Justia Constitutional Law 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

Relator was a prospective candidate for Oregon governor. After he filed his declaration of candidacy with the Secretary of State, the secretary asked relator for additional information to substantiate that he will “have been three years next preceding his election, a resident within this State,” as required to serve as governor by Article V, section 2, of the Oregon Constitution. Relator submitted additional materials in support of his claim that he met the constitutional eligibility requirement. Upon reviewing those materials, the secretary determined that, although relator had previously been a resident of Oregon, he had been a resident of New York since at least 2000 and he had not reestablished Oregon residency by November 2019. The secretary therefore concluded that relator did not meet the constitutional requirement, and informed him his name would not be placed on the ballot in the primary election. The next day, relator filed a petition for writ of mandamus with the Oregon Supreme Court, asking the Court to direct the secretary to reverse her determination and to instruct county officials to place relator’s name on the ballot. The issues this case presented for the Supreme Court's review were: (1) the meaning of “resident within this State,” as those words are used in Article V, section 2, of the Oregon Constitution; and (2) whether the secretary was required to conclude that relator met that legal standard. The Court concluded that “resident within,” when viewed against the legal context that surrounded the Oregon Constitution’s 1857 ratification, was best understood to refer to the legal concept of “domicile,” which required “the fact of a fixed habitation or abode in a particular place, and an intention to remain there permanently or indefinitely[.] Under that legal concept, a person can have only a single residence at a time." Further, the Court held the secretary was not required to conclude that relator was domiciled in Oregon between November 2019 and December 2020. Although relator challenged the constitutionality of the durational residency requirement in Article V, section 2, that question was not properly considered through a mandamus proceeding. The Court therefore dismissed the alternative writ and denied relator’s petition. View "Oregon ex rel Kristof v. Fagan" 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

The question in this case was whether the Secretary of State was required to count the signatures on an initiative petition of voters whose registration was deemed “inactive.” Plaintiffs were supporters of Initiative Petition 50 (2016) (IP 50) who sought to qualify that initiative for the 2016 ballot. After the secretary subtracted the signatures of voters with inactive registration, the petition did not have enough signatures to be placed on the ballot. Plaintiffs brought this action challenging the secretary’s exclusion of those signatures. Plaintiffs argued that voters with inactive registration could sign initiative petitions because, even if their registration was inactive, they were still registered, and therefore remain “qualified voters” within the meaning of Article IV, section 1. The secretary responded that those voters could not sign initiative petitions because voters with inactive registration were not “registered * * * in the manner provided by law,” and they therefore were not “qualified voters” within the meaning of Article IV, section 1. The Oregon Supreme Court concluded, like the secretary, that because voters whose registrations were inactive were not eligible to vote, they were not “qualified voters” within the meaning of Article IV, section 1. Accordingly, the Court held that their signatures on initiative petitions could not be counted, and that the secretary properly excluded them when determining the number of signatures submitted in support of IP 50. View "Whitehead v. Fagan" on Justia Law

The issue on appeal in this case was whether taxpayer, Ooma, Inc., a California company, had sufficient contacts or nexus with Oregon to make it subject to local tax. The Oregon Tax Court concluded that Ooma’s contacts and nexus with Oregon were sufficient to satisfy the Due Process and Commerce Clauses, and granted summary judgment to the Department of Revenue. Finding no reversible error in that judgment, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the Tax Court. View "Ooma, Inc. v. Dept. of Rev." 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