Opinion ID: 1118941
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: oregon constitution, article i, section 12

Text: Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution provides: No person shall    be compelled in any criminal prosecution to testify against himself. Although in the courts below defendant contended that his privilege against self-incrimination under section 12 would be violated by an order to produce the letter, his argument cited only decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. He made no principled argument that either the text of section 12 or any decision of an Oregon court required the result for which he contends. In this court defendant reargued the Fifth Amendment decisions and argued the state constitution only as follows: The analysis under Article I, section 12 would be similar and would require at least as much protection as under the federal standard. It should go further. As noted in the above footnote, a defendant could not be compelled to produce an incriminating communication in the absence of a grant of transactional immunity. In addition, this court should consider whether to strenghten [sic] the protections accorded the contents of private papers under Article I, section 12. The footnote was as follows: In [ United States v.] Doe, [465 US 605, 104 S Ct 1237, 79 L Ed 2d 552 (1984),] an express grant of use immunity was a necessary prerequisite to compulsory production. In Oregon, a grant of transactional immunity would be necessary. See State v. Soriano, 298 Or 392, 693 P2d 26 (1984). This is hardly a principled argument that the state constitutional privilege is broader than the federal counterpart. We have firmly established that this court will not reach a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process issue unless we first determine that a defendant does not prevail under the state constitution. State v. Kennedy, supra . In order to do that, when a defendant relies on the state constitution but does not make a principled argument on the state constitution, we are forced into the uncomfortable position of inquiring whether there is any principled argument that has been made in some other case or can be made in this one, and then dealing with the argument, if any. [6] We should start by considering to whom the state constitutional provision is addressed. The text forbids compelling one to testify against himself. The text is in the passive voice. It does not tell us in so many words who is forbidden to compel one to testify against himself. It does not tell us what kind of compulsion is forbidden. It appears to us that the party forbidden to compel a person to testify against himself must be a governmental body. [7] A governmental body can act only through its officials, employees and agents. In other words, the text speaks to the representatives of government. It forbids these representatives to compel self-incriminating testimony. Force, threats of force or court process (such as subpoenas or orders of the court to testify) are forms of compulsion. Of course, the word testify has a broader meaning than those words given from the witness stand in open court. The representatives of government cannot compel a communication from a person and then give evidence of that communication in a criminal prosecution against that person. It is the compelling of the communication by the representative that vitiates its use to convict the person making the communication. In the case at bar, the communication, i.e., the testimony against himself, that is sought to be used for conviction is the content of the letter by defendant to Bundy. There is not one bit of evidence that any representative of the state or any other governmental body in any way compelled defendant to communicate to Bundy defendant's intent to commit an act of violence against his wife. When defendant communicated this intent to Bundy, he did so of his own volition. That he did so in an unprivileged communication robbed his formed intent of any privacy that he might have otherwise expected, such as confiding his thought to a diary. [8] Here, the state does not seek to compel defendant to make any communication. The communication had already been made. Had he been subject to subpoena of the State of Oregon, Bundy could have been brought to the trial and questioned under oath as to the content of the letter. In other words, the state could have produced evidence of the content of the letter through the testimony of Bundy. That the letter itself was within the State of Oregon did not make it possible for the state to obtain the communication to Bundy; rather, it enabled the state to obtain evidence of the communication's content. Defendant's privilege is one of not being compelled to make the communication. He has no privilege to protect from compulsion the production of this evidence, i.e., the letter, of his communication.