Opinion ID: 1145252
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Consistent application of discretionary policies.

Text: Because Clark and Edmonson only rejected an attack on the dual system of felony prosecution as inherently unequal, holding that the system could withstand this attack if administered to provide equal privileges to persons similarly situated, those decisions could offer little guidance upon what terms the privilege of a preliminary hearing must equally belong to all citizens. The present case, in which the challenge is to the terms upon which the prosecution based its refusal of a preliminary hearing to defendant, calls for a further analysis. The provision allowing alternative ways to charge was added to the constitution in 1974. Article VII, section 5(5) provides: The district attorney may charge a person on an information filed in circuit court if, after a preliminary hearing before a magistrate, the person has been held to answer upon a showing of probable cause that a crime punishable as a felony has been committed and that the person has committed it, or if the person knowingly waives preliminary hearing. It is undisputed that this provision was meant to leave discretion to choose between the two procedures to the district attorney. According to the explanations in the Official Voters' Pamphlet, the proposed system was based on the discretion of the district attorney so as to assure that each county can follow the system best suited to its needs. 1974 Official Voters Pamphlet 14-15. The committee designated pursuant to ORS 254.210, in its explanation, stated: The proposed change keeps the traditional grand jury function in our system of criminal justice but makes it possible to use it in a more flexible manner within the limited discretion of the district attorney. Id. at 13. The change was designed to reduce the previously mandatory use of grand jury indictments so as to promote both efficiency and also fairness. Id. at 14. It is because of this background that reasons of efficiency are permissible criteria for the choice between the alternative procedures and that, although the criminal code and article I, section 20, apply throughout the state, each county or district remains free, in the absence of statute, to choose the charging practices most suitable for its circumstances and to change them as experience may dictate. As the Voters Pamphlet clearly stated, however, the objective of the 1974 amendment was to promote fairness as well as efficiency. It therefore does not support the notion that discretion under article VII, section 5(5), described in the committee's statement, supra, as limited discretion, somehow is immune from the restraint against haphazard, purely ad hoc, use of discretion that article I, section 20, imposes on the administration of other privileges or immunities. A charge that one has committed a felony and should undergo a trial on the charge is, short of a conviction and sentence, the gravest act by which the state confronts one of its citizens. [5] Whether or not a conviction follows, prosecution alone imposes heavy burdens on the defendant. Unlike many other programs offering benefits or privileges only to applicants that nonetheless must be designed and administered so that they upon the same terms ... equally belong to all citizens, prosecution for crime proceeds at the will of the prosecutor. The laws do not give the accused any role in choosing the procedure beyond perhaps speeding the process by waiving indictment or preliminary hearing. Or. Const. art. VII (am.), § 5(4), (5). The importance of administering such protections as the process affords on equal terms in similar circumstances therefore is even greater than it is in the administration of such other programs. The circuit court concluded that the process had not been so administered in this case. The circuit court relied on our statement that a constitutional claim for equal treatment is made out when the accused shows that preliminary hearings are offered or denied to individual defendants, or to social, geographic, or other classes of defendants ... purely haphazardly or otherwise on terms that have no satisfactory explanation under art. I, § 20. State v. Edmonson, 291 Or. at 254, 630 P.2d 822. As noted above, the statement encompasses two distinct tests under article I, section 20. Haphazard or standardless administration, in which the procedure is chosen ad hoc without striving for consistency among similar cases, differs from impermissible classification, because a systematic practice of following one or the other procedure in identifiable types of cases or circumstances itself reflects some articulable policy toward classes of cases. The quoted reference in Edmonson, above, to social, geographic, or other classes of defendants only relates to the validity of such a policy. An individual challenging purely ad hoc, unsystematic use or denial of one or the other procedure need not show that he has been discriminated against on grounds that would be invalid if they were the basis of a systematic policy. [6] The question, then, is whether a prosecutor's use of the two charging procedures adheres to sufficiently consistent standards to represent a coherent, systematic policy, even when not promulgated in the form of rules or guidelines. Our rejection of the equal protection attack made upon the dual system in Clark and Edmonson rested on the assumption that [t]he two methods are capable of valid administration, and that courts can determine whether they are so administered. If that assumption fails, and administration of the system upon the same terms toward similarly situated defendants cannot be assured, the premise of Clark and Edmonson also would fail. Given that premise, however, many kinds of reasons for proceeding with or without a preliminary hearing are valid if consistently applied. Different procedures for charging different crimes are an example. Persons charged with traffic crimes, for instance, are not a different class of citizens from persons charged with assault, or theft, unless a defendant can show that a distinction in charging such crimes in fact is designed to discriminate for or against some identifiable social group. [7] Without such a showing, a choice of charging procedure by type of offense would not be an unconstitutional classification if it were prescribed by law, and it therefore is not unconstitutional if adopted as a consistent prosecutorial policy. At the other extreme, no one doubts that it would violate article I, section 20, to grant or deny a preliminary hearing because an accused is of Oriental or Native American descent, or an immigrant, or of a particular religious denomination, or of one or the other gender. See State v. Clark, supra, 291 Or. at 240, 242, 630 P.2d 810, Hewitt v. SAIF, supra . The same would be true of doing so because of the prosecutor's personal like or dislike for an accused, People v. Walker, 14 N.Y.2d 901, 252 N.Y.S.2d 96, 200 N.E.2d 779 (1964), on remand 50 Misc.2d 751, 271 N.Y.S.2d 447 (1966), or for the accused's counsel, cf. In re Rook, supra , or because the accused did not accede to or cooperate with some extraneous demand of the prosecutor, cf. MacDonald v. Musick, 425 F.2d 373 (9th Cir.), cert. den. 400 U.S. 852, 91 S.Ct. 54, 27 L.Ed.2d 90 (1970); Dixon v. District of Columbia, 394 F.2d 966 (D.C. Cir.1968). Other types of reasons to grant or deny preliminary hearings stand or fall by analogy to these more obvious examples. A consistent practice of proceeding by one or the other method in counties where courts for conducting preliminary hearings are distant or where there are long intervals between grand jury sessions would not reflect discrimination against one or against an identifiable kind of accused. [8] Nor, for similar reasons, would a consistent policy to save needless strain or travel and inconvenience for particularly infirm or distant witnesses. More like impermissibly singling out individual defendants, on the other hand, would be a practice of denying preliminary hearings whenever a prosecutor wants only to improve his chances of conviction in a particular case by shielding witnesses from preliminary examination. Such a practice cannot be said to afford the privilege upon the same terms [equally] to all citizens, as article I, section 20 prescribes, without making nonsense of that principle. We do not go beyond these examples to decide hypothetical issues not now before us, but the foregoing should serve to indicate the analysis. None of this means that the choice of charging procedure is not within the discretion of the district attorneys throughout the state. The law presently gives them the discretion to proceed by information and preliminary hearing or by grand jury indictment. Article I, section 20, requires only that the choice be made by permissible criteria and consistently applied, so as to afford preliminary hearings to similarly situated defendants upon the same terms. Discretion to choose a policy is not incompatible with consistency in practice. As one major study of prosecutorial discretion put it: That there should be consistent and evenhanded treatment of individuals within the framework of our legal system is such a commonly accepted notion that it hardly merits discussion and analysis.... In its most elementary form, consistent and even handed treatment means that individuals in like circumstances will be treated alike.... Abrams, Internal Policy: Guiding the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion, 19 U.C.L.A.L. Rev. 1, 4 (1971). The challenge for the prosecutor, Professor Abrams continues, is to articulate the factors taken into account by him, sometimes intuitively, in exercising his discretion. Id. [9] Or, as Justice Tanzer wrote in another connection while on the Court of Appeals: We recognize the wide discretion vested in the commission ..., but that discretion is not unbridled. It is discretion to make policies for even application, not discretion to treat each case on an ad hoc basis. Sun Ray Dairy v. OLCC, 16 Or. App. 63, 72, 517 P.2d 289 (1973). [10] This led the court in that context to require the promulgation of written standards by rules. When discretion in the prosecution process is reflected in internal rules or guidelines, this of course serves to facilitate consistent practices. It also serves to direct possible challenges to the validity of the criteria used, which are likely to be within the range of discretion, rather than to the standardless and haphazard, ad hoc, character of the choice in individual cases. Nevertheless, as stated above, our decisions in Clark and Edmonson and in this case do not go so far. Even without predetermined rules or guidelines, policies for even application, assuring that individuals in like circumstances will be treated alike, can develop from consistency in practice, and consistency in practice can be both furthered and shown to exist if case files adequately reflect the reasons for making one or another choice. Cf. Dickinson v. Davis, 277 Or. 665, 561 P.2d 1019 (1977) (discretion to mitigate sanctions must have explainable reasons). The Oregon Law Enforcement Council, chaired by Attorney General Lee Johnson, noted the importance of conscious attention to the policies to be followed in making discretionary decisions. [11] Its report also recommended adequate case files to monitor these policies. [12] With this review of the relevant principles, we turn to the circuit court's decision in this case.