Title: Oregon v. Belden
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S067922
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: December 2, 2021

No. 48	
December 2, 2021	
1
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE 
STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
KYLE ALLAN BELDEN,
aka Kyle Allan Beldan,
Petitioner on Review.
(CC 16CR55568) (CA A163905) (SC S067922)
En Banc
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted March 18, 2021.
John Evans, Deputy Public Defender, Office of Public 
Defense Services, Salem, argued the cause and filed the 
briefs for petitioner on review. Also on the briefs was Ernest 
G. Lannet, Chief Defender.
Gregory A. Rios, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, 
argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review. 
Also on the brief were Ellen Rosenblum, Attorney General, 
and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.
FLYNN, 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.
Balmer, J., dissented and filed an opinion, in which 
Nelson and Garrett, JJ., joined.
______________
	
*  Appeal from Multnomah County Circuit Court, Stephen K. Bushong, 
Judge. 303 Or App 438, 464 P3d 465 (2020).
2	
State v. Belden
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
3
	
FLYNN, J.
	
At issue in this criminal case is Oregon’s consti-
tutional guarantee that an accused will have the right 
“to meet the witnesses face to face.” Or Const, Art I, § 11. 
When this court last considered Oregon’s Article I, section 
11, “confrontation right,” we emphasized that the right has 
never been understood to bar the use of reliable hearsay 
statements if the declarant “ 
‘is truly unavailable to tes-
tify at [a] trial.’ 
” State v. Harris, 362 Or 55, 62, 404 P3d 
926 (2017) (quoting State v. Herrera, 286 Or 349, 355, 594 
P2d 823 (1979)). To rely on hearsay in lieu of live testimony, 
however, “the state must show that it is unable to produce 
a witness after exhausting reasonable means of doing so.” 
 
Id. at 57. Given that standard, this court in Harris “reject[ed] 
the state’s contention that the unavailability requirement 
of Article I, section 11, is satisfied when a witness fails to 
comply with a subpoena.” Id. at 67. For procedural reasons, 
however, Harris did not address the defendant’s arguments 
about additional measures that the state could have taken 
“[o]nce the state became aware that its witness would not 
appear.” Id. at 57, 66-67. This case presents another oppor-
tunity to address how the state meets its burden to show 
that it has exhausted reasonably available means of produc-
ing a witness when that witness has been served with a sub-
poena but fails to appear.
	
The witness at issue in this case was the 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. State v. Belden, 
303 Or App 438, 464 P3d 465 (2020). The hearing record 
reveals, however, that—despite the fact that defendant 
and the state’s own witnesses identified additional mea-
sures 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 
4	
State v. Belden
explanation that pursuing those measures would have been 
unreasonable. Under the circumstances, we conclude that 
the state failed to show that it had “exhausted all reason-
ably available means of producing the witness.” See Harris, 
362 Or at 66. Although we recognize that the record below 
developed without the benefit of this court’s decision in 
Harris, the state’s failure to make the showing that this 
court has required means that the state failed to prove that 
C was “unavailable” for purposes of overcoming defendant’s 
Article I, section 11, confrontation right.
I.  FACTS
	
The pertinent facts are undisputed. A passerby, 
Laherty, was walking near the house that defendant and C 
shared when she heard a cry for help. Laherty approached 
the house, saw C in the doorway, and observed that C was 
naked, shaking, and bleeding. Laherty also observed other 
marks on C that looked to Laherty “like someone had been 
hitting” her. Laherty tried to guide C out of the house, but C 
would not go.
	
During the course of that interaction, C made state-
ments to Laherty that are at the heart of the “confrontation 
right” dispute in this case. C told Laherty that she—C—
was the person who had yelled for help, that she had been 
assaulted by a person who was “hiding in [her] daughter’s 
bedroom,” and that she did not want Laherty to call the 
police.
	
Another passerby called police, who came to the 
house and arrested defendant. The state charged defendant 
by information with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault 
constituting domestic violence.1 See ORS 163.160 (defining 
misdemeanor and felony versions of fourth-degree assault); 
ORS 132.586 (providing that, if a crime is pleaded and 
proven to satisfy the statutory definition of “domestic vio-
lence,” then “the words ‘constituting domestic violence’ may 
be added to the title of the crime”).
	
Between the time of the assault and the date of 
defendant’s trial, the office of the district attorney (DA) was 
	
1  The state also charged defendant with second-degree criminal mischief 
and harassment but ultimately dismissed those charges.
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
5
in contact with C about her role as a witness against defen-
dant. Beginning on September 9, less than a week after the 
assault, representatives of the DA’s office began to contact C. 
They left multiple phone messages for C and spoke with her 
by phone several times. In one phone conversation, a victim’s 
advocate from the DA’s office explained the “criminal justice 
process” to C.
	
On October 6, an intern from the DA’s office 
attempted to personally serve C with a subpoena as she left 
a court hearing, but C brushed past and left the courtroom. 
Four days later, however, C told the victim’s advocate that 
she would attend trial if needed and that she might be inter-
ested in a phone conference with the prosecutor who was 
assigned to defendant’s case. But C next spoke to the vic-
tim’s advocate on November 1 and, in that conversation, told 
the victim’s advocate that she wanted no further contact.
	
The day after C told the victim’s advocate that she 
wanted no further contact, C made a similar statement in 
a phone conversation with Jones, whose duties for the DA’s 
office included serving subpoenas for the domestic violence 
unit. C told Jones, “I’ve asked you guys not to call me any-
more.” At some point, Jones had learned that C had a pro-
bation officer and “tried to get in touch with” the probation 
officer “to try to get some help serving [C],” but the record 
does not reveal the outcome of that attempt. The record 
does reveal that the day after C told Jones not to call any-
more, Jones went to C’s home to serve a subpoena. When C 
answered the door, Jones explained that she had a subpoena 
for C. As described by Jones, C “looked at the subpoena. She 
looked at me. She said okay and closed the door.” Jones then 
told C through the door that C had been personally served 
and left the subpoena in C’s mailbox. That was on November 
3, and there is no evidence of contact between C and the DA’s 
office after that point.
	
The subpoena commanded C to appear at the court-
house on November 14—the day of trial—at 8:15 a.m. But 
on the morning of trial, 8:15 a.m. came and went without an 
appearance by C. Later that morning, the court convened 
a pretrial hearing at which the state attempted to demon-
strate that C was “unavailable” for purposes of defendant’s 
6	
State v. Belden
confrontation rights.2 The state called the victim’s advocate, 
the intern from the DA’s office, and Jones to testify to the 
measures described above, which the DA’s office had taken 
pretrial in an attempt to produce C as a witness at trial. 
Jones also testified that she had gone to C’s house at about 
8:20 a.m. that morning—when C should have been arriving 
in court—and had gotten no answer when she knocked on 
the door. The state argued that, in this case, it had “done 
everything in its power” to produce C as a witness, “short 
of physically barging into her house and arresting her.” 
The state urged the court to conclude that C, therefore, 
was “unavailable” for purposes of defendant’s constitutional 
rights and that C’s hearsay statements to Laherty should be 
admitted as satisfying the “excited utterance” exception to 
the hearsay rules, OEC 803(2).3
	
Defendant did not dispute that C had been person-
ally served with the subpoena, and he acknowledged the 
other measures that the state had taken to maintain con-
tact with C pretrial. He argued, however, that “the test for 
unavailability is ultimately one of necessity” and that the 
state had not made that showing. Defendant first argued 
that the state “was not unable to reach [C] via phone call,” 
emphasizing testimony that, if C’s number had been changed 
or disconnected, that usually would have been noted in the 
DA’s system.
	
Defendant then questioned the state’s assumption 
that C was absent because she was refusing to appear. He 
pointed to the testimony that C had expressed some willing-
ness to attend trial, and he argued that there did not appear 
to be any “affirmative statements made by [C] stating she 
will not show up, that she will not testify, that she will not 
cooperate.” Defendant also referred to evidence that the sub-
poena had directed C to appear in courtrooms that were not 
	
2  In addition to the confrontation right guaranteed by Article I, section 11, 
the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution also guarantees a “con-
frontation” right. Both provisions were at issue in the trial court, but only the 
Oregon Constitution is at issue on appeal. 
	
3  OEC 803(2) provides an exception to the rule against the admission of hear-
say evidence for “[a] statement relating to a startling event or condition made 
while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or 
condition.”
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
7
“this courtroom” and argued that “[i]t’s unclear whether or 
not maybe [C] appeared in either of those courtrooms.”4
	
Finally, defendant argued that the state “has a 
number of resources.”5 He specifically pointed to Jones’s tes-
timony that C “has a probation officer,” and he complained 
that “there’s been maybe one attempt, arguably, made to 
contact her probation officer.”6 Thus, defendant insisted, the 
state had “not met its burden in terms of procuring” the 
witness.
	
The trial court interrupted at that point to ask if it 
should “grant [the state] a continuance and have them send 
an officer out and see if they can round her up and bring 
her in and we can start this trial at 1:30[.]” But defendant 
dismissed that offer, emphasizing “that this is the date and 
time for trial” and that the state had not met its burden 
of showing that C was “unavailable.” After that exchange, 
the focus of the hearing turned to argument and testimony 
regarding whether the challenged statements qualified for 
admission under the hearsay rules and the federal consti-
tution, and neither the court nor either party returned to 
the possibility of measures that could be pursued with a 
continuance.
	
Ultimately, the trial court provided a lengthy oral 
ruling in which it concluded that C’s hearsay statements 
to Laherty qualified as “excited utterances” and that C 
was “unavailable” for purposes of defendant’s confronta-
tion-rights objection. The trial court, which did not have the 
	
4  Defendant made clear that he was not challenging the validity of the sub-
poena and did not explain the courtroom discrepancy in detail. But defendant 
had elicited testimony from Jones that the subpoena commanded C to appear in 
courtroom 804, and the trial court record indicates that trial was held in court-
room 450. The state did not address the asserted courtroom discrepancy at all.
	
5  One of the “resources” that defendant identified was an order under the 
“material witness statute,” but defendant withdrew the argument when the trial 
court pointed out that the statute does not provide for such orders in cases like 
this—a misdemeanor charged by information. See ORS 136.608 (describing case 
types in which the DA or the defendant may apply for a material witness order 
and excluding misdemeanors charged by information).
	
6  Defendant appears to have described the probation officer as a resource 
that the state could have better utilized before trial—“It could have reached out 
to her PO more regularly”—and “instead of sending an investigator” to C’s house 
“at 8:20 [a.m.] during a time where she would arguably be commuting to court or 
already present at court.”
8	
State v. Belden
benefit of this court’s decision in Harris, focused on the fact 
that the state had made “a number of efforts” to try to get 
C to appear, including serving a subpoena, and it reasoned 
“that the only logical inference” was that C was refusing to 
cooperate. On that basis, the court concluded that C was 
“unavailable.” After concluding its ruling on the hearsay 
statements, the trial court announced that they had “made 
it to 12 o’clock” and that court would be in recess until 
1:30 p.m., at which point the court planned to begin jury 
selection.
	
After a short trial, the jury convicted defendant of 
fourth-degree assault constituting domestic violence, and he 
appealed. Defendant primarily assigned error to the trial 
court’s admission of the three hearsay statements that C 
made to Laherty, arguing that the state did not demonstrate 
that C was “unavailable” for purposes of Article I, section 
11.7 Defendant argued that the state failed to exhaust rea-
sonable efforts that could have included reaching out to C’s 
probation officer to help convince her to appear and initiat-
ing contempt proceedings. The state responded that defen-
dant’s objection to a continuance precluded him from chal-
lenging the state’s proof that C was “unavailable” and that, 
in any event, the state’s efforts to secure C’s appearance had 
been sufficient to establish that C was “unavailable.”
	
The Court of Appeals affirmed. State v. Belden, 303 
Or App at 447. But the court first rejected what it described 
as the state’s “invited error” argument, concluding that 
defendant’s objection to the continuance did not preclude 
him from challenging the state’s proof that C was “unavail-
able.” Id. at 445. The court also concluded, however, that 
measures the state could have initiated only “after C failed 
to comply with the subpoena” were essentially irrelevant 
because the trial court’s “analysis of whether the absent wit-
ness was ‘unavailable’ necessarily could only have included 
the state’s  pretrial  efforts.” Id. at 446 (emphases in origi-
nal). Ultimately, the court held that the state’s “efforts were 
reasonable and reflected an overall approach, carried out in 
good faith, to secure C’s live testimony. Nothing more was 
	
7  Defendant also raised an unrelated assignment of error that he does not 
reprise before this court.
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
9
required.”8 Id. at 447. On defendant’s petition, this court 
allowed review.
II.  DISCUSSION
	
On review in this court, defendant renews his argu-
ments that the state’s reliance on C’s hearsay statements 
in lieu of live testimony violated his right to confrontation 
under the Oregon Constitution because the state had not 
“exhausted all reasonably available means of producing the 
witness.” See Harris, 362 Or at 66. Before turning to the 
arguments in detail, we describe the nature of the constitu-
tional right that is at issue, and we also briefly address the 
standard of review.
A.  The Article I, Section 11, Confrontation Right
	
Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution 
guarantees a criminal defendant the right “to meet the wit-
nesses face to face.” But that right is not absolute. Rather, 
this court has repeatedly concluded that the right “must be 
construed in light of certain well-established exceptions that 
existed at common law,” including an exception that permits 
the use of certain “prior out-of-court statements that are 
‘necessary’ because of the ‘unavailability’ of the declarant.” 
Harris, 362 Or at 61-62.
	
Beginning with this court’s 1985 decision in State 
v. Campbell, we have applied, on “independent and separate 
state grounds,” a two-part test for admitting hearsay testi-
mony over a confrontation rights objection that was initially 
articulated by the United States Supreme Court: “First, the 
declarant must be unavailable and, second, the declarant’s 
out-of-court statements must have ‘adequate indicia of reli-
ability.’ 
” 299 Or 633, 648, 705 P2d 694 (1985) (citing and 
quoting Ohio v. Roberts, 448 US 56, 66, 100 S Ct 2531, 65 
L Ed 2d 597 (1980), overruled by Crawford v. Washington, 
541 US 36, 43-50, 124 S Ct 1354, 158 L Ed 2d 177 (2004)). 
Notwithstanding intervening changes in the United States 
	
8  In describing the measures that the state had taken, the Court of Appeals 
opinion recites that “the state did, in fact, contact C’s probation officer to discuss 
the need for C’s testimony.” Belden, 303 Or App at 446. The parties agree, how-
ever, that the evidence shows only that an employee of the DA’s office had “tried 
to get in touch” with C’s probation officer and that the trial court expressly found 
that there was no evidence of the state actually contacting the probation officer.
10	
State v. Belden
Supreme Court’s Sixth Amendment analysis, on which 
Campbell had relied, this court continues to adhere to the 
two-part test to interpret and apply the Article I, section 11, 
confrontation guarantee. Harris, 362 Or at 64; see also State 
v. Moore, 334 Or 328, 340-41, 49 P3d 785 (2002) (reaffirm-
ing the Roberts test for analysis under Article I, section 11, 
despite intervening shifts in the Court’s interpretation of the 
Sixth Amendment, after considering the provision’s text, its 
historical purposes, and prior case law interpreting it).
	
Only the first prong of the two-part test—“unavail-
ability”—is at issue in this case.9 We explained in Harris that 
our prior cases addressing the “unavailability” exception to 
the Article I, section 11, confrontation right had “adhered to 
a demanding requirement of unavailability” that focused on 
“ 
‘necessity as the justification for admitting hearsay against 
a criminal defendant, once confrontation became impossi-
ble.’ 
” 362 Or at 65 (quoting Moore, 334 Or at 339, and State v. 
Birchfield, 342 Or 624, 629-30, 157 P3d 216 (2007)). Quoting 
our earlier decision in Herrera, this court emphasized in 
Harris that the “ 
‘exception cannot be granted routinely’ 
”; 
that it “applies only ‘when a witness is truly unavailable to 
testify at [a] trial’ 
”; and that, “[b]efore the state can rely on 
prior out-of-court statements, it must demonstrate why the 
use of such evidence is ‘genuinely necessary.’ 
” Harris, 362 Or 
at 62 (quoting Herrera, 286 Or at 355). Elaborating on the 
state’s burden, this court explained in Harris that the state 
may not simply “select one from any number of reasonable 
means of securing the presence of a witness and call it a day”; 
rather, the constitutional confrontation guarantee requires 
that the “state must have exhausted all reasonably available 
means of producing the witness.”10 Id. at 66. We emphasized, 
	
9   On appeal, defendant does not dispute that the statements qualify as 
excited utterances and are, therefore, “reliable” for purposes of the Article I, sec-
tion 11, exception. See State v. Moen, 309 Or 45, 62-63, 65, 786 P2d 111 (1990) 
(explaining that “[n]o independent inquiry into the reliability of” hearsay state-
ments is required for purposes of Article  I, section 11, if the statements fall 
within a “firmly rooted hearsay exception” and describing the “excited utterance” 
exception as “firmly rooted”).
	
10  Harris uses multiple, slightly varied formulations to describe the state’s 
burden, including that “the state must show that it is unable to produce a wit-
ness after exhausting reasonable means of doing so,” 362 Or at 57, that the “state 
must have exhausted all reasonably available means of producing the witness,” 
id. at 66, and that the “state must exhaust reasonably available measures for 
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
11
however, that “the law does not require the state to engage 
in futile measures.” Id. at 65.
	
We now highlight several significant aspects of that 
standard. First, the standard for “unavailability” does not 
ask whether the state has exhausted measures that are 
reasonably likely to produce the witness for trial; it asks 
whether the state has exhausted measures that are “rea-
sonably available” to produce the witness for trial. Id. at 66 
(emphasis added). The implication is that “unavailability” 
does not turn on a factual inquiry into the likelihood that a 
particular measure would have been successful in producing 
the witness. Indeed, the rule that a witness is “unavailable” 
only if the state shows that it has “exhausted all reasonably 
available means of producing the witness,” id., necessarily 
assumes that the state has exhausted means that did not 
succeed in producing the witness. By juxtaposing the con-
cept that a measure would be “futile” with the concept that 
a measure is a “reasonably available means of producing 
the witness,” Harris highlights that the likelihood of suc-
cess does not necessarily determine whether a measure is 
“reasonably available.” Id. at 65-66.
	
Second, because the standard places the burden on 
the state to show that it has exhausted the reasonably avail-
able measures for producing the witness, the state must do 
more than simply respond to measures that the trial court 
or the defendant have proposed. Although the fact that the 
court or the defendant has specifically proposed a particular 
measure may affect whether the measures was reasonably 
available, the fact is not dispositive.11
	
Finally, we emphasize that the question of whether 
a witness is “unavailable” for purposes of overcoming defen-
dant’s Article I, section 11, confrontation right is a question 
producing the witness,” id. at 67. We understand the varying formulations to cap-
ture the same constitutional requirement, and we treat them as interchangeable 
throughout this opinion.
	
11  In this opinion we focus on measures for contacting C that were specifically 
identified in the trial court. Although that is not necessarily the only category of 
measures that the state must address to show that it has exhausted reasonably 
available means for producing a witness, we share the dissent’s concern that, 
with the benefit of hindsight, it often will be “possible to point to additional steps 
that the state could have taken.” 369 Or at 29 (Balmer, J., dissenting).
12	
State v. Belden
of law.12 It appears that we have not yet announced that stan-
dard explicitly, but in prior cases involving the Article I, sec-
tion 11, right to confront witnesses, this court has treated 
the “unavailability” determination as a question of law. See, 
e.g., Campbell, 299 Or at 652 (holding that three-year-old 
witness would be “unavailable” only if trial court examined 
and declared the child “incompetent”); State v. Cook, 340 Or 
530, 537, 541, 135 P3d 260 (2006) (concluding that witnesses 
who had invoked their right against self-incrimination “were 
unavailable under Article  I, section 11”). That approach 
aligns with how we review other questions that determine 
whether there has been a violation of a right that Article I 
guarantees to an accused. See State v. Ward, 367 Or 188, 
198, 475 P3d 420 (2020) (whether the state has proven that 
a suspect made a knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver 
of his Article I, section 12, right to counsel is “ultimately a 
legal question”); State v. Maciel-Figueroa, 361 Or 163, 176, 
389 P3d 1121 (2017) (whether officers had “reasonable” sus-
picion to authorize investigative stop under Article I, section 
9, is an “issue of law” that depends on “whether the officer 
pointed to specific and articulable facts that are sufficient 
as a matter of law to give rise to an inference that a reason-
able officer would hold” a subjective belief that the defendant 
had committed the crime for which the officer made the stop 
(internal quotation marks omitted)); State v. Boyd, 360 Or 
302, 316, 380 P3d 941 (2016) (“whether the nature of the 
police questioning was such that it was reasonably likely 
to elicit an incriminating response,” such that the suspect 
has been subject to unlawful “interrogation” in violation of 
Article I, section 12, is “an essentially objective test” (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted)).
	
That understanding of how we review “unavailabil-
ity” for purposes of Article I, section 11, also aligns with our 
recent explanation for why we review as a matter of law the 
	
12  The parties in this case do not dispute that the test for “unavailability” is 
a question of law. But the dissent suggests that we should give a level of defer-
ence to the trial court’s assessment of the components of that test—exhaustion 
and reasonableness—that would be inconsistent with reviewing the “unavail-
ability” determination as a question of law. See 369 Or at 29 (Balmer, J., dissent-
ing) (opining that “trial court was in a better position than this court to assess 
whether, given all the circumstances, the state met its burden of showing that it 
took all reasonable steps to secure the attendance of C”).
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
13
question of whether a witness is “unavailable” for purposes 
of the statutory hearsay exceptions.13 State v. Iseli, 366 Or 
151, 161-62, 458 P3d 653 (2020). We concluded in Iseli that 
the test for statutory unavailability—whether the propo-
nent of the hearsay statement “has been unable to procure” 
the declarant’s “attendance by process or other reasonable 
means”—is a question of law because the standard “does 
not suggest a range of legally permissible choices”; it is “a 
standard that either is satisfied or is not.” Id. at 162 (citing 
OEC 804(1)). Like the statutory standard for proving stat-
utory “unavailability,” the standard for proving constitu-
tional “unavailability”—whether the state has shown that 
it “exhausted all reasonably available means of producing 
the witness,” see Harris, 362 Or at 66—is either satisfied 
or is not. Given the same set of factual circumstances, the 
question of whether a defendant’s constitutional right to 
confront witnesses must yield to the state’s need to rely on 
hearsay statements does not have “a range of legally per-
missible choices” that may vary depending on the courtroom 
in which the case is tried. See Iseli, 366 Or at 162. As we 
emphasized, in Iseli, however, to the extent that application 
of the legal standard turns on disputed questions of fact, 
this court is bound by the trial court’s findings “if supported 
by any evidence in the record.” See id. at 159.
B.  The state failed to demonstrate that C was “unavailable.”
	
In this case, the relevant facts are not in dispute, so 
we review as a matter of law whether the state demonstrated 
that C was “unavailable.” With respect to that question, the 
parties’ arguments have shifted slightly from their argu-
ments in the Court of Appeals. Defendant first urges this 
court to correct the suggestion by the Court of Appeals that 
measures available after a witness fails to appear have no 
bearing on whether the witness is “unavailable.” Defendant 
asks us to clarify that the state’s burden to show that it 
exhausted reasonably available measures for producing a 
	
13  We use the terms “constitutional unavailability” and “statutory unavail-
ability” to distinguish between the two concepts. At issue in this opinion is the 
“unavailability” exception that this court has identified to the seemingly categor-
ical Article I, section 11, right “to meet the witnesses face to face.” The concept of 
“unavailability” under the hearsay rules was created and is defined by statute. 
See OEC 804(1).
14	
State v. Belden
witness does not end when the witness fails to appear and 
may include even measures that would require a delay of 
trial. Defendant also urges this court to conclude that his 
objection to a continuance presents no barrier to his argu-
ments on appeal, in part because the state never agreed 
to pursue additional measures that would have required 
a continuance. Finally, defendant contends that the state 
failed to exhaust measures for producing C as a witness that 
were reasonably available both before and after C failed to 
appear and, thus, that the state failed to prove that C was 
“unavailable” for purposes of Article I, section 11.
	
In briefing to this court, the state no longer con-
tends that defendant is barred entirely from challenging the 
state’s proof that C was “unavailable.” The state also does 
not defend the suggestion of the Court of Appeals that con-
stitutional “unavailability” necessarily must be determined 
as of the point at which the witness fails to appear. But the 
state argues that, to the extent defendant is challenging the 
state’s proof of “unavailability” by pointing to measures that 
the state could have taken only with a continuance of the 
trial, this court should conclude that defendant’s challenge 
is precluded by his objection to a continuance in the trial 
court. Under the circumstances of this case, the state con-
tends, it “demonstrated that it made all reasonably available 
efforts to produce the victim by subpoenaing her, contacting 
her multiple times, and by attempting to contact her at her 
house on the morning of trial to persuade her to attend.” 
In other words, the state does not contend that that mea-
sures available after the witness fails to appear are always 
irrelevant to the state’s burden to prove that the witness 
is “unavailable,” but it views measures that were available 
after C failed to appear as essentially irrelevant under the 
circumstances of this case.
	
As we will explain, we are not persuaded that the 
state demonstrated that C was constitutionally “unavail-
able” without showing that it exhausted measures that were 
reasonably available after C failed to appear, whether that is 
framed as a broad legal proposition or as a conclusion under 
the circumstances of this case. Even assuming that defen-
dant’s objection to a continuance excuses the state’s failure 
to pursue measures that would have required a continuance, 
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
15
the record reveals that the parties and the witnesses iden-
tified other measures for producing C as a witness that 
were available on the morning of trial. Yet the state offered 
neither evidence nor argument that those measures would 
have required a delay of trial, would have been futile, or 
were otherwise not reasonably available means of producing 
C as a witness. Under the circumstances, we conclude that 
the state failed to show that it had exhausted measures that 
remained reasonably available for producing C as a witness 
in the time available on the morning of trial.14
1.  Whether a witness is “unavailable” takes into account 
measures that are available after the witness fails to 
appear.
	
We turn first to defendant’s request that we “clar-
ify” that the state’s obligation to exhaust reasonably avail-
able measures for producing the witness does not end when 
the witness fails to appear as directed by a subpoena. 
Although the state does not dispute that basic proposition, 
the decision of the Court of Appeals could be read as hold-
ing otherwise. See, e.g., Belden, 303 Or App at 446 (because 
the state’s pretrial “efforts were reasonable and reflect[ 
] an 
overall approach, carried out in good faith, to secure C’s live 
testimony[,] [n]othing more is required”). To the extent that 
the Court of Appeals intended to announce a categorical rule 
that the state’s obligation to show that it has exhausted rea-
sonably available measures to produce a witness ends when 
the witness fails to appear as commanded in a subpoena, we 
reject that rule as incompatible with our existing case law 
regarding what it means for a witness to be “unavailable” 
for purposes of Article I, section 11.15
	
Harris is our most recent case addressing the state’s 
burden to prove that a witness is “unavailable” for purposes 
of Article I, section 11, and it provides the starting point for 
	
14  Given that conclusion, we do not decide whether a defendant who objects 
to a continuance is precluded from contending that the state failed to exhaust 
measures that would have required a continuance.
	
15  It is unclear whether the Court of Appeals intended to announce a categor-
ical legal rule regarding “unavailability” or whether the court meant only that in 
this case—given defendant’s objection to a continuance—the inquiry was limited 
to measures that the state could have taken pretrial. Either way, we disagree.
16	
State v. Belden
our analysis in this case. In Harris, after the victim failed to 
appear at trial as directed in a subpoena, the state argued 
that the victim was “unavailable” for purposes of the defen-
dant’s Article I, section 11, confrontation right. 362 Or at 58. 
The state explained to the trial court that it had served the 
victim with a subpoena, had attempted to call the victim but 
been unable to reach her, and had spoken that morning to 
the victim’s mother. Id. at 58-59. Although the state argued 
that its efforts up to that point demonstrated that the wit-
ness was “unavailable,” it also indicated a willingness to 
attempt additional measures to bring the victim to court 
if the court were to grant a short continuance. Id. at 59. 
The defendant, however, objected to giving the state more 
time to produce the witness. Id. The trial court accepted 
the defendant’s position as to the proposed delay and ruled 
that the state’s pretrial efforts established that the victim 
was “unavailable” for purposes of Article I, section 11. Id. at 
59-60.
	
In briefing to this court in Harris, the state had 
argued that measures that were available after the witness 
failed to appear should be irrelevant to the “unavailability” 
analysis, but we did not agree. Although this court ulti-
mately affirmed the decision of the trial court in Harris for 
other reasons, we expressly “reject[ed] the state’s contention 
that the unavailability requirement of Article I, section 11, 
is satisfied when a witness fails to comply with a subpoena.” 
Id. at 67. And our analysis in Harris suggests that proving 
“unavailability” sometimes may require the state to pursue 
measures that are available only with a delay of trial. For 
example, we emphasized that the defendant’s arguments 
pointed specifically to measures that would have required 
at least a short delay of the trial, such as initiating remedi-
al-contempt proceedings or sending someone out to the vic-
tim’s house to persuade her to attend.16 Id. at 61. And we did 
	
16  The trial court in Harris contemplated that a short continuance would 
be needed “to allow the state to take such additional steps” as the defendant 
had identified. 362 Or at 57. The trial court is quoted more fully in the Court 
of Appeals opinion as reasoning: “ 
‘If all that has happened so far is a follow up 
phone call we could set this to begin tomorrow * 
* 
* and allow the State to do 
whatever further—make whatever further efforts it wishes to make at this time 
whether through officers that are on the case or otherwise.’ 
” State v. Harris, 279 
Or App 446, 451-52, 379 P3d 539 (2016), rev’d, 362 Or 55, 404 P3d 926 (2017). 
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
17
not question the merits of the defendant’s suggestion that 
circumstances may require the state to exhaust measures 
that would require a delay of trial in order to demonstrate 
that the witness is “unavailable.” Id. at 66-67. Instead, we 
held that the defendant was precluded from arguing that the 
state needed to pursue such additional measures because he 
had objected after the state had “agreed to a continuance to 
permit it to make further attempts to secure its witness.” Id. 
“Under those circumstances,” we reasoned, the “defendant 
is in no position to complain that the trial court erred in 
concluding that the victim was unavailable.” Id. at 67.
	
At least implicitly, that answer to the defendant’s 
argument in Harris suggests a conclusion that we now 
make explicit: The state’s burden to prove that a witness 
is “unavailable” may include showing that the state has 
exhausted measures that were reasonably available after 
the witness failed to appear, potentially even measures that 
require a delay of the trial.17 Any other conclusion would 
be difficult to reconcile with our emphasis in Harris that 
 
“[r]eliance on hearsay in lieu of live testimony must be a mat-
ter of ‘necessity’ 
” and that “[t]he state must have exhausted 
all reasonably available means of producing the witness.” 
Id. at 66. Accordingly, we reject the suggestion by the Court 
of Appeals that whether a witness is “unavailable” must 
be determined on the basis of the state’s “pretrial efforts” 
and that measures that could have been initiated “after C 
failed to comply with the subpoena” are irrelevant. Belden, 
303 Or App at 446 (emphases in original). The rule, instead, 
depends on what measures are reasonably available “under 
the circumstances of the individual case.” Harris, 362 Or at 
67. The circumstance of an imminent trial may significantly 
affect the range of measures that are reasonably available 
for producing a recalcitrant witness, but knowledge that the 
state’s pretrial measures have been ineffective at producing 
the witness is also a circumstance that can affect whether 
	
17  That holding is consistent with—but not controlled by—our recent con-
clusion that, in the context of the state’s statutory obligation to prove a witness’s 
“unavailability” for purposes of the hearsay exceptions, OEC 804(1), “other rea-
sonable means” for procuring the witness in that case included requesting a 
material witness warrant or initiating remedial contempt proceedings. Iseli, 366 
Or at 175.
18	
State v. Belden
it is reasonable for the state to pursue additional available 
measures.
2.  Defendant’s objection did not invite error.
	
We next turn briefly to defendant’s request that 
we “clarify” the extent to which his objection to a contin-
uance in the trial court limits his ability to challenge the 
state’s proof of “unavailability” on appeal. As set out above, 
the Court of Appeals held that defendant’s objection was not 
“invited error” that would entirely preclude him from chal-
lenging the state’s proof that C was “unavailable,” Belden, 
303 Or App at 445, and the state no longer contends other-
wise. We agree with that analysis of “invited error.” In gen-
eral, the doctrine applies when a trial court has taken pre-
cisely the action that the party claiming error has requested 
the trial court to take. See, e.g., State v. Ulery, 366 Or 500, 
502, 464 P3d 1123 (2020) (explaining that “the doctrine of 
invited error can apply when a party requests an instruc-
tion and later assigns error to that very instruction”). To the 
extent that defendant challenges as error the trial court’s 
ruling that the state proved C was “unavailable,” defendant 
did not invite the claimed error. On the contrary, defendant 
opposed that ruling and is entitled to challenge it in this 
 
court.
	
Harris does not hold otherwise. As explained above, 
this court held in Harris that the defendant was precluded 
from arguing that the state needed to pursue measures 
that would have required a continuance, because the state 
had “agreed to a continuance to permit it to make fur-
ther attempts to secure its witness” but the defendant had 
objected. 362 Or at 66-67. Although we described the nature 
of the preclusion as “essentially invited * 
* 
* error,” id. at 67, 
that conclusion should be understood in the context of argu-
ments that focused on the state’s failure to request a con-
tinuance to pursue additional measures, see id. (explaining 
that, “[i]n this case, defendant objected to the state being 
granted the time to pursue other means of producing the vic-
tim as a witness”). Thus, immediately before describing the 
defendant’s argument as precluded by his objection to a con-
tinuance, we emphasized that we did not understand “how 
the state can be faulted for failing to obtain a continuance 
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
19
to pursue other means of producing the witness when defen-
dant objected to the state being allowed to do just that.” Id. 
at 66. As the state recognizes in this court, Harris should not 
be understood as holding that the defendant was precluded 
from challenging entirely the state’s failure to exhaust mea-
sures, even those that would not have required a delay of the 
trial.
	
Defendant contends that the preclusion holding 
in Harris should be further limited to the precise facts of 
that case and should not apply if a defendant has a good 
faith basis for opposing a continuance or if the state has 
not affirmatively agreed to a continuance. The state insists, 
however, that Harris applies whenever a defendant who 
has opposed a continuance later faults the state for failing 
to pursue measures that would have required a continu-
ance. As indicated above, we decline to resolve that dispute 
because considering the state’s failure to pursue measures 
that would have required a continuance would not alter our 
conclusion in this case. Moreover, given the timing of this 
court’s decision in Harris, the parties had no opportunity to 
create a record that would be conducive to addressing defen-
dant’s proposed construction of Harris. The dispute is more 
appropriately left to a future case.
3.  The state failed to demonstrate that it exhausted 
reasonably available measures in the period after C 
failed to appear.
	
Under the circumstances of this case, we conclude 
that the state failed to exhaust measures for producing C 
as a witness that were reasonably available after C failed 
to appear and that would not have required a delay of the 
trial. The timing of C’s failure to appear is significant in 
this case. The state learned at 8:15 a.m. that C had failed to 
appear as directed in the subpoena, and Jones knocked on 
C’s door at roughly the same time. Although another hour 
passed before the state attempted to persuade the court that 
C was “unavailable” and five more hours passed before the 
case moved to the point of jury selection, there is no evidence 
that the state pursued—or considered pursuing—other 
measures in that time to produce C as a witness at trial. 
Instead, the state insisted in the trial court that “[t]here 
20	
State v. Belden
were simply no other efforts the State could have made.” But 
the record shows otherwise. Specifically, testimony from the 
state’s witnesses makes clear that they had a phone number 
for C through which they had contacted C on multiple occa-
sions pretrial and that Jones was aware that C had a pro-
bation officer whom Jones had considered to be a potential 
resource for locating C pretrial. The state, however, offered 
no evidence that it had attempted, or was willing to attempt, 
any of those measures after it learned that its pretrial efforts 
had been insufficient to bring C to trial.18
a.  Attempting to call C after she failed to appear
	
In arguments to the trial court, defendant primar-
ily highlighted the lack of certainty regarding the reason for 
C’s absence from court. Defendant emphasized that C had 
assured the victim’s advocate that she would attend trial 
if needed, that there had been no “affirmative statements 
made by [C] stating she will not show up, that she will not 
testify, that she will not cooperate,” and that the subpoena 
may have created confusion about the courtroom in which C 
was to appear. That uncertainty could have been addressed 
by attempting to call C on the phone to see if there was an 
innocent explanation for her absence. But, despite defen-
dant’s arguments, the state offered no evidence that it 
attempted to contact C by phone after she failed to appear 
and no evidence or explanation to support a conclusion that 
calling C would have been futile, too time consuming, or 
otherwise not a reasonably available means of producing 
her as a witness.
	
The dissent would excuse that gap in proof because 
defendant has never expressly proposed that the state 
should have called C on the morning of trial. 369 Or at 27-28 
	
18  The state also failed to respond when the trial court raised the possibility 
that the state could “send an officer out and see if they can round [C] up and 
bring her in and we can start this trial at 1:30.” Although defendant objected to 
a delay of the trial, the course of proceedings shows that any measures that the 
state could have attempted during the morning pretrial hearing would not have 
delayed the trial. In another case, it might be significant that the state failed to 
take advantage of the time needed to resolve pretrial issues to attempt additional 
measures for producing the witness. But it appears that both the parties and the 
trial court assumed that “send[ing] an officer out” would have delayed the start 
of trial. We need not decide whether that measure was also reasonably available, 
and we decline to do so in this case.
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
21
(Balmer, J., dissenting).19 But, as we have explained above, 
the state’s obligation to prove that a witness is constitution-
ally “unavailable” is not limited to exhausting reasonably 
available measures that the defendant asks it to exhaust. 
That does not mean that the state must address measures 
to which it is only possible to point “[w]ith the benefit of 
years of hindsight.” See 369 Or at 29 (Balmer, J., dissenting). 
At a minimum, however, the state must make some show-
ing as to measures that are specifically identified during 
the course of the hearing—either a showing that it has 
exhausted those measures or a basis on which to conclude 
that the measures are not reasonably available for produc-
ing the witness. Given the testimony of the state’s own wit-
nesses, the state cannot claim that it was unaware that a 
phone call to C was seemingly a reasonably available means 
of producing C as a witness. And given defendant’s empha-
sis on the possibly innocent explanation for C’s absence, 
the state did not need to be reminded that its pretrial mea-
sures failed to address that uncertainty. Under the circum-
stances, the state’s failure to either call C on the morning of 
trial or to explain why doing so would have been unreason-
able was a failure of proof that C was “ 
‘truly unavailable to 
testify at [a] trial.’ 
” Harris, 362 Or at 62 (quoting Herrera, 
286 Or at 355).20
b.  Attempting to contact C through her probation 
officer
	
To the extent that the state viewed C’s absence 
from court as a willful disregard of the subpoena, the record 
identifies at least one additional measure for persuading 
C to appear that the state failed to exhaust. In argument, 
	
19  According to the dissent, defendant’s “whole argument before the trial 
court regarding C’s unavailability on the morning of trial was about efforts that 
the state had or had not made before the day of trial “ 369 Or at 27 (Balmer, J., 
dissenting) (emphasis in original). We agree that defendant never expressly pro-
posed that the state could have called C on the morning of trial. However, given 
defendant’s extensive emphasis on uncertainty as to the reason for C’s absence, 
we disagree that defendant’s arguments in the trial court could have been under-
stood as faulting only the state’s proof with respect to pretrial efforts.
	
20  The dissent observes that “nothing in the record indicates that [the state] 
did not” call C on the morning of trial or consider and reject that measure. 369 Or 
at 29 (Balmer, J., dissenting). The observation is factually accurate but irrelevant 
under a standard that places the burden on the state to show that it exhausted 
the reasonably available measures for producing the witness.
22	
State v. Belden
defendant highlighted Jones’s testimony that she was aware 
of C’s probation officer and considered the probation officer a 
possible source of assistance when Jones needed to serve the 
subpoena on C. Yet the state offered neither evidence that it 
had attempted to contact the probation officer on the morn-
ing of trial nor explanation for why it had failed to do so.21 
On appeal, the state argues that C’s probation officer would 
have had nothing to add to “the chorus of state actors” trying 
to persuade C to come to court. But the argument focuses 
on the wrong question. As explained above, the standard 
for proving that a witness is constitutionally “unavailable” 
asks more than whether additional measures are likely to 
produce the witness for trial; it asks whether the measure is 
“reasonably available” for producing the witness. See Harris, 
362 Or at 67. Although evidence that C’s probation officer 
had nothing to add to “the chorus of state actors” trying to 
persuade C to come to court might have supported a deter-
mination that contacting the probation officer would have 
been “futile,” the state offered no evidence of the sort. On 
the contrary, the only evidence that the state offered regard-
ing the probation officer was Jones’s testimony that she had 
considered the probation officer to be a potential resource 
when attempting to locate C to serve her with the subpoena. 
Moreover, even on appeal, the state does not offer a reason to 
question the statutory authority on which defendant relies to 
argue that C’s probation officers may have had greater influ-
ence over C than the others in the “chorus of state actors.” 
See ORS 137.540(1)(h) (requiring that probationers allow the 
probation officer to visit their home or work); ORS 137.540(1)
(m) (requiring that probationers “[r]eport as required and 
abide by the direction” of the probation officer). We agree 
with defendant that the state’s failure to present evidence 
	
21  There is no dispute that defendant specifically argued that the state 
should have made additional attempts to use the probation officer as a means 
of producing C as a witness, but the dissent again faults defendant for fail-
ing to expressly propose that the state pursue that measure on the morning 
of trial. 369 Or at 27-28 (Balmer, J., dissenting). As quoted above, however, 
defendant’s arguments in the trial court appear to have faulted the state’s 
failure to reach out to the probation officer both before trial and “instead of” 
going to C’s house on the morning of trial. 369 Or at 7 n  6. In any event, as 
explained with respect to the measure of a phone call to C, the state’s obligation 
to prove that C was constitutionally “unavailable” was not limited to address-
ing the reasonably available measures that defendant expressly proposed. 
 
369 Or at 21. 
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
23
regarding contact with the probation officer represents a 
gap in the state’s showing that it “exhausted all reason-
ably available means of producing the witness.” See Harris, 
 
362 Or at 66.22
III.  CONCLUSION
	
Under the circumstances of this case, we conclude 
that the state failed to demonstrate that it had exhausted 
reasonably available measures for producing C as a witness. 
Instead, as defendant pointed out, the state showed only 
that C had not appeared as directed by the subpoena and 
that she had not been at her house at 8:20 a.m. when Jones 
knocked on the door. Although that evidence may support 
the court’s factual inference that C was deliberately absent 
from the courtroom, the standard for “unavailability” that 
we have articulated is not a factual question. As we have 
emphasized repeatedly, a defendant’s constitutional right to 
confront witnesses requires that, “[b]efore the state can rely 
on prior out-of-court statements, it must demonstrate why 
the use of such evidence is ‘genuinely necessary’ 
” and that 
the state does so by “show[ing] that it is unable to produce 
a witness after exhausting reasonable means of doing so.” 
 
Id. at 57, 62 (quoting Herrera, 286 Or at 355). Here, the state 
made no showing that it had attempted to call C or contact 
her through her probation officer on the morning of trial and 
no showing that either measure would have been futile or 
otherwise not a reasonably available measure for producing 
C as a witness. Given defendant’s arguments and the tes-
timony of the state’s own witnesses that they were aware 
of those measures, we cannot conclude that the state met 
its burden to demonstrate that its reliance on C’s hearsay 
statements was “ 
‘genuinely necessary.’ 
” See id. at 62 (quot-
ing Herrera, 286 Or at 355).
	
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.
	
22  We do not intend to suggest that probation officers must, or routinely do, 
interfere when a probationer is reluctant to testify as a witness. The relevance of 
defendant’s argument about the probation officer is that he raised that method of 
producing C as a witness, and the state, which bore the burden to show that it had 
exhausted all reasonably available means for producing C as a witness, offered 
neither evidence nor explanation for its failure to contact C’s probation officer.
24	
State v. Belden
	
BALMER, J., dissenting.
	
Four years ago, in State v. Harris, 362 Or 55, 404 
P3d 926 (2017), we held that a defendant who had objected to 
a continuance to allow the state to take additional steps on 
the day of trial to secure the attendance of a witness could 
not later argue that that witness was not unavailable. Here, 
when C, a key witness, failed to appear for trial despite hav-
ing been subpoenaed, the trial court suggested a brief delay 
to “send an officer out and see if they can round her up and 
bring her in.” Defendant, however, rejected any delay, say-
ing, “this is the date and time for trial.” The facts are not 
materially different from those in Harris, and yet the major-
ity now holds that, although defendant objected to the con-
tinuance suggested by the trial court, he nevertheless may 
argue that the witness was not unavailable. The majority 
goes on to conclude that the witness was not unavailable 
and that the hearsay testimony was improperly admitted.
	
The majority reaches those conclusions by an 
unusual route. Defendant’s argument in this court is 
straightforward and best summed up by a quotation from 
his brief:
	
“In this case, the state left two ‘reasonably available 
means’ for producing C untried: (1) it did not enlist the aid 
of C’s probation officer to encourage C’s attendance, and 
(2) it took no steps to compel C’s compliance with her sub-
poena. Given the fact that C displayed a clear reluctance 
to cooperate with the prosecution, the state should have 
attempted the first method prior to the morning of trial. 
Once C actually failed to appear, the state should have 
sought a continuance so that it could pursue the statutory 
method of compelling C’s appearance—that is, a remedial- 
contempt proceeding.”
The majority’s ruling for defendant is not based on either 
of those arguments. It does not address whether the state’s 
failure to contact C’s probation officer “prior to the morning 
of trial” was deficient, bypassing the relevant issue argued 
at the trial court: whether the state made sufficient efforts 
to bring the witness to court in the days and weeks before 
trial. The majority also does not address defendant’s sec-
ond argument: that “the state should have sought a contin-
uance” to initiate remedial contempt proceedings against C.
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
25
	
The majority instead focuses on the short time 
period between the state’s last effort to contact the witness 
by going to her home at 8:20 a.m. on the day of trial and 
about an hour later when the trial court began hearing pre-
trial motions. The majority’s examination of what it now 
says the state should have done differently during that brief 
time period five years ago fails to appreciate the real-time, 
in-court circumstances in which the trial judge, prosecution 
and defense lawyers, and parties and potential witnesses 
were operating, as well as the arguments that defendant 
did and did not make at that time. The majority essentially 
sidesteps the considered ruling by the experienced trial 
court judge, which was based on the arguments the parties 
made and the testimony of three witnesses about the state’s 
efforts to keep in contact with and convince C to appear at 
trial. In doing so, the majority reaches the wrong result. I 
respectfully dissent.
	
The legal issue is whether the state should have 
been permitted to introduce reliable hearsay evidence at 
trial because a witness, C, with firsthand knowledge of the 
crime—she was the victim of defendant’s domestic violence 
assault—was unavailable.1 As in Harris, the state in this 
case took steps before trial to ensure that C would be pres-
ent to testify, including subpoenaing her and contacting her 
multiple times, but C failed to appear on the day of trial. 
And here, as in Harris, there is no dispute that there were 
at least some additional measures that the state possibly 
could have taken, both before trial and on the day of trial, to 
attempt to secure the attendance of C. In Harris, when the 
witness there failed to appear on the day of trial, the defen-
dant “objected to a continuance that would have enabled the 
state to pursue other means of securing its witness.” 362 Or 
at 57. Accordingly, we held that “[the] defendant cannot be 
heard now to complain that the state did not exhaust those 
measures.” Id. We affirmed the defendant’s conviction on 
that basis.
	
1  Here, the person who would report C’s statements was walking her dog near 
C’s house when she heard C calling for help, saw C naked and bleeding, and heard 
other statements from C about defendant’s assault. The trial court ruled that C 
was “unavailable” and that C’s statements, as reported by the witness, were admis-
sible under the “excited utterance” exception to the hearsay rule, OEC 803(2).
26	
State v. Belden
	
Here, as noted above, defendant argues that C was 
not truly “unavailable” because “[t]he state should have 
sought a continuance to initiate remedial contempt proceed-
ings” against C. The state responds that, as in Harris, it 
was defendant who objected to a continuance and, therefore, 
that defendant’s argument is foreclosed by that decision. 
The majority, however, declines to resolve that dispute here 
or decide the case on that basis, and we see no reason to 
discuss that issue further.
	
Defendant’s other argument before this court, as 
quoted above, is that the state should have contacted and 
enlisted the help of C’s probation officer before trial. But that 
argument finds little traction in this case. If the state had 
had difficulty contacting C or could not find her to serve her 
with a subpoena, it might have made sense to turn to her 
probation officer for assistance. But that is not what hap-
pened here. Before trial, employees of the district attorney’s 
office had spoken to C by phone on multiple occasions, and 
she had been successfully served with a subpoena. In that 
context, C’s probation officer would have had little to add. 
Defendant argues that the probation officer could have 
emphasized to C that she was required to comply with the 
subpoena, but the subpoena itself conveyed that much—by 
law, a subpoena must state that, “in the name of the State 
of Oregon,” the witness is “hereby commanded to appear” 
before the trial court “as a witness * 
* 
* in a criminal action.” 
ORS 136.575(2). Understandably, then, as with defendant’s 
argument regarding the continuance, the majority does not 
rule for defendant on that basis either. Instead, it rules for 
defendant on other grounds.
	
I agree with substantial parts of the majority opin-
ion. As we held in Harris, and as the majority affirms, the 
state must “exhaust reasonably available measures for pro-
ducing the witness,” 362 Or at 67, but it is not required to 
take all possible steps to ensure that a witness appears at 
trial, see id. (“[W]e reiterate that the rule is one of reason-
ableness under the circumstances of the individual case.”) 
I also agree with the majority’s rejection of any suggestion 
in the Court of Appeals’ opinion of a categorical rule that 
a trial court may consider only the state’s pretrial efforts 
to secure the witness. See 369 Or at 15. Such a categorical 
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
27
approach would be inconsistent with the more general rule 
stated in Harris that the state must exhaust reasonable 
efforts to secure the attendance of the witness, but that it 
need not engage in efforts that are likely to be futile.
	
And the majority appears to recognize that nei-
ther of defendant’s arguments in this court offers a basis 
for reversal, since it does not take the more straightforward 
path of ruling for defendant on one of the two grounds that 
was briefed by the parties. Rather, the majority departs from 
defendant’s arguments and instead faults the state for fail-
ing to take steps that it might have taken between 8:15 a.m. 
on the day of trial, when C was scheduled to appear (but did 
not), and the hearing an hour later, when the state asked 
the court to consider C unavailable. By doing so, the major-
ity avoids addressing the state’s persistent efforts before 
trial. And the majority’s approach allows it to simply dis-
miss defendant’s objection to the continuance, because that 
objection did not come until after the time when the major-
ity now says the state should have undertaken additional 
efforts to secure C’s attendance. 369 Or at 14-15, 15 n 14).
	
The majority concludes that the state failed to meet 
its burden because, between 8:20 a.m. (when an representa-
tive of the district attorney visited C’s house) and the time 
of the pretrial hearing, the state did not attempt to call 
C or attempt to contact her through her probation officer. 
Contradicting the explicit and implicit findings of the trial 
court, the majority holds that the state “failed to demon-
strate that it had exhausted reasonably available measures 
for producing C as a witness.” 369 Or at 23.
	
I disagree with the majority’s approach for several 
reasons. First, the majority rewrites what the parties argued 
and what happened in the trial court. The whole argument 
before the trial court regarding C’s unavailability on the 
morning of trial was about efforts that the state had or had 
not made before the day of trial. Defendant’s contention was 
that those efforts, or lack thereof, were insufficient, not that 
the state should have taken additional steps on the morning 
of trial. At the OEC 104 hearing, defendant never even sug-
gested either of the two grounds on which the majority now 
rests its decision: that the state, on the day of trial, should 
28	
State v. Belden
have called C on her phone or tried again to reach C’s proba-
tion officer.2
	
The majority appears to have based this new focus 
on what happened after C failed to appear at trial, but before 
the court’s suggestion about a continuance an hour later, 
drawing on comments made during the state’s oral argu-
ment in this court about what efforts the state is required 
to make on the day of trial if a witness fails to appear. The 
state agreed that its obligation to bring its witnesses in per-
son to trial did not cease at the time set for trial. It accepted 
the general proposition that, if prosecutors knew where the 
absent witness was at the time of trial—the example dis-
cussed was that the state knew the witness was at a coffee 
shop across the street from the courthouse—the state could 
not establish unavailability simply by pointing to its pre-
trial efforts to secure the attendance of the witness. No one 
disputes that proposition. The state did not concede, how-
ever, that it had failed to make reasonable efforts on the day 
of trial in this case, and it correctly pointed out that “the 
question of doing more [on the day of trial] never came up” 
and was “never even raised” by defendant. For that reason, 
“the state had no opportunity or any impetus to say any-
thing about whether they had to do more” on the day of trial. 
And, of course, before the trial court, the state did make 
clear that, during the very time period that the majority 
now asserts is critical, Jones, a representative of the dis-
trict attorney’s office, had personally gone to C’s house in an 
effort to locate her and bring her to court.
	
If defendant or the court had raised any issue about 
the insufficiency of the state’s effort during that time period, 
it is apparent that the state could and would have responded 
to those assertions. Peeples v. Lampert, 345 Or 209, 219, 191 
P3d 637 (2008) (“Preservation * 
* 
* ensures fairness to an 
opposing party, by permitting the opposing party to respond 
to a contention and by otherwise not taking the opposing 
party by surprise.”). As to the majority’s apparent factual 
	
2  Indeed, defendant’s only argument at trial about what the state did or did 
not do on the day of trial was to criticize the state for sending a representative 
to her house at 8:20 a.m. during a time when she should have been on her way to 
court or already there. Defendant argued instead that, before the day of trial, the 
state “could have reached out to her PO more regularly.”
Cite as 369 Or 1 (2021)	
29
finding that attempting to contact C’s probation officer on 
the morning of trial was a reasonable way of producing C as 
a witness, the state presumably would have pointed out that 
it had made previous, unsuccessful efforts to contact the 
probation officer, as well as other potential problems with 
using a probation officer. Similarly, although, as the major-
ity points out, the state did not put on evidence that state 
representatives tried to call C on her phone after she failed 
to appear at 8:15 a.m., nothing in the record indicates that 
they did not. In fact, given that Jones had gone to C’s house 
in search of her on the morning of trial, it is possible that 
she called C as well or that Jones had determined that C, as 
an obviously reluctant witness, would find it harder to avoid 
someone knocking on her door than an incoming phone 
 
call.
	
But, of course, the record is silent on whether the 
state tried to call C or contact her probation officer between 
8:20 a.m. and the hearing on the morning of trial or, if they 
did not do so, the reasons why. That is because neither 
defendant, the prosecutor, nor the trial court would have 
had any idea that this court, five years later, would hold 
that the state was required to put on evidence of what its 
representatives had done in the hour immediately following 
the witness’s failure to appear in order to meet its burden of 
demonstrating the witness’s unavailability. The issue sim-
ply was not discussed.
	
In my view, the trial court was in a better position 
than this court to assess whether, given all the circum-
stances, the state met its burden of showing that it took all 
reasonable steps to secure the attendance of C, both before 
and on the day of trial. There is no hint in this record that 
the state failed to make good faith efforts to secure C’s atten-
dance or was engaged in a charade and actually wanted C’s 
statements introduced through the hearsay testimony of 
another witness. With the benefit of years of hindsight, it is 
possible to point to additional steps that the state could have 
taken. That will almost always be the case. Having heard 
the testimony of three witnesses who had tried to ensure 
that C would appear at trial, up to and including the day 
of trial, the trial judge concluded that C “did not want to be 
contacted by them anymore.” The judge stated:
30	
State v. Belden
	
“She did not want to participate in this process and was 
not cooperative. Although she may not have stated expressly 
that she was not coming to trial, the logical conclusion from 
that and from her failure to return phone calls, failure to 
respond to inquiries and failure to respond when the State 
sent someone to her door this morning, is—the only logical 
inference from that is that she is not cooperating and refus-
ing to come to testify at trial.”
	
The trial court concluded, based on explicit and 
implicit factual findings which are supported by the record, 
that the state had made all reasonable efforts to bring C 
to court before and on the day of trial, that they had been 
unsuccessful, and that C therefore was unavailable. I see no 
error in the trial court’s statements or conclusions, based on 
the case as presented to that court by the parties.
	
I respectfully dissent.
	
Nelson and Garrett, JJ., join in this dissenting 
opinion.