Opinion ID: 2635774
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Penalty and the Offense

Text: We next apply the proportionality provision of Article I, section 16, to the cases before us by considering the factors described above. The first factor identified above is the comparison of the penalty and the offense. Defendants were convicted of first-degree sexual abuse. The crimes of first- and second-degree sexual abuse originally were enacted as part of the 1971 revision of the criminal code. Former ORS 163.425 (1971) (first-degree sexual abuse); former ORS 163.415 (1971) (second-degree sexual abuse). First-degree sexual abuse was defined (among other things) as sexual contact with a person less than 12 years of age. Under versions of those statutes that were in effect from 1971 until 1991, the conduct at issue here would have constituted second-degree sexual abuse, which was a Class A misdemeanor subject to a maximum sentence of one year in jail. See former ORS 163.415 (1971) (defining second-degree sexual abuse and classifying crime as Class A misdemeanor); former ORS 161.615(1) (1971) (setting maximum penalty for Class A misdemeanor of one year in jail). First-degree sexual abuse required that the defendant use forcible compulsion or that the victim be under 12 years old; it was a Class C felony. Former ORS 163.425 (1971). In 1991, the legislature expanded the scope of first-degree sexual abuse to include sexual contact with a person under the age of 14. Or. Laws 1991, ch. 830, § 3. The legislature also reclassified the offense as a Class B felony. Id. From 1991 until the effective date of Measure 11 in 1995, the presumptive sentence for first-degree sexual abuse under the sentencing guidelines was 16-18 months in prison. Even that presumptive sentence would have been subject to a possible downward departure if the court found certain mitigating factors. With the passage of Measure 11, the penalty for first-degree sexual abuse was set as a mandatory term of 75 months in prison. ORS 137.700(2)(a)(P). The penalty for a first-time offender, like defendants here, cannot be increased or decreased. [11] The penalty, for purposes of the proportionality analysis, is the mandatory prison sentence of 75 months. As discussed above, the offense, for purposes of an as-applied proportionality challenge, consists of both the statutory definition of the crime and the circumstances of the particular crime that led to the defendant's conviction. That approach is particularly appropriate here. The statutory definition consists of the terms of the conduct prohibited by the first-degree sexual abuse statute, ORS 163.427(1), and few statutes criminalize such a broad range of conduct. [12] Measure 11 groups all acts constituting first-degree sexual abuse together and subjects all acts that fall within the definition of that crime to the same sentence. As defendants point out, ORS 163.427(1) covers [a] wide swath of conduct when the victim is less than 14 years, including, but not limited to, momentary touching of an intimate part without the victim's awareness or knowledge, touching that the victim apprehends but does not appreciate as sexual, momentary touching over clothing, prolonged hand to genital contact, prolonged skin to skin genital contact, and, of course, forcing a person under 18 to engage in bestiality. Measure 11 imposes the same, mandatory prison term for a 50-year-old man forcing a 13-year-old girl to engage in prolonged skin-to-skin genital contact with him and a 19-year-old forcing the same 13-year-old to touch his clothed buttock for five seconds. Because the statutory wordingany touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person [under 14 years of age]    for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of either partyencompasses (for example) the former conduct, the mandatory 75-month sentence for first-degree sexual abuse does not, on its face, violate Article I, section 16. But because the statute also encompasses conduct that reasonable people would consider far less harmful, defendants are entitled, as this court held in Huddleston, to argue that the mandatory sentence, as applied to the particular facts of their cases, is unconstitutionally disproportionate. [13] Thus, the offense at issue here includes the specific conduct in which each defendant engaged. That conduct consisted of Rodriguez causing the back of the boy's head to be in contact with her clothed breasts for about a minute and of Buck letting the back of his hand remain when the girl leaned her clothed buttocks against his hand several times and later wiping dirt off the back of her shorts with two swipes of his hand. In each case, defendant's contact came within the scope of first-degree sexual abuse, because it was the touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person under the age of 14 for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of either party. See ORS 163.305(6) (defining sexual contact). In determining whether the penalty here is unconstitutionally disproportionate, we cannot ignore the limited extent of the offensesthe physical touchingat issue here. There is no evidence that any touching between Rodriguez and the boy involved fondling, stroking, rubbing, or palpating. And the trial court, sitting as the factfinder in Buck, found that his contact with the girl did not involve fondling and was minimal. The touchings were brief, if not momentary. There is no evidence of force or threats of any kind. The sexual or intimate body parts that were touched were clothed. There was no skin-to-skin contact, no genital contact, no penetration, no bodily injury or physical harm. [14] In our view, comparing the statutory sentence of six years and three months in prison to the gravity of the touching for which defendants were convicted suggests, preliminarily, that that penalty is not proportioned to their offenses as required by Article I, section 16. That view is strengthened when we compare defendants' conduct with other conduct that ORS 163.427 explicitly brings within its scope and that also may be prosecuted as first-degree sexual abuse. First, the text of the statute penalizes, to the same extent as the conduct at issue here, the following conduct: Intentionally caus[ing] a person under 18 years of age to touch or contact the mouth, anus or sex organs of an animal for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of a person. ORS 163.427(1)(b). Reasonable peopleone is tempted to say, all reasonable people would agree that the conduct in which defendants engaged here is far less severe, wrongful, immoral, or harmful to a victim than at least one other form of first-degree sexual abuseintentionally causing a person under 18 to engage in bestiality. ORS 163.427 also makes sexual contact first-degree sexual abuse if it is the result of forcible compulsion by the wrongdoer, regardless of the age of the victim, ORS 163.427(1)(a)(B), such as by violence towards a victim, armed threats to accomplish sexual contact, or ripping off the victim's clothes to make sexual contact. Again, the difference between such conductpunished by the same mandatory 75-month sentence that Measure 11 would impose hereand defendants' conduct is obvious to any reasonable person. Second, when one examines the conduct here compared not just to other conduct specifically described in ORS 163.427 but to the range of possible conduct encompassed by the subsection of the statute applied heresexual contact with a person under 14the idea that the same six-year and three-month sentence should be applied becomes even more untenable. We have reviewed all the reported first-degree sexual abuse cases decided since the effective date of the 75-month mandatory sentence, and, although not all opinions discuss the defendants' conduct in detail and many involve convictions of other sex crimes as well, we are unable to find any case in which the contact upon which the convictions were based was as limited as in these cases. More typical are cases like State v. Foreman, 212 Or.App. 109, 157 P.3d 228 (2007), where the defendant was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse for engaging in sexual contact with the three-year-old victim by touching her vagina with his hands and penis. [15] In another unfortunately typical first-degree sexual abuse case, the defendant repeatedly rubbed his penis against his six-year-old victim, including one occasion where he took her clothes off, laid her on the floor, and rubbed his penis all over her. State v. Reed, 173 Or.App. 185, 21 P.3d 137 (2001). Even the other cases involving the least sustained or harmful conduct are easily distinguishable from the facts here. In State v. Cockrell, 174 Or.App. 442, 26 P.3d 169 (2001), for example, the defendant was convicted of one count of first-degree sexual abuse when, while roughhousing with his 11-year-old niece, he picked her up and repeatedly rubbed her crotch area, rubbing that she described as persistent and deliberate. In State v. Acker, 175 Or.App. 145, 27 P.3d 1071 (2001), the defendant furnished alcohol to his stepdaughter's 13-year-old friend and touched her breasts and buttocks. Those and other reported cases lend credence to the comments made by the experienced trial judges in the cases at issue here that neither had ever seen a first-degree sexual abuse case based on such minimal physical contact. The state consistently refers to the Measure 11 sentence for first-degree sexual abuse as a mandatory minimum sentence,  suggesting that a trial court could impose a greater sentence for the crime if the facts were more egregious than they are in these cases, thus alleviating any proportionality concerns. That is incorrect. The sentencing guidelines permit a trial court to depart from a presumptive sentence and to impose a sentence which is proportionate to the seriousness of the crime of conviction and the offender's criminal history. OAR XXX-XXX-XXXX(1). However, an upward durational departure shall not total more than double the maximum duration of the presumptive prison term. OAR XXX-XXX-XXXX(2). The presumptive sentence for first-degree sexual abuseabsent Measure 11is 16 to 18 months in prison. Because no other statute authorizes the trial court to impose a greater sentence than the mandatory 75 months set by Measure 11, that sentence becomes the minimum and the maximum sentence for first-degree sexual abuse. [16] Moreover, as with other Measure 11 sentences, the trial court has no authority to reduce a sentence for first-degree sexual abuse. In other words, with a narrow exception not available to these defendants, see 347 Or. at 68, n. 11, 217 P.3d at 674, n. 11, exactly the same sentence is imposed whether the conduct is as limited as it is in these cases or as extensive and gruesome as the examples suggested by defendants or as described in other reported first-degree sexual abuse cases, discussed above. Finally, although we recognize the legislature's authority to change sentences for crimes, proportionality review under the Oregon Constitution certainly can take into consideration the historical fact that, before Measure 11, the sentencing guidelines established, as the presumptive sentence for first-degree sexual abuse, a prison term of 16 to 18 months. As noted, even if the trial court had imposed the maximum upward departure from the presumptive guidelines sentence, based on aggravating circumstances, the maximum sentence for first-degree sexual abuse for a defendant with no prior convictions would have been 36 months. Measure 11 imposed a mandatory sentence on these defendants that is more than twice as long as the maximum sentence that could have been imposed on these defendants under the guidelines. Although the 75-month sentence is not disproportionate for most of the conduct that constitutes first-degree sexual abuse, the previously applicable guidelines sentence supports the conclusion that the 75-month sentence is disproportionate for the conduct at issue here. For the reasons described above, a comparison of the penalty and the offense indicates that the 75-month Measure 11 sentence may be so disproportionate to defendants' offenses as to violate Article I, section 16. Not only does defendants' criminal conduct appear insufficiently grave to justify the mandatory six-year and three-month sentence, but it also is less severe than the conduct in the vast majority of (and probably in all) other reported first-degree sexual abuse cases since Measure 11 was passed. Despite our initial view that the penalty that Measure 11 would impose for defendants' offenses may be unconstitutionally disproportionate, one could imagine a regime of draconian penalties for a wide variety of criminal offenses in which a 75-month sentence for the conduct at issue here would not shock the moral sense, because more serious crimes routinely were punished even more severely. Accordingly, we continue our inquiry by considering the penalty that Measure 11 would impose here in the context of the penalties imposed for related crimes.