Opinion ID: 2635774
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Penalties for Related Offenses

Text: As discussed above, courts are ill-equipped to conduct an open-ended inquiry comparing the gravity of disparate crimes as part of a determination of whether the penalty for one of the crimes is disproportionate. Courts are, however, able to reach at least general conclusions about whether some related crimes are more serious than others. Defendants point out that the careful calibration of lesser and greater sex crimes from the 1971 criminal code revision, with corresponding gradations in punishment, was undone by later changes to the definitions of the substantive crimes and, in 1995, by the imposition of Measure 11 sentences for many of those crimes. The legislature, of course, can and routinely does change the criminal code and the penalties for various crimes. Nevertheless, to the extent that the structure of related sex crime statutes reflects the kinds of considerations that lead reasonable people to conclude that one crime is more serious than another, it is relevant to our consideration of proportionality. Two aspects of Oregon's penalties for sex crimes, when compared to the 75-month sentences that Measure 11 would impose on defendants here, raise proportionality concerns. First, as discussed above, the conduct in these cases is at the outer edge of sexual contact as that term is defined in ORS 163.305(6)it involved, in one case, the back of the child's head and the clothed breasts of Rodriguez, and, in the other, the child's clothed buttocks and Buck's hand. The contact was momentary; there was no fondling or stimulation. Yet conviction for the sexual contact in these cases results in the same sentence as would be imposed on a defendant who anally sodomized the boy whom Rodriguez touched or the girl whom Buck touched. See ORS 163.395 (defining second-degree sodomy); ORS 137.700(2)(a)(M) (mandatory 75-month prison sentence for second-degree sodomy). And Rodriguez and Buck would have received the same sentences if they had engaged in sexual intercourse with the children that they briefly touched. See ORS 163.365 (defining second-degree rape); ORS 137.700(2)(a)(K) (mandatory 75-month sentence for second-degree rape). They would have received the same sentences if they had penetrate[d] the vagina, anus or penis [of children under the age of 14] with any object other than the penis or mouth. See ORS 163.411 (defining second-degree sexual penetration); ORS 137.700(2)(a)(O) (mandatory 75-month sentence for second-degree sexual penetration). We can assume that a reasonable person would consider the mandatory 75-month sentences for the conduct just described constituting second-degree sodomy, second-degree rape, and second-degree sexual penetrationas proportioned to those offenses. And, we may also assume that a reasonable person would conclude that a 75-month penalty for a defendant who committed first-degree sex abuse by stripping a six-year-old girl, laying her on the kitchen floor, and rubb[ing] his penis all over her, see Reed, 173 Or.App. at 188, 21 P.3d 137, was proportioned to the offense. In our view, however, that same reasonable person could not, at the same time, conclude that the mandatory 75-month sentence for the conduct at issue here also is proportioned to the offense, whether the conduct comes within the statutory definition of first-degree sexual abuse or any other criminal statute. Another enlightening comparison, for proportionality purposes, is that between the offense and punishment in these cases and the offense of second -degree sexual abuse and the penalty for that offense. ORS 163.425 defines second-degree sexual abuse as: subject[ing] another person to sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse or    penetration of the vagina, anus or penis with any object other than the penis or mouth of the actor and the victim does not consent thereto. Second-degree sexual abuse has occurred, for example, when the defendant touched the victim's vagina and penetrat[ed] the victim's anus with his fingers, State v. Liviu, 209 Or.App. 249, 251, 147 P.3d 371 (2006), and where the defendant (a nurse in a psychiatric hospital) stood next to the bed of a bipolar, sedated patient with his pants open and an erect penis and indicated that he wanted the patient to perform oral sex on him, and the patient complied, State v. Neubauer, 214 Or. App. 130, 162 P.3d 1044 (2007). That conduct, both in its physical and sexual content, invasion of the body of the victim, and likely psychological impact, seems far removed from the touchings at issue here, even when the victim is older than 18. Yet, a person convicted of second-degree sexual abuse will not receive a Measure 11 sentence. Rather, if that person has no prior convictions, he or she will receive a guidelines sentence, presumptively of 90 days in jail and 90 days under some other form of custodial supervision. OAR XXX-XXX-XXXX(2)(c); OAR XXX-XXX-XXXX(1)(c). Here, in other words, is a sex crime that is closely related in terms of severity and description to first-degree sexual abuse and which, in practice, often is based on conduct that most people would consider far more serious than the conduct of Rodriguez and Buck. Nonetheless, the penalty for that crime is a fraction incarceration for one twenty-fifth the timeof the penalty that Measure 11 would impose here. It is another indication that Measure 11 sentences in these cases would be disproportionate to the offense.