Opinion ID: 836097
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fourteenth Amendment Right to Allocution

Text: Defendant next argues that Measure 11 violates his right to allocution under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [13] According to defendant, that right primarily aims to provide the defendant an opportunity to plead for mitigation of the sentence. Defendant submits that, in Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 304, 81 S.Ct. 653, 5 L.Ed.2d 670 (1961), the Supreme Court recognized that [n]one of [the] modern innovations [respecting criminal procedure that have evolved since the seventeenth century] lessens the need for the defendant, personally, to have the opportunity to present to the court his plea in mitigation. Because Measure 11 would not allow the court to impose a sentence below his mandatory minimum sentence, defendant argues that Measure 11 denied him a meaningful right to allocution under the Due Process Clause. In Huddleston, this court arguably addressed a similar federal allocution argument in the course of rejecting a defendant's federal equal-protection challenge to Measure 11. See 324 Or. at 628, 932 P.2d 1145 (citing earlier state allocution analysis as basis for concluding that Measure 11 did not infringe upon any federal right of allocution and therefore rejecting federal equal-protection challenge). Although the sweep of that conclusion is sufficiently broad to include defendant's argument here, the analysis that underlies that conclusion largely is indirect and reliant primarily-if not entirely-upon the right to allocution under the Oregon Constitution. For that reason, we elect to entertain defendant's argument that Measure 11 violates a federal right to allocution under the Due Process Clause. The right to allocution is rooted in the common law. Green, 365 U.S. at 304, 81 S.Ct. 653. Allocution is the defendant's formal address to the trial court following a guilty verdict, wherein the court asks the defendant if any reason exists why the court should not impose the sentence. See Paul W. Barrett, Allocution, 9 Mo. L. Rev. 115, 115 (1944) (explaining historical roots of allocution). At common law, only four narrowly defined answers could relieve the defendant of the sentence: [T]he point of [allocution] was not to elicit mitigating evidence or a plea for leniency, but to give the defendant a formal opportunity to present one of the strictly defined legal reasons which required the avoidance or delay of sentencing: he was not the person convicted, he had benefit of clergy or a pardon, he was insane, or if a woman, she was pregnant. Note, Procedural Due Process at Judicial Sentencing for Felony, 81 Harv. L. Rev. 821, 832-33 (1968) (footnote omitted; emphasis added). A defendant who could not establish one of those strictly defined legal reasons nonetheless would frequently address [] the court in mitigation of his conduct    [and] cast[ ] himself upon their mercy. Barrett, Allocution, 9 Mo. L. Rev. 115, 118 (1944) (quoting 1 Chit Creditor L., 700). However, even under those circumstances, nothing more [was] done, but the proper judge pronounce[d] the sentence. Id. Many states have preserved the right to allocution in various forms. For example, although the Oregon Constitution recognizes a right to allocution, the right does not carry with it a right to have the sentencing court necessarily be able to reduce a sentence that otherwise applies. Huddleston, 324 Or. at 611, 932 P.2d 1145 (emphasis in original). We observe, however, that it is uncertain whether and to what extent the right of allocution may have a basis in the United States Constitution. See State v. Rogers, 330 Or. 282, 303, 4 P.3d 1261 (2000) (so stating). As already noted, defendant cites Green to support his argument that his Measure 11 sentence violates a federal constitutional right to allocution under the Due Process Clause. The issue in Green, however, was whether the trial court had violated Federal Criminal Rule 32(a), which then specifically granted to a defendant in federal court the right to speak in mitigation of his or her sentence. 365 U.S. at 303, 303 n. 1, 81 S.Ct. 653. Green was not based, as defendant suggests, upon any federal constitutional guarantee. Indeed, one year after deciding Green, the Supreme Court held that [t]he failure of a trial court to ask a defendant represented by an attorney whether he has anything to say before sentence is imposed is    an error which is neither jurisdictional nor constitutional. Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 428, 82 S.Ct. 468, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962) (emphasis added). Even respecting a defendant's right to seek a reduction of a sentence during allocution, the Court has stated that it has not directly determined whether or to what extent the concept of due process of law requires that a criminal defendant wishing to present evidence or argument presumably relevant to the issues involved in sentencing should be permitted to do so. McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 218, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971). Turning to the case at hand, we conclude that, even assuming that a federal right to allocution exists under the Due Process Clause, and that such a right includes the opportunity to seek a reduction in sentence, defendant was not denied that right here. Defendant does not assert that the trial court denied him the opportunity to make whatever statement he wished to make. Rather, he argues that Measure 11, by denying the trial court the power to impose a sentence less than the mandatory minimum, has rendered the right to allocution ineffective. At bottom, defendant contends that his right of allocution is violated unless a court has authority to reduce a sentence as a defendant requests. Nothing, however, in either the United States Constitution or in the Supreme Court's case law suggests that, in a mandatory sentencing scheme, the right to allocution includes, as a necessary result of that allocution, the ability of a trial court to reduce a mandatory minimum sentence that otherwise lawfully applies. Not even the allocution provided for in the rule at issue in Green affords the right that defendant claims here. Despite defendant's argument to the contrary, the Court in Green did not suggest that Rule 32(a) included a right to any particular range of sentences or to the consideration of any particular sentencing factors; rather, the rule provided an opportunity to address whatever factors the substantive law made relevant. The same can be said, we think, of any federal constitutional right to allocution that might exist. We therefore reject defendant's allocution argument under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.