Opinion ID: 836323
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: right to be heard

Text: In his second assignment of error, defendant contends that the trial court erred in limiting an unsworn statement that defendant desired to address to the court and the jury at the end of the penalty-phase proceeding. Before the remand proceeding, defendant moved for permission to make an unsworn statement to the jury after closing arguments. The state moved to require defendant to submit a copy of his proposed statement to the court so that the court could review the statement for relevancy before defendant delivered it to the jury. Defendant responded that any prior restraint of his allocution was improper. In particular, defendant contended that, under the fourth question in capital cases, the scope of permissible allocution is broad, and so it was unlikely that defendant's statement could stray into irrelevant topics. After hearing arguments, the trial court ruled: Well, my view is that the defendant's entitled to a statement.    [M]y concern is that by providing that opportunity after the conclusion of the evidence in the case and prior to the argument that there needs to be some submission to the Court about the contents of his statement. I think that provides a way that there is a structure, that I can satisfy myself won't result in error that would cause a mistrial and this process [to] have to be    repeated.         Well, as I indicated, there would be a right of allocution. That would be exercised prior to the arguments of the case. There would be a submission in writing to the Court of the proposed statement. I think that provides the Court with a safeguard on the relevancy and other matters. And I agree that it's a broad scope here but I think we need to know what's going to be submitted, particularly given the stage of the proceeding that it is made.    After the close of evidence, defendant submitted to the trial court the following proposed statement: Ladies & Gentlemen of the Jury What I have done [and] caused clearly overshadows anything I can say here today. In no way do I nor can I justify a thing. It's true that there was a lot of abuse in my raising, but I don't blame my parents for what I've done and caused as an adult. There is never a day that I don't struggle within the very depths of my heart and soul over the horrible things I've done. Because of what I have done, I have literally sentenced the hearts of those family members to a lifetime of precious loss and grief. I have clearly proven to all [and] myself that I don't belong in the free community and never do. Besides the task before you in this case, I am currently serving a life sentence with a 30 year minimum from the previous Smith trial. And your Honor, at this time I respectfully appeal to you that should this jury spare my life, I ask that I be sentenced to consecutive life sentences. The trial court struck the last paragraph in its entirety, but allowed defendant to read the remainder of his statement to the jury. Defendant now argues that the trial court erred in three ways: (1) by requiring him to submit his proposed statement for the court's review; (2) by requiring him to read a statement to the jury instead of allowing him to speak extemporaneously; and (3) by editing his statement. Defendant contends that those limitations violated his rights under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. [5] We first consider defendant's arguments under the Oregon Constitution. See, e.g., State v. Charboneau, 323 Or. 38, 53, 913 P.2d 308 (1996) (court considers state constitutional claims before federal constitutional claims); State v. Kennedy, 295 Or. 260, 262, 666 P.2d 1316 (1983) (the court must resolve all questions of state law before reaching federal constitutional arguments). Defendant argues that Article I, section 11, provides criminal defendants with the right to make unsworn statements to the jury and that the sole permissible limitation on the content of that allocution is relevancy. He relies on DeAngelo v. Schiedler, 306 Or. 91, 757 P.2d 1355 (1988). Defendant further observes that the scope of relevancy in capital cases is particularly broad because, under the fourth question, juries may consider, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character    that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death. State v. Stevens, 319 Or. 573, 583, 879 P.2d 162 (1994) (citation omitted; emphasis omitted). Thus, according to defendant, a defendant in a capital case is entitled to speak to the jury in an unrestricted fashion because it is difficult to determine exactly what that jury would consider `mitigating' in deciding a sentence of life or death. Defendant contends that, because nothing in his proposed statement was irrelevant, the trial court erred in striking the last paragraph. Defendant further argues that his extemporaneous feelings and thoughts constitute an aspect of his character from which the jury could have inferred that his life should have been spared and, accordingly, that the trial court erred in requiring him to read from a prepared statement. The state first responds that the trial court satisfied the constitutional right to be heard by affording the opportunity for defendant to take the stand and offer sworn testimony subject to cross-examination. In giving defendant the opportunity to make an unsworn statement to the jury, the state argues, the trial court gave him more than the constitution requires and cannot be faulted for not giving him much more. Defendant replies that the state conceded in the trial court that capital defendants have the right to make unsworn statements during the penalty phase and, accordingly, cannot assert a contrary position on appeal. The state denies making that concession and asserts that it conceded only that criminal defendants have a right of allocution, which includes the right to take the stand and offer sworn testimony. The state submits that it might have acquiesced before the trial court to the view that an unsworn statement was permissible, but, according to the state, that position is distinguishable from conceding that defendant had a right to make an unsworn statement. The state contends that its position in the trial court is not inconsistent with its present argument. Furthermore, the state argues that, even if it did concede that capital defendants have the right to make unsworn statements to the jury, this court nevertheless may consider the state's challenge to that proposition in determining whether the trial court correctly limited defendant's statement, albeit for a reason that the trial court might not have considered. We agree with the state that we can reach its present argument that criminal defendants have no right to make unsworn statements. When a trial court makes a ruling, we will affirm that ruling on appeal, even if the trial court's legal reasoning for the ruling was erroneous, if another legally correct reason and, to the extent necessary, the record developed in the trial court support the ruling. See, e.g., State v. Montez, 324 Or. 343, 361, 927 P.2d 64 (1996) (applying proposition); Tarwater v. Cupp, 304 Or. 639, 644 n. 5, 748 P.2d 125 (1988) (on appeal, party seeking affirmance may change its argument and claim that lower court was right for the wrong reason). The right for the wrong reason principle establishes that appellate courts may examine legal arguments not relied on by a trial court to determine if those arguments provide a basis for affirmance. To conclude otherwise could result in reversal of a correct action of a trial court, which would warp the law and waste judicial resources. This court, quoting the Supreme Court of the United States, has stated: [W]e do not disturb the settled rule that, in reviewing the decision of a lower court, it must be affirmed if the result is correct `although the lower court relied upon a wrong ground or gave a wrong reason.'    The reason for this rule is obvious. It would be wasteful to send a case back to a lower court to reinstate a decision which it had already made but which the appellate court concluded should properly be based on another ground within the power of the appellate court to formulate. State v. Nielsen, 316 Or. 611, 629 n. 12, 853 P.2d 256 (1993) (citation omitted). Furthermore, we find no support in the record for defendant's argument that the state conceded below that defendant had a right to make an unsworn statement. It appears that the state did not object in the trial court to allowing defendant to make an unsworn statement to the jury. However, defendant does not cite, and we cannot find, any concession by the state that defendant had a right to make an unsworn statement. Accordingly, we turn to the question whether defendant had a right to make an unsworn statement to the jury, apart from any right to take the stand and testify under oath. That question requires us to construe Article I, section 11, an original provision of the Oregon Constitution. This court has determined that the right    to be heard by himself in Article I, section 11, encompasses the right of all criminal defendants to allocution, which refers to a convicted defendant's opportunity to speak before sentencing[.] DeAngelo, 306 Or. at 94, 93 n. 1, 757 P.2d 1355. According to the state, however, DeAngelo leaves open the question of the form that allocution may take. The state is correct that DeAngelo does not resolve that issue directly. [6] Accordingly, we consider the specific wording of Article I, section 11, the historical circumstances that led to its creation, and the case law surrounding it. See Priest v. Pearce, 314 Or. 411, 415-16, 840 P.2d 65 (1992) (setting out methodology). Our goal is to understand the wording in the light of the way [the] wording would have been understood and used by those who created the provision, Vannatta v. Keisling, 324 Or. 514, 530, 931 P.2d 770 (1997), and to apply faithfully the principles embodied in the Oregon Constitution to modern circumstances as those circumstances arise. See, e.g., State v. Delgado, 298 Or. 395, 400-03, 692 P.2d 610 (1984) (applying the principle embodied in the right to bear arms to weapons analogous to those in existence in 1857). Article I, section 11, provides, in part: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the right    to be heard by himself and counsel[.] In particular, in this case, we are concerned with what the framers of the Oregon Constitution meant when they provided that a criminal defendant has the right to be heard by himself. The Oregon Constitution establishes that right in conjunction with the right to be heard by counsel. That suggests that the framers intended that the content of that right be similar to the right to be heard by counsel, i.e., that a criminal defendant has the right to represent himself. Accordingly, the wording of Article I, section 11, supports defendant's view that he may present argument without taking the stand, similar to the way in which his counsel may make an unsworn closing statement to the factfinder. We turn to the historical circumstances that led to the creation of Article I, section 11, and to the case law surrounding it. In this case, we address history and case law together, as our prior cases have explicated that history. Nothing in the reported history of the adoption of the Oregon Constitution sheds any light on the question of how the framers understood the right to be heard. Reports from the proceedings leading to the adoption of the Oregon Constitution are collected in Charles Henry Carey, ed., The Oregon Constitution and Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1857 (1926). Insofar as the reports reflect, the wording at issue here was not discussed during the public deliberations of the constitutional convention. However, consideration of the historical legal context is illustrative. In his special concurrence in State v. Douglas, 292 Or. 516, 527-38, 641 P.2d 561 (1982), Justice Lent provided a detailed history of the evolution of the right to be heard. He observed that the relevant wording of Article I, section 11, was copied from the Indiana Constitution of 1851, which, in turn, was drawn from the constitutions of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Id. at 527, 641 P.2d 561. When those states adopted their constitutions, the right to be heard did not include the right to testify, because courts considered defendants in criminal trials to be incompetent to testify due to bias. Id. at 527-28, 641 P.2d 561. As indicated above, the available historical resources describing the adoption of the Oregon Constitution do not indicate that the framers had a view of the right to be heard different from the view that generally prevailed in 1859. On the contrary, the Bill of Rights in the Indiana Constitution was described during the Oregon constitutional convention as being gold refined and as assert[ing] the civil rights of the citizens as ascertained in those 70 years of progress [since the United States Constitution was adopted]. Carey, The Oregon Constitution and Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1857 at 101-02. At common law, criminal defendants, like all parties, were disabled from testifying under the reasoning that self-interest was likely to undermine their veracity. Douglas, 292 Or. at 528-31, 641 P.2d 561 (Lent, J., specially concurring); see also Christopher D. Jaime, Sword and Shield: An Analysis of Criminal Defendants' Right To Be Heard Under Article I, Section 11, of the Oregon Constitution, 28 Willamette L Rev 127, 129 (1991) (so stating). However, under the common-law system, courts allowed defendants to speak in their own defense, including presenting their own version of the facts, although they could not testify under oath. Douglas, 292 Or. at 528-30, 641 P.2d 561 (Lent, J., specially concurring); Jaime, 28 Willamette L Rev at 129-30. Defendants also could examine and impeach witnesses and make legal arguments. Douglas, 292 Or. at 530, 641 P.2d 561 (Lent, J., specially concurring); Jaime, 28 Willamette L Rev at 130. In addition, after a jury had returned a verdict of guilty against a defendant, courts would inquire whether the defendant knew of any reason why the court should not pronounce judgment. The courts allowed criminal defendants to make a responsive statement and labeled this process allocution. Paul W. Barrett, Allocution, 9 Mo L Rev 115, 115 (1944). That was the state of the law when the early state constitutions, upon which the Oregon Constitution was based, were adopted. Justice Lent opined that it was that common-law right to make unsworn statements that mid-nineteenth century Americans also had in mind when they included in their constitutions a right to be heard. Douglas, 292 Or. at 532, 641 P.2d 561 (Lent, J., specially concurring). Justice Lent believed, and we agree, that the framers of the Oregon Constitution intended to incorporate into Article I, section 11, the contemporaneous understanding of the right of one criminally accused to be heard by himself. Id. As noted above, that contemporaneous understanding developed in a legal context in which a criminal defendant had no right to serve as a witness for or against oneself. See Revised Statutes of the Territory of Oregon, ch. IV, title 1, §§ 3-4 (1854) (although court cannot prevent proffered witness from giving evidence by reason of witness's interest in action, that protection does not apply to a party to the action); Latshaw v. Territory of Oregon, 1 Or 141, 145-46 (1854) (where several defendants are indicted together, one cannot be a witness for the others). Because the constitutional right to be heard could not have encompassed, at the time of adoption, a right to make a sworn statement, that right must have entailed the right to make an unsworn statement. The wording of Article I, section 11, and the prevailing understanding in 1859 that criminal defendants were disabled from testifying support the conclusion that the right to be heard, at the time of the adoption of the Oregon Constitution, referred to a right to make an unsworn statement. We next consider the parameters of that right, particularly with respect to the ways in which defendant contends that the trial court erred in constraining his right to be heard. Defendant challenges both procedural and substantive restrictions imposed by the trial court. We first address the procedural restrictions, viz., the trial court's requirements that defendant read from a prepared statement and submit the statement to the trial court in advance for review. It is well established that a trial court generally possesses broad discretion to control the proceedings before it. See, e.g., ORS 1.010 (every court has power to regulate proceedings before it and to control, in furtherance of justice, conduct of persons connected with judicial proceedings); OEC 611(1) (court shall exercise reasonable control over presentation of evidence); Still v. Benton, 251 Or. 463, 473, 445 P.2d 492 (1968) (trial court has discretion and power to control progress of trial, including scope of recross examination); State v. Barnett, 251 Or. 234, 237, 445 P.2d 124 (1968) (scope of voir dire examination within trial court's discretionary power to conduct trial efficiently and expeditiously). For example, this court has concluded that trial courts have discretion to control arguments by counsel. R.J. Frank Realty, Inc. v. Heuvel, 284 Or. 301, 306, 586 P.2d 1123 (1978); see also Biegler v. Kirby, 281 Or. 423, 426-27, 574 P.2d 1127 (1978) (determination of how to allot argument between two attorneys arguing on behalf of one party is within discretion of trial court); Amick v. Watson, 280 Or. 641, 645, 572 P.2d 317 (1977) ([T]he trial court is in the best position to evaluate the effect upon the jury of claimed prejudice because of an attorney's argument. Usually, these matters are left largely to the discretion of the trial court   .). Similarly, the trial court has the authority to exercise reasonable discretion regarding allocution by a defendant to ensure that the trial is orderly and expeditious. Furthermore, especially in the case of statements by a defendant not made in response to questioning under oath, the trial court has a legitimate concern with assuring that the defendant does not make irrelevant or prejudicial statements. That concern, in fact, was the basis of the decision of the trial court in this case to require defendant to submit a written statement for the court's review and to read only that statement to the jury. A trial court's authority to exercise reasonable discretion to ensure that the trial is orderly and expeditious does not evaporate when the parties assert their constitutional rights during trial. See, e.g., State v. Langley, 314 Or. 247, 257-60, 839 P.2d 692 (1992) (rulings that implicated defendant's rights to counsel and to fair trial reviewed for abuse of discretion); State v. Engeman, 245 Or. 209, 211, 420 P.2d 389 (1966) (ruling that implicated defendant's right to fair trial reviewed for abuse of discretion). Rather, a trial court is obliged to accommodate the exercise of all pertinent constitutional and statutory rights by all parties within the context of an orderly and expeditious trial. See State v. Burdge, 295 Or. 1, 14, 664 P.2d 1076 (1983) (proposition that disqualification of testimony is too grave a sanction for unintentional violation of exclusion order represents a practical and sensitive accommodation between a criminal defendant's right to present witnesses in his behalf and the court's need to control the trial proceedings); Still, 251 Or. at 474, 445 P.2d 492 (Cross-examination is a matter of right, but the bounds of proper cross-examination are necessarily within the sound discretion of the trial judge, and this is particularly so when applied to recross-examination. It must be clear that counsel cannot be permitted to prolong the course of trial by continually returning to matters already considered or as to which he has been given ample opportunity to examine; otherwise, there would be no orderly procedure, and nothing but confusion.) (citation omitted). Nothing in the text of Article I, section 11, suggests that the framers intended that a defendant's right to be heard by himself should override the court's authority and responsibility to conduct the trial as an orderly and expeditious proceeding. The historical circumstances and case law surrounding Article I, section 11, support that reading. See Douglas, 292 Or. at 533, 533 n. 17, 641 P.2d 561 (Lent, J., specially concurring) (from the colonial era on, a defendant's right to present a defense has been subject to some restrictions, e.g., relevancy). We conclude that, by requiring defendant to read from a prepared statement and to submit the statement in advance for review, the trial court acted within its discretion to ensure orderly and expeditious proceedings and to avert error. Defendant makes no convincing showing that those procedural restrictions prevented him from exercising fully his constitutional right to be heard. Therefore, as to those restrictions, we find no violation of defendant's right to be heard under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution. Defendant next contends that those restrictions violated his rights under the United States Constitution, first pointing to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendant submits that, in Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 81 S.Ct. 653, 5 L.Ed.2d 670 (1961), the Supreme Court recognized the persuasiveness of a defendant speaking in his own words. He further argues that, under Medina v. California, 505 U.S. 437, 112 S.Ct. 2572, 120 L.Ed.2d 353 (1992), the denial of a defendant's opportunity to speak in an unedited, extemporaneous fashion `offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,' 505 U.S. at 445, 112 S.Ct. 2572 (quoting Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 201-02, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977)), and, therefore, that the trial court's procedural restrictions violated his right to due process. Defendant further contends that those restrictions violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment because, as explained in Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982), a trial court must allow a capital jury to consider all relevant mitigating evidence, including aspects of a defendant's character. According to defendant, his extemporaneous, unedited thoughts are an aspect of his character, and, therefore, requiring him to read a preapproved written statement violated his Eighth Amendment rights. The state responds that defendant has not shown that he could not have presented the same aspects of his character by taking the stand and testifying. The state contends that, because defendant chose not to pursue that available course, the court should not permit him to argue that he was prevented from presenting all relevant aspects of his character. The state further argues that there is no basis for defendant's federal constitutional arguments, because the United States Supreme Court has concluded that there is no federal constitutional right to allocution. The state relies for that argument on McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971), and Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 82 S.Ct. 468, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962). We have reviewed the cases cited by the state and other cases, and it appears to us that the Supreme Court has not resolved definitively the questions of whether and to what extent the right of allocution may have a basis in the United States Constitution. Even if the United States Constitution requires an opportunity for allocution, however, we hold that that right was not violated in this case. First, any due process interest served by allocution, as described by the Supreme Court, was satisfied here. The jury had the opportunity to hear defendant's arguments and evidence in the sound of his own voice. See McGautha, 402 U.S. at 220, 91 S.Ct. 1454 (ritual of allocution assures that a defendant will not be sentenced to death in silence). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has explained that constitutional rights are not absolute, but `may, in appropriate cases, bow to accommodate other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process.' Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 55, 107 S.Ct. 2704, 97 L.Ed.2d 37 (1987) (quoting Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 295, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973)). See also United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 308, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413 (1998) (A defendant's right to present relevant evidence is not unlimited, but rather is subject to reasonable restrictions.    [S]tate and federal rulemakers have broad latitude under the Constitution to establish rules excluding evidence from criminal trials. Such rules do not abridge an accused's right to present a defense so long as they are not arbitrary or disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve.) (internal quotation marks omitted; footnote omitted). The trial court in this case imposed reasonable procedural limits on defendant's allocution based on its legitimate concerns about the criminal trial process. The trial court wanted to ensure that defendant's allocution would not introduce error at the end of a lengthy trial. The restrictions imposed were proportionate to accomplishing the objective of minimizing the risk of error. By requiring defendant to read from a prepared statement and to submit that statement in advance for the court's review, the trial court did not violate defendant's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Second, the court's action did not infringe any Eighth Amendment interest that allocution implicates. In Skipper, 476 U.S. 1, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1, and Eddings, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1, the Court held that the exclusion of particular evidence violated the defendants' right not to have the death penalty imposed without individualized consideration of mitigating factors required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Eddings, 455 U.S. at 105, 102 S.Ct. 869 (citation omitted). Defendant contends that his extemporaneous, unedited thoughts are an aspect of his character such that the trial court was required to allow him to speak in an extemporaneous and unedited fashion. However, defendant does not explain what aspect of his character was excluded by the court's ruling that: (1) could bear on mitigation; and (2) defendant would have communicated to the jury had the court allowed him to speak free of any restraints. Nor does defendant demonstrate that any such aspect of his character was not communicated adequately by other means. We reject defendant's Eighth Amendment arguments without further discussion. We conclude that the procedural restrictions imposed on defendant's allocution did not violate his rights under the Fourteenth or Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We turn to defendant's argument that the trial court erred in restricting the substance of his unsworn statement by deleting the last paragraph, which read: Besides the task before you in this case, I am currently serving a life sentence with a 30 year minimum from the previous Smith trial. And your Honor, at this time I respectfully appeal to you that should this jury spare my life, I ask that I be sentenced to consecutive life sentences. According to defendant, allocution traditionally includes the right to discuss mitigating factors, and, because it is difficult to tell what a jury would consider mitigating, a defendant must be allowed to speak in an unrestricted fashion. The state responds that the trial court correctly struck those two sentences. The state contends that the second stricken sentence contained information that was inappropriate for allocution in two related ways: First, the state contends that the topic of consecutive sentencing was a matter over which the jury has no say, and hence was outside the scope of proper allocution to the jury. Second, the state notes that the second sentence was addressed to the judge, who would control any consecutive sentencing decision, not to the jury, to whom defendant had asked to address his allocution. When the Oregon Constitution was adopted, the permissible scope of a criminal defendant's unsworn pre-sentencing statement included legal reasons why the court should not impose a potential sentence, general pleas for leniency, mitigating factors, and requests for pardon. Joseph Chitty, 1 The Criminal Law, 699 (4th ed. 1841); Fred Cohen, Sentencing, Probation, and the Rehabilitative Ideal: The View from Mempa v. Rhay, 47 Tex. L. Rev. 1, 9-10 (1968); see also Jaime, 28 Willamette L. Rev. at 132 (discussing trial in Virginia colony in 1766 in which a defendant exercised his allocution to persuade the court to accept his self-recommended sentence). This court has explained that allocution provides an opportunity for a defendant to convince the sentencing authority to impose no more than the minimum sentence and also allows the defendant to address other matters pertaining to the sentence. Huddleston, 324 Or. at 612, 932 P.2d 1145. As this court stated in DeAngelo: The right to speak at a sentencing hearing should logically include the right to make any statements relevant to existing sentencing and parole practices.    Oregon's    approach to incarcerating individuals requires the sentencing judge to be fully informed of the defendant's criminal history, the crime severity, and aggravating and mitigating matters   . [A] prime reason for allowing such a right is to provide the defendant an opportunity to plead for mitigation of the sentence.    [A] defendant should be able to state any reason why he or she feels sentence should not be pronounced and, in addition to presenting mitigating evidence, be given an opportunity to make any relevant personal comments to the court. This includes, but is not limited to, statements of remorse, apology, chagrin, or plans and hopes for the future. Some defendants might even wish to plead for maximum punishment in an attempt to achieve some purported good.  306 Or. at 95-96, 757 P.2d 1355 (emphasis added). Generally, of course, it is the court, not the jury, that resolves all sentencing issues. See, e.g., ORS 137.010(1) (statutes defining offenses impose duty upon court to pass sentence in accordance with ORS chapter 137); ORS 137.120 (court shall impose sentence on persons convicted of felonies); ORS 161.615 (court shall fix the term of imprisonment for misdemeanors); ORS 161.725 (court may extend period of confinement of dangerous offenders). In capital cases, however, the legislature has dictated that both the court and the jury shall play significant roles in sentencing proceedings. See ORS 163.150 (setting out procedures for sentencing in capital cases). In this case, as distinguished from DeAngelo, we address for the first time the parameters of allocution in the context of a capital sentencing proceeding, in which both jury and court play a role. See ORS 163.150(1)(b) (in capital sentencing proceeding, jury must resolve four issues); ORS 163.150(1)(f), (2)(b) (depending on how jury resolves those four issues, court must impose a specified sentence). We agree with the state that, in all cases, including capital cases, whether sentences are to be served consecutively or concurrently is a matter for the court, not for the jury. See ORS 137.123 (establishing criteria under which court may order sentences to run consecutively). This court has held that a trial court properly may refuse to allow a capital defendant's counsel to argue to the jury that the court could impose consecutive life sentences if the jury returned multiple life sentence verdicts. State v. Williams, 322 Or. 620, 628, 912 P.2d 364 (1996). This court reasoned that, to allow such an argument, would    open[ ] a Pandora's box involving all sorts of evidence and arguments about the possibilities of what the trial court might do, what the Parole Board might do, what the Governor might do, what might happen if defendant escaped, and so forth. A trial court has the authority to prevent the parties from arguing about matters outside the record and to prevent jury confusion and speculation about matters over which the jury has no say. Id. at 628, 912 P.2d 364. The proposed statement in this case, however, is distinguishable and, as we explain below, when viewed in context, was relevant to issues that Oregon law required the jury, as well as the judge, to decide. The pertinent sentences in defendant's statement were preceded by defendant's acknowledgment that I have clearly proven to all [and] myself that I don't belong in the free community and never do. He then sought to inform the jury that he already was serving a sentence with a 30-year minimum. The state concedes that the subject of the first stricken sentencethat defendant already was serving a 30-year prison term for his conviction in the Smith trialwas within the record. One of the state's witnesses had testified that defendant already was serving a 30-year prison term, and the trial court had alluded to that prison term in the jury instructions, stating that any life sentence in this case would commence on the completion of the life sentence currently being served by the defendant. The state's sole objection to the statement is that for defendant himself to mention his prison term in the Smith case after a prosecution witness already had mentioned it could only have appeared to be self-serving. We reject the state's argument. By referring to the prison term that he already was serving, defendant was attempting to obtain a less onerous sentence in this case. A primary traditional purpose for allocution is to allow a criminal defendant to plead for leniency or to establish mitigation. The fact that such a purpose is, by definition, selfserving, may be accurate descriptively, but the label self-serving is not a useful analytical tool. By informing the jury that he already would be in prison for many years, defendant was attempting to communicate a relevant mitigating consideration, viz., the fact that he already was separated from the community for his conduct, and would continue to be for at least 30 years. Two characteristics of the second stricken sentence satisfy us that that sentence also was within the proper scope of allocution. First, it invited the judge to impose consecutive life sentences but conditioned that request on the jury's acceptance of defendant's plea that it spare his life. Defendant sought to express that statement to the judge, but also in the jury's presence and for its benefit. The question whether a defendant might qualify for any sentence less than death is one that ORS 163.150(5) requires the jury to decide. By making the statement in question, defendant sought to demonstrate to the jury that a facet of his characterhis willingness to accept lifetime imprisonmentshould induce them to decline to sentence him to death. Second, the second stricken sentence invited the trial judge to hold defendant to his word before the jury. By stating his condition before both the jury and the judge, defendant knew that he later would be unable to argue credibly against consecutive life sentences if the jury spared his life. ORS 163.150(5) assigns unique roles to the jury and the judge, in that it makes both a part of the sentencing process. Thus, while defendant's second stricken sentence ordinarily would be pertinent to only the traditional sentencer, the judge, it had pertinence here to the jury, because under Oregon's death-penalty sentencing scheme, the jury is a participant in the sentencing decision. We conclude that both excluded sentences fell within the proper scope of allocution and that the court violated Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution, in striking them from defendant's proposed unsworn statement.