Oregon Water Resources Department (WRD) never commenced the process for converting the hydroelectric water right to an in-stream water right. Whether the water right here should have been subject to conversion depended on the meaning and interaction of two statutes: ORS 543A.305 (the “conversion statute”), and ORS 537.348 (the “lease statute”). Petitioner WaterWatch of Oregon argued that, under the conversion statute, the hydroelectric right was subject to conversion because no water was used under that right for hydroelectric purposes since 1995, and, therefore, use has ceased. WRD and the current holder of that hydroelectric water right, Warm Springs Hydro LLC contended the right was not subject to conversion because, even though the water has not been used for hydroelectric purposes, the water has been used for in-stream purposes during the periodic leases of the water right to the state under the lease statute. Therefore, respondents contended, use did not entirely cease in any given five-year period. The Supreme Court agreed with WaterWatch and held that the hydroelectric water right now held by Warm Springs Hydro was subject to conversion to an in-stream water right under the terms of ORS 543A.305. The Court therefore reversed the Court of Appeals’ decision and the judgment of the circuit court, and remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. View "WaterWatch of Oregon v. Water Resources Dept." 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

On September 27, 2021, in accordance with the timeline that the Oregon Supreme Court ordered in Oregon ex rel Kotek v. Fagan, 484 P3d 1058 (2021), the Oregon Legislative Assembly enacted, and the Governor signed, a reapportionment of Oregon’s legislative districts, based on the federal decennial census data that was released by the United States Census Bureau in August 2021. Senate Bill (SB) 882 (Spec Sess 2021), codified as Or Laws 2021, ch 2. Two sets of petitioners, all of whom were Oregon electors, sought review of that reapportionment. Petitioners in Sheehan v. Legislative Assembly (S068991) challenged SB 882 in its entirety on the ground that it was the product of an improper and partisan process, and they presented a different reapportionment plan that they asked the Supreme Court to direct the Secretary of State to adopt in place of SB 882. Petitioners in Calderwood v. Legislative Assembly (S068989) brought a narrower challenge and asked the Supreme Court to void only the sections of SB 882 that apportioned House Districts 8 and 12, arguing that the Legislative Assembly drew those districts for an unlawful partisan purpose and without considering the redistricting criteria set out in ORS 188.010(1). The Supreme Court concluded: (1) the Sheehan petitioners did not demonstrate SB 882 violated applicable law in any of the ways they have asserted; and (2) the Calderwood petitioners failed to demonstrate that the parts of SB 882 that defined House Districts 8 and 12 did not comply with applicable law in any of the ways they have asserted. Both petitions were dismissed. View "Sheehan/Calderwood v. Legislative Assembly" 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

Plaintiffs were landlords that rented property in the City of Portland. Plaintiffs filed a declaratory judgment and injunction action against the city contending, as relevant here, that ORS 91.225 preempted an ordinance passed requiring landlords to pay relocation assistance to displaced tenants in certain circumstances. Plaintiffs argued the ordinance impermissibly created a private cause of action that a tenant could bring against a landlord that violates the ordinance. On review, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded ORS 91.225 did not prevent municipalities from enacting other measures that could affect the amount of rent that a landlord charged or could discourage a landlord from raising its rents. The Court further held that ORS 91.225 did not preempt the city’s ordinance. The Supreme Court also rejected plaintiffs’ contention that the ordinance impermissibly created a private cause of action. View "Owen v. City of Portland" 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

Two juvenile dependency cases were consolidated for the Oregon Supreme Court’s review because they presented the same issue on review: whether the juvenile court’s dependency judgments establishing jurisdiction and wardship over each of parents’ two children exceeded the scope of the court’s temporary emergency jurisdiction under ORS 109.751, one of the statutes in the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act as enacted in Oregon. Before issuing its decision in “J.S.II,” the trial court became concerned that these cases might have become moot, because the juvenile court had terminated its jurisdiction and the wardships during the pendency of the appeal. Having considered the parties’ supplemental briefs, the Supreme Court conclude that these cases were not moot. And, for the reasons discussed in J. S. II, the Supreme Court held the juvenile court had authority under ORS 109.751 to issue dependency judgments making the children wards of the court and placing them in foster care, but that it did not have authority to order parents to engage in specified activities to regain custody of the children. View "Dept. of Human Services v. P. D." on Justia Law