Title: State v. Willis

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

FILED: July 29, 2010
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
DANA JO WILLIS,
Petitioner
on Review.
(CC
CFH060180; CA A134794; SC S057879)
En Banc
On review from the
Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted
May 18, 2010, at North Medford High School, Medford, Oregon.
Garrett A. Richardson,
Multnomah Defenders, Inc., Portland, argued the cause for petitioner on review.
Erika L. Hadlock,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief
for respondent on review.  With her on the brief were John R. Kroger, Attorney
General, and Jerome Lidz, Solicitor General.
GILLETTE, J.
The decision of the
Court of Appeals is reversed.  The judgment of the circuit court is reversed,
and the case is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
*Appeal from Umatilla
County Circuit Court, Jeffrey M. Wallace,
Judge. 230 Or App 215, 213 P3d
1286 (2009).
GILLETTE, J.
This is a criminal case in which
defendant was convicted after a jury trial of the crime of unlawful possession
of a controlled substance -- in this case, methamphetamine.  Defendant appealed
her conviction to the Court of Appeals, asserting that the trial court erred in
admitting a scientific report authored by a state police criminalist that
identified a particular substance seized from defendant as methamphetamine. 
(The criminalist was not present to testify.)  The state conceded that the
admission of the report without supporting testimony from the criminalist was
error, but asserted that the error was harmless.  The Court of Appeals agreed
and affirmed defendant's conviction.  State v. Willis, 230 Or App 215,
213 P3d 1286 (2009).  We allowed defendant's petition for review and, for the
reasons that follow, now reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and the
judgment of the trial court.  
We take our statement of facts from
the opinion of the Court of Appeals:
"Officer Washburn of the Hermiston Police Department
went to a convenience store to investigate a report that some people had not
paid for food that they had eaten.  Upon arrival, Washburn saw defendant and
two other people at the store and, after a brief encounter, arrested defendant
for disorderly conduct.  After advising defendant of her Miranda rights
and before taking her to the police station, Washburn asked defendant if she
had any contraband.  Defendant briefly hesitated and then said, 'Yes, she had
some stuff.'  Washburn removed defendant's handcuffs in the presence of another
officer.  Defendant reached under her sweatshirt and into her bra and pulled
out a vial and a bindle of marijuana.  It appeared to Washburn that the vial
was a Chanel perfume container; however, Washburn had not seen perfume in the
crusted and dried form that he saw in the vial, and it was his belief, 'not
absolute,' that the vial contained crystal methamphetamine.  The [Oregon State
Police crime] laboratory report later identified the contents of the vial as
methamphetamine. [At her trial, d]efendant sought to exclude the laboratory
report, asserting that admission of the report without also producing its
author violated her Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses.  The trial court
admitted the report over defendant's objection.
"Washburn testified at trial that he
recognized the substance in the vial as methamphetamine.  At the time of the trial,
Washburn had been a police officer for 14 years and had had extensive training
as a drug recognition expert and training relating to drug-impaired drivers and
methamphetamine labs.  Most of the training pertained to methamphetamine.  In
1998 and 1999, when he was with the Hillsboro Police Department, Washburn had
received awards for making the most arrests in the State of Oregon for
drug-impaired driving."
Id. at 217-18.  A jury convicted defendant of unlawful
possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine.
Defendant appealed her conviction to
the Court of Appeals, arguing that, under this court's decision in State v.
Birchfield, 342 Or 624, 157 P3d 216 (2007), admission of the laboratory
report without requiring the author of the report to testify concerning it was
reversible error.  The state conceded that admission of the report without the
supporting testimony was error, but urged the Court of Appeals nonetheless to
affirm defendant's conviction because, the state asserted, the error in
admitting the report was harmless.  The Court of Appeals agreed with the
state.  It reasoned:
"[A]side
from an undeveloped challenge in closing argument, defendant did not seriously
dispute whether the substance in the vial was methamphetamine. * * * In the
overall context of the case, including Washburn's testimony that the vial,
concealed in defendant's bra, contained methamphetamine and defendant's
admission to Washburn that she had contraband, and in the absence of an attempt
on defendant's part to contend that the contents of the vial was anything other
than methamphetamine, * * * [citation omitted], we conclude that there is
little likelihood that the admission of the report affected the jury's verdict,
and that the error was harmless * * *."
Willis, 230 Or App at 223.  As noted, we allowed
defendant's petition for review.
In this court, the parties focus not
on whether there was a Birchfield error -- as noted, the state conceded that
point -- but on whether the error was harmless.  As a preliminary matter, we
focus on two separate statements by the Court of Appeals on which the state
relies.  The state first points to the Court of Appeals' statement that,
"aside from an undeveloped challenge in closing argument, defendant did
not seriously dispute whether the substance in the vial was
methamphetamine."  The state also endorses the Court of Appeals'
observation that there was no "attempt on the part of defendant to contend
that the contents of the vial [were] anything other than methamphetamine."
We respectfully disagree with both of
those statements.  It is true that the defendant did not give a great deal of
attention to the identification of the contents of the vial, either in her
closing argument or elsewhere in the trial.  However, she did contest that
identification, most notably in the following statements by her lawyer in
closing argument:
"Is [the evidence that the jury had heard,
including the unexplained laboratory report] enough?  Is that enough for you
the jury to believe -- to know, to know beyond a reasonable doubt that that was
the substance tested and that that was the result of the test?
"Is that enough for you ladies and
gentlemen, to know beyond a reasonable doubt that the proper tests were done,
that the error rate of those tests performed did not fall outside of accepted
tolerances for these tests?
"Is that enough for you to know, ladies and
gentlemen, in sum, [that] the white junk in the bottle is methamphetamine?  Is
that enough?"
In our view, the quoted statements establish that defendant
made an issue of each element of the charged offense, including the identity of
the alleged controlled substance.  The Court of Appeals' characterization of
defendant's argument thus was mistaken.
We also take issue with the second
part of the reasoning of the Court of Appeals on which the state relies, i.e.,
that court's assertion that there was no "attempt on the part of defendant
to contend that the contents of the vial [were] anything other than
methamphetamine."  Defendant was not required to contend that the vial's
contents were "anything other" than methamphetamine; defendant bore
no burden of proof or persuasion in the proceeding.  She was entitled to
content herself with arguing that the state had not proved by the requisite
degree of persuasiveness that the contents of the vial were what they
were alleged to be.  The contrary statement of the Court of Appeals thus was improper. 
With those preliminary observations in mind, we return briefly to a review of
our decision in Birchfield.
In Birchfield, this court held
that a statute, ORS 475.235 (2001), which made criminalist reports like that
involved in this case prima facie evidence of the criminalist's findings
and gave criminal defendants the right to subpoena and cross-examine the
criminalist who authored the report, denied defendant his right of confrontation
under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution.  Birchfield, 342
Or at 631-32.(1) 
Because the law on that point is clear, we agree with the parties that the
trial court's contrary ruling in the present case was error.  The remaining issue
is whether the error is one that requires reversal of the trial court's judgment
or whether, instead, the error was "harmless" -- i.e., whether
this court is of the opinion "that the judgment of the court appealed from
was such as should have been rendered in the case."  Article VII
(Amended), section 3, of the Oregon Constitution.
Under Article VII (Amended), section
3, of the Oregon Constitution, an appellate court must "affirm a
conviction, notwithstanding any evidentiary error, if there is little
likelihood that the error affected the verdict."  State v. Gibson,
338 Or 560, 576, 113 P3d 423, cert den, 546 US 1044 (2005).  The court's
inquiry 
"must focus 'on the possible influence of the error on
the verdict rendered, not whether this court, sitting as a fact-finder, would
regard the evidence of guilt as substantial and compelling.' * * * That inquiry
requires us to examine the nature of the error that occurred below and the
context of that error. * * * If the particular issue to which the error pertains
has no relationship to the jury's determination of its verdict, then there is
little likelihood that the error affected the verdict."(2)
Id. (citations omitted).
In the present case, the indictment
charged that defendant, 
"on or about October 17, 2005, in Umatilla County,
Oregon, did unlawfully and knowingly possess methamphetamine, a schedule II
controlled substance * * *."
Such possession is a Class C felony.  ORS 475.894.  Both
parties appear to recognize -- and we agree -- that the specification in the
indictment that the controlled substance that defendant possessed was
"methamphetamine" required the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that the substance in the vial seized from defendant was, in fact,
methamphetamine and not some other substance.
The state relied on the following
evidence to prove the identity of the substance in the vial:  (1) The fact that
defendant produced the substance in response to Washburn's question whether she
possessed "contraband"; (2) the appearance of the substance itself; (3)
Officer Washburn's "belief" (which he admitted was "not
certain") that the substance that he saw in the vial was methamphetamine;
and (4) the laboratory report that declared that the substance was, in fact,
methamphetamine.  As already noted, defendant properly and timely objected to
admission of the laboratory report without the supporting testimony of the
criminalist who had prepared it, but that objection was erroneously overruled.
When the erroneous ruling is examined
in context, its significance is apparent:  The report went to "the heart
of * * * the case."  State v. Davis, 336 Or 19, 34, 77 P3d 1111
(2003) (using that description to explain why certain evidentiary error is not
harmless).  The state had no witness who could affirmatively identify the
substance in the vial as methamphetamine.  Defendant's verbal act in giving up
the substance established only that it was "contraband."  The only
witness even to suggest that the substance was methamphetamine was Officer
Washburn, and he admitted that he was not sure.  The substance was not
self-identifying, as certain other substances might be -- the substance could have
been methamphetamine, but it also could have been, inter alia, cocaine,
or heroin, or a harmless white crystalline substance.  Without the laboratory
report, that was all the evidence that the state had.  We certainly cannot say
that the evidence that the substance was methamphetamine was overwhelming.
In light of the other evidence in
this case, a chemical analysis was necessary to establish the identity of the
substance in the vial in a persuasive way, which presumably is why the state
offered the laboratory report.  Science either can turn suspicion into probability,
or it can establish that the substance was not the specific controlled
substance alleged in the indictment (or, indeed, was not a controlled substance
of any kind).  Any juror would wish to have the scientific answer, and could be
expected to give it weight.  Far from being able to say, on this record, that
there was "little likelihood" that any error in admitting the
laboratory report "affected the verdict," we conclude that there was
a high likelihood that the improperly received report did affect the
verdict.  The error was not harmless.(3) 
The contrary conclusion of the Court of Appeals was incorrect.
The decision of the Court of Appeals
is reversed.  The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. 
1. The
Supreme Court of the United States reached a similar conclusion under the Sixth
Amendment in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 US ___, 129 S Ct 2527,
174 L Ed 2d 314 (2009).  
2. The
foregoing statement of the law does not purport to establish a separate or
different inquiry when the evidence in question is, as it is in this case,
scientific evidence.  The test is equally applicable whether the evidence in
question is scientific or ordinary.
3. In
so holding, we leave open the possibility that, on a different record,
erroneous admission of a laboratory report could be harmless.