Opinion ID: 836009
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of Former Jeopardy under Article I, section 12, to the PFZ Ordinance

Text: We will not belabor the issue of legislative intent. It is clear that the Portland City Council intended to create a civil process and sanction when it adopted the PFZ ordinance. The question is whether, in spite of the council's intent, the proceeding that results in exclusion under the ordinance is criminal in nature. We answer that question by examining the exclusion procedure in light of the four factors identified in Selness.
The use of arrest, detention, or other similar police procedures that ordinarily are associated with criminal law enforcement may suggest that a nominally civil proceeding in fact is criminal in nature. Selness, 334 Or. at 535-36, 54 P.3d 1025; Brown v. Multnomah County Dist. Ct., 280 Or. 95, 108, 570 P.2d 52 (1977). One amicus suggests that the criminal nature of the PFZ exclusion process is demonstrated by the fact that, under the PFZ ordinance, arrest for one of the specified prostitution crimes is an essential precondition for issuance of an exclusion order. PCC § 14.150.030. However, although arrest is a necessary precondition to the exclusion process, that process is not part of the criminal prosecution that may follow from the arrest, but arises out of a separate source of law. Indeed, the police have no authority under the PFZ ordinance itself to arrest individuals for committing prostitution-related crimes. [7] Thus, the fact that individuals may be excluded from PFZs only after being arrested for a prostitution crime does not demonstrate that the PFZ exclusion process is criminal, rather than civil.
Under this second factor, we look to see if the actual or potential sanction is infamous or one that traditionally has been regarded as criminal punishment. Selness, 334 Or. at 536, 54 P.3d 1025. Defendant suggests that this factor is definitivethat exclusion under the PFZ ordinance is equivalent to banishment, a sanction that has been employed for centuries as criminal punishment. Defendant notes, in that regard, that banishment is defined in Black's Law Dictionary 183 (Rev 4th ed 1968) as a punishment inflicted upon criminals, by compelling them to quit a city, place or country for a specified period of time, or for life. Defendant also notes that the United States Supreme Court has referred to banishment as a harsh punishment, even in the eyes of those who were accustomed to brutality in the administration of criminal justice. Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 168 n. 23, 83 S.Ct. 554, 9 L.Ed.2d 644 (1963) (quoting David W. Moxey, Loss of Nationality: Individual Choice or Government Fiat? 26 Albany L Rev 151, 164 (1962)). Defendant's attempted analogy between banishment and exclusion under the PFZ ordinance is not apt. As the state points out, banishment traditionally meant exclusion from a sovereign's entire territory for life or a significant period of time. The exclusion at issue here, in contrast, pertains for a limited period of time to a limited part of the city's area. In that sense, PFZ exclusions are more like certain restraining orders and injunctions, which are imposed to maintain order within a designated geographical area or to protect specific persons from harassment or physical harm. See, e.g., ORS 163.738 (providing for issuance of stalking protective order by court); ORS 107.718(1)(c) (providing for order, on petition by victim of domestic abuse, restraining abuser from entering a reasonable area surrounding the petitioner's    residence); see also Portland Fem. Women's H. Ctr. v. Advocates for Life, Inc., 859 F.2d 681 (9th Cir.1988) (approving order enjoining right-to-life advocates from entering free zone extending along sidewalk to the right and left of abortion clinic's front door). We have found nothing in the case law surrounding those kinds of orders that suggests that they are considered, or historically have been considered, to be criminal punishments. The analogy to banishment that defendant proposes becomes even more tenuous when one considers that the exclusion ordinance expressly provides for variances to protect the health, welfare, and well-being of the targeted individuals, and even mandates the granting of variances for such persons who reside or work in a PFZ. PCC § 14.150.160(2(b)). [8] By contrast, the historical punishment of banishment stripped offenders of home, citizenship, and livelihood. Because the exclusion ordinance allows offenders to avoid those consequences, we do not deem it comparable. [9] Defendant suggests that, the analogy to banishment aside, the deprivation of any civil right because of past conduct historically has been viewed as punishment for constitutional purposes. He points to the following statement in Cummings v. The State of Missouri, 71 U.S. (4 Wall) 277, 321-22, 18 L. Ed. 356 (1866): The theory upon which our political institutions rest is, that all men have certain inalienable rightsthat among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that in the pursuit of happiness all avocations, all honors, all positions, are alike open to everyone, and that in the protection of these rights all are equal before the law. Any deprivation or suspension of any of these rights for past conduct is punishment, and can be in no otherwise defined. The foregoing passage extols the sacred virtue of opportunity; it clearly does not speak to the far more practical question that is at issue here, viz., whether the particular deprivation that is at issue historically has been viewed as a criminal punishment. We are satisfied that it has not. We also consider under that Selness factor whether the sanction in question is such that it cannot be explained in terms of the civil purpose that it supposedly serves. Selness, 334 Or. at 536, 54 P.3d 1025. Defendant invokes that factor when he argues that exclusions under the PFZ ordinance far exceed what is necessary, both in terms of geography and affected activities, to achieve the city's legitimate, remedial goals. With regard to geography, defendant points to the trial court's finding that the PFZs follow a number of important thoroughfares and that it would be extremely difficult to move through substantial portions of the city without at least crossing one of these lineal zones. With regard to activities, defendant argues that exclusion under the ordinance unreasonably and unnecessarily makes legitimate, everyday activities, like commuting to work and driving to the airport, more difficult. Defendant suggests that the PFZs could have been designed to minimize those impacts by, for example, permitting excluded individuals to travel on interstate freeways and major arterial streets. Defendant also argues that the PFZ scheme is excessive because it is unnecessary, given the legal mechanisms already in place. Defendant notes that the City already prohibits many prostitution-related activities, such as repeatedly circling an area in a motor vehicle and beckoning to pedestrians and drivers, and that those activity-based prohibitions are appropriate and sufficient. Defendant also suggests that the city could achieve its goals by imposing narrowly tailored exclusions in criminal proceedings against individual defendants who are charged with prostitution crimes, as a condition of release. Defendant is laboring under a misapprehension with regard to the nature of our inquiry. We never have suggested that a sanction must be narrowly tailored to the remedial goals that it serves if it is to avoid classification as criminal punishment. The test that we have proposed is less exacting: It asks only whether the sanction is so excessive that it cannot be justified in terms of the civil purpose that it ostensibly serves. Selness, 334 Or. at 536, 54 P.3d 1025. The exclusion ordinance passes that test. Despite defendant's argument to the contrary, it is evident that the geographical designs of the PFZs are linked closely to the remedial purpose of inhibiting prostitution in areas that have become centers of prostitution activity. Exhibits in the record show that the areas designated as PFZs at the time of defendant's exclusion under the ordinance in fact were experiencing a significantly higher level of prostitution arrests than other parts of the city. [10] As noted, defendant suggests that the configuration of the PFZs makes exclusion unnecessarily burdensome, in that excluded persons are prohibited from driving on or even crossing through parts of Portland's most important arterial streets. However, given that those major arterials are the prostitution centers, and that prostitutes and their clients generally find one another by driving along or through those streets, we cannot say that the City was overreaching when it designed the PFZs in the way that it did. With respect to defendant's suggestion that the City has other mechanisms in place for preventing prostitution activities in the targeted areas, that argument says nothing about whether exclusion under the PFZ ordinance is excessive. We reject that argument without further discussion. Finally, we note that defendant's claims of excessiveness are diminished by the fact and nature of the variances that the ordinance provides. To be sure, exclusion from a portion of the city can be burdensome, depending on the excluded person's individual circumstances. However, if affected individuals are entitled to a variance because they live or work in an exclusion zone and may, at the discretion of designated officials and agencies, obtain additional variances for reasons of health, welfare, or well-being, PCC § 14.150.160(2)(b), then the burdens that accompany exclusion are considerably less than they might be. Although defendant takes great pains to point out that the granting of variances is in part discretionary, we cannot assume that city officials will deny legitimate requests for variances, particularly when the individual who makes the request can show that an exclusion is particularly burdensome. For the foregoing reasons, we reject defendant's contention that the punitive effects of exclusion under the PFZ ordinance are so excessive, in relation to the remedial purpose that exclusion serves, that exclusion should be deemed a criminal sanction and the exclusion process a criminal prosecution for purposes of Article I, section 12.
Some level of public stigma may attach to an exclusion under Portland's PFZ ordinance. We must determine, however, whether that public stigma is stigma of the individual, and not simply public disapproval of the behavior. See Selness, 334 Or. at 534, 54 P.3d 1025 (setting the standard). We are persuaded that the stigma associated with exclusion under the PFZ ordinance is no more stigmatizing of the individual involved than domestic abuse restraining orders, ORS 107.718(1)(c), and other similar civil orders aimed at preventing violence and disorder, rather than at punishing past crimes. See, e.g., Portland Fem. Women's H. Ctr., 859 F.2d at 681-85 (approving order enjoining right-to-life advocates from entering area around abortion clinic's front door).
The last of the four factors we have identified as relevant in this contextwhether any collateral consequences that attach to the proceeding have attributes of a criminal sanctiondoes not appear to be relevant in this case. Defendant has not argued that any collateral consequences attach and none otherwise have come to our attention.