Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

In July 2010, defendant Roman Suppah was driving his girlfriend’s car. Deputy Sheriff Hulke stopped defendant for a traffic violation. After being stopped, defendant “told [the deputy that] his name was Harold Pennington, born in 7/21/64.” Defendant said that he lived in Warm Springs but that he did not “have a physical address or a mailing address.” The deputy contacted the dispatcher to check the name and date of birth that defendant had given him. The dispatcher told him that “Pennington was driving while suspended,” and defendant did not offer any proof of insurance. The deputy cited defendant (as Pennington) for driving while suspended and driving without insurance. The deputy did not cite defendant for the traffic violation that had led him to stop defendant in the first place, nor did he make a written record of the reason why he had stopped defendant. As the deputy later explained, the traffic violation that had led him to stop defendant was one for which he normally gives drivers a warning but no citation. The state charged defendant with giving false information to a deputy sheriff. Later, at a hearing on defendant’s motion to suppress, the deputy could not remember the specific traffic violation that had led him to stop defendant. The trial court found that the state’s inability to establish the reason for the stop rendered it unlawful, but it denied defendant’s motion to suppress the statements that defendant had made following the stop. Focusing on defendant’s reasons for giving the deputy false information, the trial court found that defendant’s decision to do so was independent of the illegality. The en banc Court of Appeals reversed. The Oregon Supreme Court allowed the state’s petition for review and reversed the Court of Appeals decision. "[F]rom a temporal perspective, the illegality did not become apparent until months later at the suppression hearing when the officer could not remember which traffic violation had led him to stop defendant. The trial court correctly concluded that the stop had no appreciable effect on defendant’s decision to give the deputy a false name and date of birth. Because that decision attenuated the taint of the unlawful stop, the trial court correctly denied defendant’s motion to suppress his statements." View "Oregon v. Suppah" on Justia Law

Defendant Alen Simonov and his brother, Vadim, talked to their neighbor about purchasing a 1983 Datsun pickup truck. The neighbor testified that she agreed to allow the brothers to take the truck to a car wash to check for an oil leak. The neighbor watched the brothers drive away. Because the brothers failed to return the truck when she expected them to, the neighbor reported the truck stolen. Defendant later left a voicemail message stating, “I’m in Portland. We’re bringing the truck back.” The neighbor saw Vadim pull the truck into her driveway several hours later, with defendant in the passenger seat. Defendant appealed his conviction for unauthorized use of a vehicle (UUV), a felony offense committed when a person “takes, operates, exercises control over, rides in or otherwise uses another’s vehicle * * * without consent of the owner.” At trial, defendant requested an instruction that, to reach a guilty verdict, the jury must find that he knew that the use of the vehicle was without the owner’s consent; instead, the trial court instructed the jury that it could convict defendant if it found that he was criminally negligent with regard to whether the owner had consented. The Court of Appeals reversed defendant’s conviction on the ground that the charged offense required that the person riding in the vehicle knew that the vehicle was being used without the owner’s consent, the trial court therefore improperly instructed the jury, and the error was reversible. After review of this case, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals, reversed the judgment convicting defendant, and remanded the case back to the circuit court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Simonov" on Justia Law

Police officers entered a residence without a warrant and opened a wooden box that they found in a bedroom, believing that they had lawful consent to take each of those actions. Defendant was charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance based on evidence found in the box, and moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that the persons who had given consent to the home entry and the search of the box were not authorized to give consent. The trial court denied the motion. Defendant appealed her conviction, arguing that there was no evidence that she had consented to the home entry or the search of the box. The state replied that, for purposes of Article I, section 9 of the Oregon Constitution, the persons who gave consent to the entry and search had actual authority to do so. The Court of Appeals reversed. Focusing specifically on the search of the box, that court rejected the state’s argument that the person who had consented to the search had actual authority to give consent, based on her shared possession and control of the room in which the box was located. After its review, the Supreme Court concluded that the warrantless search of the wooden box in this case was not authorized under the consent exception to the warrant requirement. Furthermore, the Court concluded the state’s alternative argument (that the search was lawful because it was reasonable) was essentially a request to overturn the Court's longstanding construction of Article I, section 9. The Court declined the state's argument, affirmed the Court of Appeals, reversed the trial court's judgment and remanded this case for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Bonilla" on Justia Law

Defendant and her five-year-old daughter were passengers in a borrowed car driven by defendant’s 17-year-old daughter. A police officer stopped the car for a traffic violation and, during the stop, noticed objects in defendant’s open purse that appeared to be drugs. The officer asked for consent to search the car, which defendant gave. As a result of the consent search, the officer confirmed that defendant’s purse contained drugs. Based on those facts, defendant was charged with unlawful possession of heroin (ORS 475.854), unlawful possession of methamphetamine (ORS 475.894), unlawful possession of a controlled substance (ORS 475.752(3)(b)), and two counts of child endangerment (ORS 163.575). The issue in this case was whether ORS 163.575 was violated when a person knowingly possesses drugs in a container (here, a purse) while in a car with two children. The Supreme Court concluded that a person in that circumstance can be found to have engaged in unlawful “activity” involving controlled substances. The Court agreed with defendant, however, that when, as here, the possession of the drugs in the car is a brief isolated incident of illegal drug activity, the car is not, within the meaning of the statute, “a place” where unlawful activity involving controlled substances “is maintained or conducted.” The Court therefore concluded that defendant was entitled to a judgment of acquittal on the charges of child endangerment, and reversed the decisions of the trial court and the Court of Appeals which held to the contrary. View "Oregon v. Gonzalez-Valenzuela" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder in 1988. The Oregon Supreme Court affirmed those convictions in 1990, but vacated defendant’s death sentence three times and remanded each time for new penalty-phase trials. This case was an automatic and direct review of defendant’s fourth death sentence. Defendant raised 87 assignments of error. The Supreme Court found that only 13 merited discussion, and even then, found no error in the trial court’s handling of his case. Accordingly, the Court affirmed defendant’s death sentences. View "Oregon v. Guzek" on Justia Law

A jury convicted defendant of 10 counts of rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse. When a jury finds a defendant guilty of multiple offenses, a trial court must make two related but separate sentencing decisions. One decision involves the length of the sentence for each conviction. The other involves whether the convictions should run concurrently or consecutively. On appeal in this case, the Court of Appeals concluded that both rules increased defendant’s sentence based on facts that, under “Apprendi v. New Jersey,” (530 US 466 (2000)), a jury must find beyond a reasonable doubt. Although the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court should have submitted those facts to the jury, it held that the failure to do so was harmless error. On review, the Oregon Supreme Court held that the two sentencing guidelines rules do not implicate Apprendi and affirmed the Court of Appeals decision on that ground. View "Oregon v. Cuevas" on Justia Law

Relator was 14 years old when he committed murder in 1998. Relator was waived into adult court and convicted of aggravated murder. The court sentenced relator to life imprisonment with a 30-year mandatory minimum period of incarceration. After relator had served roughly half of that period, he obtained a “second look” hearing under ORS 420A.203. The trial court entered a preliminary order of conditional release, but the state appealed that order to the Court of Appeals. At issue in this mandamus proceeding was the trial court’s related “direction” to the Department of Corrections, pursuant to ORS 420A.206(1)(a), requiring it to prepare a proposed release plan. Relator sought, and the Supreme Court issued, an alternative writ of mandamus ordering the department to comply with the trial court’s direction or to show cause for not doing so. The department, however, contended that its obligation to comply was automatically stayed under ORS 138.160. The Supreme Court disagreed and ordered the department to comply with the trial court’s direction to prepare and submit a proposed plan of release. View "Oregon ex rel Walraven v. Dept. of Corrections" on Justia Law

This case centered on the interpretation and application of two statutes, ORS 144.335(3) and ORS 144.135, to a final order of the Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision that postponed petitioner’s release date from prison. The threshold question presented to the Oregon Supreme Court was whether, by amending ORS 144.335(3) in 1999, the legislature intended to exempt the board from the substantial reason standard that this court had identified and applied in "Martin v. Board of Parole," (957 P2d 1210 (1998)). If the legislature did not intend to exempt the board from the substantial reason standard, the second question was whether the board’s order in this case satisfied the substantial reason standard. The third question is whether the board’s order complied with ORS 144.135. The Court concluded that ORS 144.335(3) (1999) did not eliminate the substantial reason requirement that inheres in the substantial evidence standard of review to which the board’s orders are subject. Furthermore, the Court concluded that the board’s final order in this case satisfied that requirement and satisfied ORS 144.135. The Court affirmed the board’s final order postponing petitioner’s release date. View "Jenkins v. Board of Parole" on Justia Law

The state charged defendant with manufacture of cocaine and endangering the welfare of a minor, among other things. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress physical evidence and statements obtained by detectives after they knocked on the back door of defendant’s house and obtained defendant’s consent to enter and then to search the house. Defendant argued both that his consent had not been voluntary and that the detectives had exploited their unlawful conduct to obtain his consent in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. The trial court denied the motion, and a jury convicted defendant as charged. The Court of Appeals reversed, reasoning that, under the "Oregon v. Hall" exploitation analysis, the detectives’ unlawful entry into defendant’s backyard to reach his back door had “tainted [defendant’s] subsequent consent.” Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, modifying in part, the exploitation analysis announced in Hall. Specifically, the Court "disavowed" the minimal factual nexus test described in Hall. Hall considered only the temporal proximity between the unlawful police conduct and the consent and mitigating or intervening circumstances. "Rather, courts must consider the totality of the circumstances, [. . .] including the nature of the illegal conduct and its purpose and flagrancy, without unduly emphasizing any single consideration." View "Oregon v. Unger" on Justia Law

In this case, a police officer on patrol encountered defendant at 10:00 p.m. in an area behind a shopping center where criminal activity frequently occurred. The officer stopped defendant and obtained her consent to search pouches that he saw inside her purse, as well as the remainder of her purse. During those searches, the officer found drugs and drug paraphernalia. Defendant sought to suppress that evidence at trial, arguing, among other things, that the stop had been unlawful and that defendant’s consent had been derived from the unlawful stop in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. The trial court denied that motion, and defendant was convicted of unlawful possession of methamphetamine at a stipulated facts trial. The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that the officer had stopped defendant unlawfully and that the incriminating evidence had derived from that stop. Upon review of the record, the Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals' decision: based on the facts of this case, the police improperly exploited their unlawful stop of defendant to obtain her consent to the search. View "Oregon v. Musser" on Justia Law