Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/or-supreme-court/1675104.html
Timestamp: 2020-02-26 17:38:38
Document Index: 169864250

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 4', '§ 13', '§ 17', '§ 92', '§ 250', '§ 250', '§ 597', '§ 7772', '§ 1', '§ 2103']

STATE v. NIX | FindLaw
STATE of Oregon, Petitioner on Review, v. Arnold Weldon NIX, Respondent on Review.
(CC CRH090155; CA A145386; SC S060875).
Before BALMER, Chief Justice, and KISTLER, WALTERS, LINDER, LANDAU, and BALDWIN, Justices.** David J. Celuch, argued the cause and filed the brief for petitioner on review. Jamie K. Contreras, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review.
In this criminal case, defendant was found guilty of 20 counts of second-degree animal neglect. ORS 167.325 (2009).1 Oregon's “anti-merger” statute, ORS 161.067, provides that, when the same conduct or criminal episode violates only one statute, but involves more than one “victim,” there are “as many separately punishable offenses as there are victims.” The issue in this case is whether defendant is guilty of 20 separately punishable offenses, which turns on the question whether animals are “victims” for the purposes of the anti-merger statute. The trial court concluded that, because only people can be victims within the meaning of that statute, defendant had committed only one punishable offense. The court merged the 20 counts into a single conviction for second-degree animal neglect. On appeal, the Court of Appeals concluded that animals can be victims within the meaning of the anti-merger statute and, accordingly, reversed and remanded for entry of a judgment of conviction on each of the 20 counts and for resentencing. State Nix, 251 Or.App. 449, 283 P.3d 442 (2012). We agree with the Court of Appeals and affirm.
“Acting on a tip, police officers entered defendant's farm and found dozens of emaciated animals, mostly horses and goats, and several animal carcasses in various states of decay. Defendant owned those animals. Defendant was indicted on 23 counts of first-degree animal neglect, ORS 167.330, and 70 counts of second-degree animal neglect, ORS 167.325. Each separate count identified a different animal and charged conduct by defendant toward that animal. All of the separate counts were alleged to have occurred within the same span of time. A jury convicted defendant of 20 counts of second-degree animal [neglect].
“At defendant's sentencing hearing, the state asked the trial court to impose 20 separate convictions because the jury had found defendant guilty of neglecting 20 different animals. Accordingly, the state argued, the convictions ‘do not merge based on [ORS 161.067](1), (2) and (3).’ The trial court disagreed and merged the guilty verdicts into a single conviction, explaining that
“ ‘[ORS 161.067(2) ] talks about—although violating only one statutory provision, it involves two or more victims. In this case, I agree with the defendant's position that the animals are not victims, as defined by the statute; by the ORS 161.067(2).
“ ‘ * * * I don't think that [ORS 161.067(3) ] applies because the animals are not victims under the definition of the statute requiring that to be persons.’
Defendant argued that the ordinary meaning of the term “victim” does not include non-humans. Animals, he argued, are treated by Oregon law as the property of their owners. In defendant's view, because no statute expressly defines the word to include animals, only persons can be victims under the anti-merger statute.
On review before this court, defendant renews his argument that “the ordinary meaning of the word ‘victim’ means a ‘person,’ “ not an animal. According to defendant, “[a]nimals are defined as property under Oregon law,” and “[t]here is no statute that allows property to be seen as a victim” of a criminal offense. In defendant's view, the victim of an animal neglect case is either the public at large or the owner of the animal.
The state responds that the ordinary meaning of the word “victim” is not as narrow as defendant contends and that, to the contrary, it commonly is used to refer both to animals and to human beings. Moreover, because individual animals directly suffer the harm that is central to the crime of animal neglect, as set out in ORS 167.325, they are the “victims” of that crime. According to the state, the text and history of the statute make clear that the legislature was concerned with the capacity of animals to suffer abuse and neglect. Indeed, the state argues, the legislature expressly structured the animal neglect statutes “such that the degree of the crime corresponds to the extent of the animal's suffering.” Thus, in the state's view, the statutes evince a concern to protect more than a general public interest in animal welfare; rather, those statutes reflect the legislature's intention to protect individual animals from suffering.
We begin with the text of the statute, in context. Oregon's anti-merger statute provides that, when a defendant is found guilty of committing multiple crimes during a single criminal episode, those guilty verdicts “merge” into a single conviction, unless they are subject to one of a series of exceptions. One of those exceptions is ORS 161.067(2), which provides that, “[w]hen the same conduct or criminal episode, though violating only one statutory provision [,] involves two or more victims, there are as many separately punishable offenses as there are victims.” At issue in this case is the meaning of the word “victims” as it is used in that statute.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we assume that the legislature intended that the wording of an enactment to be given its ordinary meaning. State Murray, 340 Or. 599, 604, 136 P.3d 10 (2006). The ordinary meaning of the word “victim” reflected in a dictionary of common usage is:
“1: a living being sacrificed to some deity or in the performance of a religious rite 2: someone put to death, tortured, or mulcted by another: a person subjected to oppression, deprivation, or suffering 3: someone who suffers death, loss, or injury in an undertaking of his own 4: someone tricked, duped, or subjected to hardship: someone badly used or taken advantage of
“syn PREY, QUARRY: VICTIM applies to anyone who suffers either as a result of ruthless design or incidentally or accidentally * * *.”
Webster's Third New Int'l Dictionary 2550 (unabridged ed 1983) .2
In that light, it can be seen that defendant's contention that the “plain meaning” of the word “victim” refers only to persons, and not to animals, is predicated on a selective reading of the dictionary definitions. The first sense listed in the definition, for example, refers broadly to “a living being,” not solely to human beings. And the synonymy gives as an example of the word “victim” the sacrifice of animals. The ordinary meaning of the word “victim,” then, is capable of referring either to human beings, animals, or both.3
Illustrative examples of the plain meaning of “victim” to refer to animals are not difficult to locate. Especially in the context of animal cruelty, it is common to refer to animals as “victims.” As far back as the mid-nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill referred to the “unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind; the lower animals.” John Stuart Mill, 2 Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy 579 (1864). Rachel Carson complained of cruelty to all, “whether its victim is human or animal.” Letter from Rachel Carson to Oxford University Press, (undated) (on file with Yale University Library). A headline from an early New York Times article referred to “Animal Victims of Railroad Trains.” NY Times, Oct 11, 1914, at 77. A more recent article from 1982 on a series of hunting photographs from India mentioned pictures of “animal victims.” Images of India, N Y Times, April 25, 1982. A 1992 article from the Chicago Tribune similarly is headlined, “Pair Heading to Bosnia to Aid Animal Victims of War.” Chi Trib, Oct 6, 1992. Closer to home, an article in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin reported that, “[t]he Oregon Legislature has repeatedly and consistently articulated a strong public policy favoring the aggressive prosecution of animal cruelty cases by enacting statutes requiring police officers to make arrests in cases of animal abuse and to pay for and provide care to victim animals.” Full–Time Prosecutor to Litigate Animal Cruelty Cases Statewide, Or State Bar Bulletin, May 2013.
Having established the common, ordinary meaning of the term “victim,” the question is whether anything in the statute at issue suggests that the legislature meant something different. Certainly nothing in the wording of ORS 161.067(2) suggests that the word “victim” cannot refer to animals. If anything, the phrasing of the statute—which refers to the violation of another statutory provision—suggests that the meaning of the word “victim” will depend on the underlying substantive statute that the defendant violated.
Staff Measure Analysis, Senate Judiciary Committee, SB 257, 1985. Up to that time, no statute existed to guide the courts about how to enter judgments when a single criminal episode might provide grounds for multiple convictions and sentences. See generally State Cloutier, 286 Or. 579, 582–85, 596 P.2d 1278 (1971) (noting incomplete legislative direction regarding possible “multiple consequences” of a “single criminal act”). SB 257 was proposed to provide the courts that needed direction. State Crotsley, 308 Or. 272, 276–78, 779 P.2d 600 (1989) (discussing legislative history of former ORS 161.062). The House voted in favor an amended version of SB 257, which the legislature ultimately adopted and codified at former ORS 161.062(2). Id. As enacted, the new law provided in part that, “when the same conduct or criminal episode violates only one statutory provision, but involves two or more victims, there are as many separately punishable offenses as there are victims.” Or Laws 1985, ch 722, § 4(2). Nothing in the legislative history mentions any concern with the definition of the word “victim,” however.
Significantly for our purposes, Measure 10 also added the anti-merger provision to ORS Chapter 161 that is now ORS 161.067(2): “When the same conduct or criminal episode, though violating only one statutory provision [,] involves two or more victims, there are as many separately punishable offenses as there are victims.” Id . § 13. That provision is nearly identical to what the legislature had just enacted the year before as former ORS 161.062(2). In fact, the source of the wording of the ballot measure provision was SB 257 (1985). Crotsley, 308 Or. at 276 n. 3, 779 P.2d 600 (noting that both ORS 161.062 and ORS 161.067 “derived from a common source”).4
Ordinarily, when legislation has been essentially reenacted with no material change, we assume—in the absence of evidence to the contrary—that no change in meaning was intended. See, e.g., Carter U.S. National Bank, 304 Or. 538, 544, 747 P.2d 980 (1987) (“[t]here is no indication that the legislature intended any substantive change when it repealed former ORS 17.605 and reenacted it as ORCP 64A”), overruled on other grounds by Assoc. Unit Owners of Timbercrest Condo. Warren, 352 Or. 583, 288 P.3d 958 (2012); Kingery Dept. of Revenue, 276 Or. 241, 247, 554 P.2d 471 (1976) ( “[t]here is no evidence that the legislature intended any change in its prior statutory direction * * * by its substitution of the words ‘true cash value’ for the words ‘full and true value’ when it reenacted” the statute). In this case, nothing in that history of Measure 10 suggests that the duplicate provision was intended to have a meaning different from what the legislature had just enacted.
To be sure, other provisions of Measure 10 appear to assume that “victim” refers to persons. After all, provisions relating to the rights of victims to appear in court, to obtain restitution, and to be heard at sentencing and Parole Board hearings would be difficult to apply were “victims” to include non-human animals. The measure itself provides a definition of “victim” as “the person or persons who have suffered financial, social, psychological or physical harm as a result of a crime.” Or Laws 1987, ch 2, § 17 (emphasis added.)
But that definition expressly applies only to certain provisions in the measure, specifically, those that amended “ORS 40.385 and * * * ORS Chapters 136, 137, and 144.” Id. The definition of “victim” as a person does not apply to the anti-merger statute. Consequently, just as with former ORS 161.062(2), the otherwise undefined reference to “victim” in ORS 161.067(2) must draw its meaning from some other source.
Two of this court's decisions interpreting ORS 161.067(2) hold precisely that. The first is Glaspey. In that case, the defendant was found guilty of two counts of felony assault in the fourth degree, based on the fact that he had assaulted his wife in the presence of his two children. 337 Or. at 560, 100 P.3d 730. Under ORS 163.160(3), the offense of fourth-degree assault, ordinarily a misdemeanor, is categorized a Class C felony if it is committed in the presence of, among other things, “the victim's minor child.” The state argued that, because minor children who witness assaults suffer a variety of harms, each of the two children who witnessed defendant assaulting his wife were “victims,” thus justifying separate convictions under ORS 161.067(2).
This court rejected that argument. The court explained that, regardless of whether the children might have been “victims” in some sense, what counts for the purposes of ORS 161.067(2) is whether they were victims under the substantive criminal statute that the defendant violated:
Id. at 563, 100 P.3d 730. The court then turned its attention to “whether the child witnesses described in ORS 163.160(3)(c) are victims of the crimes that that statute defines.” Id. The court noted that, ordinarily, a “victim” is one “who suffers harm that is an element of the offense.” Id. at 565, 100 P.3d 730. The underlying substantive statute may use the term “victim,” but, even then, that is regarded as “context” for the purposes of determining the controlling question of legislative intent. Id. at 566, 100 P.3d 730. In that particular case, the court explained, the wording of the statute in context compelled the conclusion that the legislature considered the “victim” to be the person who is physically assaulted, not the children. Id. at 565, 100 P.3d 730.
The second case is State Hamilton, 348 Or. 371, 233 P.3d 432 (2010). In that case, the defendant was found guilty of seven counts of first- and second-degree robbery, based on an incident in which the defendant robbed a bar at gunpoint in the presence of the owner, two employees, and four customers. Id. at 373–74, 233 P.3d 432. The defendant argued that the multiple robbery counts should have merged into a single conviction, because he committed only a single robbery against the bar owner. Id. The state argued that each of the witnesses to the robbery was a victim and, as a result, separate convictions were appropriate under ORS 161.067(2). Hamilton, 348 Or. at 376, 233 P.3d 432.
This court agreed with the state. Citing Glaspey, the court began by stating that, “[i]n analyzing whether a crime involves ‘two or more victims' within the meaning of ORS 161.067(2), this court determines who qualifies as a ‘victim’ by interpreting the substantive statute defining the relevant crime.” Hamilton, 348 Or. at 376, 233 P.3d 432. Turning to the text, context, and legislative history of the robbery statutes, the court concluded that the “victim” of a robbery includes any person against whom a defendant uses or threatens violence in the course of committing a theft, not only the owner of the property. Id. at 377–79, 233 P.3d 432.
Whether each of the animals that defendant neglected was a “victim” for the purposes of the anti-merger statute, then, depends on whether the legislature regarded them as such for the purposes of the substantive offense of second-degree animal neglect. More particularly, it depends on “who suffers harm that is an element of the offense.” Glaspey, 337 Or. at 565, 100 P.3d 730. We turn to that issue.
An “animal” means “any nonhuman mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian or fish.” ORS 167.310(1) (2009). “Minimum care” refers to “care sufficient to preserve the health and well-being of an animal and, except for emergencies or circumstances beyond the reasonable control of the owner, includes, but is not limited to,” such requirements as food, water, shelter, and reasonably necessary veterinary care. ORS 167.310(7) (2009). For domesticated animals, “minimum care” also includes access to adequate shelter, continuous access to an area that is adequate for “exercise necessary for the health of the animal,” being kept at a “temperature suitable for the animal,” and being “[k]ept reasonably clean and free from excess waste or other contaminants that could affect the animal's health.” Id.
The phrasing of the offense reveals that the legislature's focus was the treatment of individual animals, not harm to the public generally or harm to the owners of the animals. The offense is committed by failing to provide required care to “an animal,” regardless of who owns it. The required care includes the minimum necessary “to preserve the health and well-being” of that animal. It is the individual animal that “suffers harm that is an element of the offense.” Glaspey, 337 Or. at 565, 100 P.3d 730.
In each instance, the offense is committed against “an animal,” and the relative seriousness of the offense is gauged in accordance with the relative degree of harm to or suffering of that animal. If the animal suffers a lack of minimum care, the offense is second-degree animal neglect. But if the animal is subjected to torture, the offense is felony aggravated animal abuse. In any reasonable sense of the word, the “victim” of those offenses is the individual animal that suffers the neglect, injury, cruelty, torture, or death.
Other aspects of the larger statutory scheme similarly confirm the legislature's focus on the suffering of individual animals. ORS 167.350, for example, provides that, in addition to other penalties that a court may impose for violations of the animal cruelty laws, the court may order the forfeiture of a defendant's rights in the animal. ORS 167.350(1). The same statute provides that, if a court orders such a forfeiture, it may further order “that the rights be given over to an appropriate person or agency demonstrating a willingness to accept and care for the animal.” ORS 167.350(2). The statute also provides that a court may also require the owner to repay the reasonable costs incurred by any person or agency caring for the animal during the pendency of the charges. In each instance, again, the focus is on the care of the animal who has suffered the harm of neglect or abuse. ORS 167.350(3)
The first animal cruelty legislation on this continent can be traced to the Puritan “Body of Liberties” from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which prohibited cruelty to “any bruite [sic] Creature which are usuallie [sic] kept for man's use.” Massachusetts Body of Liberties § 92 (Ward 1641); Thomas G. Kelch, A Short History of (Mostly) Western Animal Law: Part II, 19 Animal L 347, 350 (2013) (quoting Body of Liberties). By its terms, the law protected the animals only as property of their owners, and even then, only as to commercially valuable animals that were “usuallie kept for man's use.”
In the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, some states began to pass anti-cruelty laws that were intended to deter immoral conduct; the emphasis still was not on protecting the animals themselves. See, e.g., Johnson District of Columbia, 30 App DC 520, 522 (DC 1908) (prevention of animal cruelty “is in the interest of peace and order and conducive to the morals and general welfare of the community”); see also Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property and Legal Welfarism: “Unnecessary” Suffering and the “Humane” Treatment of Animals, 46 Rutgers L Rev 721, 754 (1994) (“the purpose of the statutes is to improve human character not to protect animals”). The 1962 Model Penal Code provision on animal cruelty, for example, provided:
Model Penal Code § 250.11 (1962). According to the commentary to that provision, “[c]ruelty to animals is another class of behavior widely penalized because of outrage to the feelings of substantial groups in the population.” Model Penal Code and Commentaries (Tentative Draft No. 13), American Law Institute 40, § 250.6 (1962).
New York's animal cruelty statute became a model for many other states, which adopted animal cruelty laws in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See, e.g., Mass Gen L, ch 344 (1869); 1869 Ill Laws 3; NJ Rev Stat 64–82 (1873); 1878 NH Laws 281; 1900 Cal Stat § 597; 14 Pa Stat § 7772 (1920); Mich Comp Laws ch 285 § 1 (1929). Oregon was one of the states that followed the New York model of animal cruelty legislation. Adopted in 1885, Oregon's statute provided:
“Whoever overdrives, or overloads, drives when overloaded, overworks, tortures, torments, deprives of necessary sustenance, cruelly beats, mutilates, or cruelly kills, or causes or procures to be so overdriven or overloaded, driven when overloaded, overworked, tortured, tormented, deprived of necessary sustenance, cruelly beaten, mutilated or cruelly killed, any animal; and whoever having the charge of or custody of any animal, either as owner or otherwise, inflicts cruelty upon the same, shall, for every such offense be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding sixty days, or by fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or by both fine and imprisonment.”
Lord's Oregon Laws § 2103 (1885). The courts recognized that the focus of the statute was the treatment of the animals themselves, with no mention of proof of economic loss to the owner or harm to the public. In State Goodall, 90 Or. 485, 175 P. 857 (1918), for example, this court held that evidence that the defendant rode a horse while it had a deep ulcerated sore on its back and that the defendant had supplied it with insufficient food was enough to establish violation of animal cruelty statute. Id. at 488–89, 175 P. 857. In the court's view, “[i]t is clear that the act of riding a horse in such condition * * * constitutes the crime of ‘torturing and tormenting an animal,’ as is also the act of depriving the animal of necessary sustenance.” Id. at 489, 175 P. 857.
Staff Measure Analysis, Senate Judiciary Committee, SB 508, Mar 14 1985, 1. Senate Bill 508 repealed both the old animal cruelty statute and the newer provision adopted in 1971 and replaced them with a comprehensive set of offenses, ranging from animal abandonment to animal neglect in the first and second degrees and to animal abuse in the first and second degrees. The bill also established detailed criteria for determining what constitutes the “minimum care” to which animals are entitled. Id.
“I see dozens of cases of animal abandonment, abuse and neglect that I can't take action against because of the inadequacy of our current law. Much of this law was written * * * when there were different problems with the care of animals. This leaves us with a law that now contains many vague or archaic terms. For example, our current law prohibits many acts that happened during those times when animals were used primarily for work purposes, such as ‘overloading’ or ‘overworking’ a horse or ‘works an animal when unfit for labor.’ “
Testimony, House Judiciary Committee, HB 508, June 12, 1985, Ex E, 1 (statement of David Hemphill). Hemphill explained that our highly mobile society is resulting in “an epidemic of animal abandonment and neglect.” Id. at 1, 175 P. 857. “If there were a strong law that prohibited any type of animal abandonment,” he argued, “many animals' lives could be saved.” Id. Hemphill urged the committee to recommend passage of the bill “on behalf of all responsible pet owners and the animals as well, so that we can continue to make our state a better place for every living being.” Id. at 3, 175 P. 857.
The preceding history confirms that the principal purpose of adopting the legislation that became ORS 167.325 was to prevent the suffering of animals. Although early animal cruelty legislation may have been directed at protecting animals as property of their owners or as a means of promoting public morality, Oregon's animal cruelty laws have been rooted—for nearly a century—in a different legislative tradition of protecting individual animals themselves from suffering. Indeed, the modern animal cruelty statute was designed to broaden the state's earlier law to encompass abandonment, as well as neglect and abuse, and to graduate punishment in accordance with the severity of the harm to the animals.
We therefore conclude that defendant is incorrect that the real “victim” of the crime of second-degree animal neglect is either the public or the animal owner. It is true that, for a brief period of time—from 1971 to 1985—Oregon's statutes included an additional provision that reflected the Model Penal Code's concern that animal cruelty is a matter of public morality. But that provision reflected an additional layer of legislative policy on top of the longstanding concern with protecting animals from suffering for the sake of the animals themselves. In any event, that provision was repealed in 1985, replaced by the comprehensive scheme of animal cruelty laws that we have described, all of which are predicated on preventing the suffering of animals. Moreover, Glaspey makes clear that the “victim,” for the purposes of ORS 161.067(2), is the one that “suffers harm that is an element of the offense.” Glaspey, 337 Or. at 565, 100 P.3d 730. Public harm is not an element of the offense of second-degree animal neglect. Harm to the individual animal is.
Nor is there in any indication that the legislature regarded the “victim” of animal neglect to be the owner of the animal. To be sure, Oregon law regards animals as the property of their owners. See generally State Fessenden / Dicke, 355 Or ––––, ––––, ––– P3d –––– (2014) (so noting, citing relevant statutes). But it does not necessarily follow from that fact that owners of abused or neglected animals are the victims of the offense. Indeed, it would be anomalous to conclude that the “victim” of animal neglect is the owner of the animal when it is the owner who is charged with having committed the offense.5 What is more, ORS 167.325 provides that, in the event of a conviction for animal neglect or animal cruelty, a court may order that the defendant forfeit any rights he or she had in the animal that has been neglected or abused—an odd consequence if the real victim of the offense is the animal's owner.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is remanded for entry of separate convictions on each guilty verdict for a violation of ORS 167.325 and for resentencing.