Opinion ID: 2611058
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Answer to (A)

Text: Defendant's claim that the district attorney denied [him] equal treatment by the standardless election to commence a prosecution for aggravated murder is without merit. Defendant does not dispute that the state had a sufficient factual basis for charging him with aggravated murder. The district attorney's decision to seek an aggravated murder indictment against him was proper on its face. Placing defendant within the class of persons charged with aggravated murder was consistent with a proper application of a neutral, objective and appropriate standard: probable cause to believe that defendant committed the crime. The record shows that that was the district attorney's motive here. Defendant does not contend, and no evidence in the record suggests, that the district attorney's decision to seek an aggravated murder indictment was prompted by improper motives, or indeed by any reason other than that the district attorney had sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant committed aggravated murder. The district attorney's decision to seek an aggravated murder indictment against defendant did not treat him differently from any other similarly situated person. Nothing in this record suggests that the district attorney ever has failed or refused to seek an aggravated murder indictment when he had probable cause to believe that specific persons committed aggravated murder in Marion County. The mere fact that other murders have occurred in the county and that some of the other murderers were charged only with non-capital murder does not establish that those defendants were similarly situated persons whom the district attorney treated more favorably. Not every homicide fits the restrictive statutory definition of aggravated murder, see ORS 163.095, and the existence of probable cause to indict a person for simple murder does not necessarily mean that the facts also support an indictment for aggravated murder. The record reveals that the other contemporaneous murder defendants were not in fact similarly situated because the state did not have evidence to charge any of them with aggravated, as distinguished from simple, murder. The circuit court correctly refused to dismiss this case based on defendant's allegation that the district attorney's decision to seek an aggravated murder indictment against him unconstitutionally denied him equal protection under the state or federal constitutions.