Opinion ID: 835875
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: assignments of error regarding pretrial issues

Text: Defendant raises 13 assignments of error that pertain to his pretrial motions and jury voir dire. Seven of those assignments raise facial challenges to the constitutionality of Oregon's death-penalty statute. This court previously has considered and rejected defendant's constitutional challenges to the statute. [4] Another assignment of error presents a challenge to the constitutionality of excluding convicted felons and nonregistered voters from the jury pool. This court previously has considered and rejected that challenge. We adhere to those prior rulings and, because further discussion would not benefit the public, bench, or bar, we decline to address those assignments of error in detail. In two assignments of error, defendant argues that the trial court erred in overruling his objections and in refusing to grant a mistrial on the basis of questions and statements that the prosecutor presented to prospective jurors during voir dire. On review, we conclude that, in the context of this case, the trial court's rulings do not reflect an abuse of discretion. A detailed discussion of our reasons for reaching that conclusion would not serve the interests of the public, bench, or bar. However, two issues that defendant raises in three assignments of error regarding pretrial matters warrant further discussion.
We first address defendant's argument that the trial court erred in denying his motion for a change of venue. ORS 131.355 provides the standard for a motion for change of venue: The court, upon motion of the defendant, shall order the place of trial to be changed to another county if the court is satisfied that there exists in the county where the action is commenced so great a prejudice against the defendant that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial. Defendant argues that prejudicial pretrial publicity made it impossible for him to receive a fair trial in Yamhill County and that holding the trial in that venue violated his rights under ORS 131.355 and under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution and the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. [5] Defendant has not offered a different analysis under the statute than under the state or federal constitutions. In construing the meaning and application of Oregon's statute and state constitution in this context, we consider and give due weight to federal court interpretations of federal law on the same subject based on the pertinence and persuasiveness of the reasoning offered. We review a trial court's denial of a motion for change of venue for an abuse of discretion. Id. at 260, 971 P.2d 879. In this case, defendant moved for a change of venue before the start of jury selection. He argued that the pretrial publicity detailing his personal history, his criminal record, and the effect of the murder on Yamhill County communities had made it impossible for him to receive a fair and impartial trial in Yamhill County. In support of that motion, defendant submitted copies of four newspaper articles published about the case and provided the court with an opinion poll of 250 Yamhill County residents taken within one month of the victim's murder. That poll purported to show that 75 percent of residents recalled hearing about a case in which the authorities had accused defendant of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl and, of those residents, 51 percent had an opinion that defendant was guilty, and 54 percent had an opinion that, if defendant was found guilty after a fair trial, he should receive the death penalty. The trial court denied defendant's motion. The court determined that the views shown by the poll, although somewhat useful, were given in response to fairly general questions and do not appear to the [c]ourt to be so fixed as to foreclose a fair consideration of all the evidence in the case. The court concluded that the jury selection process would provide a sufficient safeguard to ensure that defendant obtained a fair and impartial jury. Defendant did not renew his motion for change of venue. On review, defendant asserts that he was entitled to a change of venue because the opinion poll demonstrated that there was a reasonable likelihood that pretrial publicity w[ould] prevent defendant from obtaining a fair trial. [6] However, the applicable standard is not whether there is a reasonable likelihood that defendant cannot obtain a fair trial. Rather, under ORS 131.355, the standard is whether the court is satisfied that there exists    so great a prejudice against the defendant that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial. Here, the trial court reviewed the newspaper articles and the opinion poll that defendant submitted, and concluded that defendant had not demonstrated that the residents of Yamhill County had such a fixed opinion about the case that defendant could not obtain a fair trial. We recently addressed similar arguments raised by the defendant in State v. Fanus, 336 Or. 63, 79 P.3d 847 (2003). In that case, the defendant submitted several television news reports and newspaper articles, including 41 articles from the local newspaper. He also submitted an opinion poll that purported to show that, in the county where the state would try him, 94 percent of voters recognized his case, 71 percent believed that he was guilty, and 58 percent believed that, if found guilty, he should receive the death penalty. Id. at 75, 79 P.3d 847. At the hearing on his motion for change of venue, the defendant also submitted expert testimony that several factors created heightened prejudice against [the] defendant in that venue[.] Id. The defendant renewed his motion during, and at the close of, jury voir dire. This court concluded that the trial court had not abused its discretion in denying those motions. In doing so, this court explained that, in contrast to Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961), the record of publicity d[id] not disclose a community sentiment of `deep and bitter prejudice' against [the] defendant. Fanus, 336 Or. at 80, 79 P.3d 847. In this case, defendant does not claim, nor do we conclude, that the pretrial publicity here was comparable to the inflammatory publicity that denied the defendant a fair trial in Irvin v. Dowd . Further, defendant did not present evidence that the denial of his motion for a change of venue caused him to be unable to obtain an impartial jury or that he actually was deprived of a fair and impartial jury. To the contrary, the trial court presided over a lengthy jury selection process that included an extensive juror questionnaire and three days of individual voir dire questioning. Of the 13 jurors that actually served, [7] six disclosed that they either had seen some form of pretrial publicity about the case or had talked to a friend or family member who had seen publicity about the case. However, none of those jurors could remember details about that publicity and each stated that he or she could decide the case based solely on the evidence presented at trial. We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion for change of venue.
In another assignment of error, defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his supplementary motion in limine to exclude post-mortem photographs of the victim and portions of the videotape of the crime scene that depicted the victim's body. Defendant argues that, because he had offered to stipulate to the facts that the photographs would tend to show as true, the photographs were inadmissible as irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial. [8] After a hearing, the trial court denied defendant's motion. [9] We first address defendant's argument that, in light of his offered stipulation, the post-mortem photographs were irrelevant to any material issue in the case. OEC 401 provides: `Relevant evidence' means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. OEC 401 establishes a very low threshold for the admission of evidence, that is, evidence is relevant so long as it increases or decreases, even slightly, the probability of the existence of a fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action. State v. Barone, 329 Or. 210, 238, 986 P.2d 5 (1999), cert. den., 528 U.S. 1086, 120 S.Ct. 813, 145 L.Ed.2d 685 (2000). We review a trial court's determination of relevance under OEC 401 for errors of law. State v. Titus, 328 Or. 475, 481, 982 P.2d 1133 (1999). We first note that, without the stipulation, the photographs of the victim's body were relevant. The state sought to admit the photographs to illustrate the testimony of several witnesses, to prove the nature and circumstances of the victim's death, and to prove that defendant had acted intentionally. Defendant asserts, however, that the photographs became irrelevant once he offered to stipulate to the facts that the state sought to prove with the photographs. Defendant's argument is not well taken. His proposed stipulation only provides an alternate form of proof. It did not have the effect of making otherwise relevant evidence irrelevant. Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Oregon Evidence § 401.02, Art IV-4 (4th ed. 2002) (quoting 1981 Conference Committee to OEC 401) addresses that point: `The fact to which the evidence is directed need not be in dispute. While situations will arise which call for the exclusion of evidence offered to prove a point conceded by the opponent, the ruling should be made on the basis of    considerations [set forth in] Rule 403, rather than under any general requirement that evidence is admissible only if directed to matters in dispute.' We conclude that the mere availability of defendant's offered stipulation as an alternate form of proof did not render the photographs irrelevant. We next turn to defendant's argument that the trial court should have excluded the photographs because, in light of his offered stipulation, they were unfairly prejudicial. OEC 403 provides: Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay or needless presentation of cumulative evidence. In the context of OEC 403, `unfair prejudice' means `an undue tendency to suggest decisions on an improper basis, commonly although not always an emotional one.' State v. Moore, 324 Or. 396, 407-08, 927 P.2d 1073 (1996). We review a trial court's decision under OEC 403 for an abuse of discretion. Id. at 407, 927 P.2d 1073. Defendant argues that the photographs depicting the victim's body were unfairly prejudicial because they had a tendency to evok[e] a visceral, emotional response from the jurors. Defendant further argues that, because his offered stipulation covered the facts that the state sought to prove with the photographs, the court should have excluded them. In support of his argument, defendant relies on Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 117 S.Ct. 644, 136 L.Ed.2d 574 (1997); State v. Zimmerlee, 261 Or. 49, 492 P.2d 795 (1972); and State v. McKendall, 36 Or.App. 187, 584 P.2d 316 (1978), overruled on other grounds by State v. Lopez, 147 Or.App. 314, 936 P.2d 386 (1997). In particular, defendant points to the following statement that the Court of Appeals made in McKendall: [W]hen a defendant offers to stipulate to a fact, proof of the fact would be prejudicial to the defendant, and the evidence offered in proof is not probative of any issue other than that which the stipulation addresses, the evidence is inadmissible. McKendall, 36 Or.App. at 198, 584 P.2d 316. However, as we explain below, defendant's reliance on those cases is misplaced. In McKendall, the authorities charged the defendant with murder under an accomplice theory. At trial, the defendant sought to exclude photographs of the murder victim's body by stipulating that someone had murdered the victim. The court determined that, other than the fact that someone had murdered the victim, photographic evidence of the murder victim's body was irrelevant to the issues in the case. Because the defendant's stipulation covered that fact and because the photographic evidence of the victim's murder would be unfairly prejudicial to the defendant, the court concluded that the trial court should have excluded the evidence. Id. at 197-98, 584 P.2d 316. In reaching that conclusion, the Court of Appeals relied on this court's decision in Zimmerlee. In Zimmerlee, the state charged the defendant with armed robbery of Palmer. In the course of the robbery, the defendant had pointed a pistol at Palmer. Later the same evening, the defendant had pointed a pistol at Charley before provoking a fight with him. The defendant sought to exclude evidence of his encounter with Charley by stipulating to the fact that he was in possession of the pistol when he first pursued Charley. This court determined that evidence of [the] defendant's encounter with Charley was relevant to the issue of [the] defendant's possession of the gun at the time of the robbery. Zimmerlee, 261 Or. at 53, 492 P.2d 795. However, the court explained that [o]nce [the] defendant offered to stipulate that he had possession of the gun subsequent to the alleged robbery, the only purpose that would be served by permitting the state to prove the subsequent crime would be to show that because [the] defendant had committed another crime he was a bad man and therefore probably committed the crime for which he was charged. Id. at 54, 492 P.2d 795. Thus, the court concluded that the unfairly prejudicial effect of the evidence of the defendant's encounter with Charley outweighed its probative value and was not admissible. Defendant also relies on Old Chief, in which the United States Supreme Court addressed, under the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE), [10] an issue similar to the one presented in Zimmerlee. In Old Chief, the defendant was charged with, among other things, being a felon in possession of a firearm. The defendant had sought to exclude the evidence of the name and nature of his prior felony by stipulating that he previously had been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding one year. The Court determined that the trial court should have excluded the evidence. The Court concluded that the defendant's stipulation provided evidence of equal evidentiary significance as the prosecutor's reading of defendant's official record of conviction. Old Chief, 519 U.S. at 191, 117 S.Ct. 644. However, the defendant's stipulation did not present the tendency of unfair prejudice that the name and nature of his conviction presented. [11] The Court emphasized that the case was unique in that the fact to be proven was the defendant's legal status and that [p]roving status without telling exactly why that status was imposed leaves no gap in the story of a defendant's subsequent criminality, and its demonstration by stipulation or admission neither displaces a chapter from a continuous sequence of conventional evidence nor comes across as an officious substitution, to confuse or offend or provoke reproach. Id. In all three of the cases discussed above, the excluded evidence was relevant only to prove a discrete fact in the case. Further, even without the defendants' offered stipulations, the excluded evidence in those cases had an undue tendency to suggest a decision on an improper basis. By offering to stipulate to the discrete fact that the prejudicial evidence was offered to prove, the defendants were able to tip the balance in favor of excluding the prejudicial evidence, because the stipulation provided a nonprejudicial alternate form of proof. In contrast to those cases, defendant here sought to replace the state's photographic evidence with a lengthy series of terse stipulations. Those stipulations were not of equal evidentiary significance, because they would have left gaps in the prosecution's narrative of the crime. In addition, although defendant's stipulations would have covered much of what the state sought to prove with the photographs of the victim's body, those stipulations could not replace the demonstrative value of the photographic evidence. The photographs illustrated the testimony of several of the state's witnesses and helped to clarify that testimony for the jury. The principles discussed in Old Chief, Zimmerlee, and McKendall are not applicable in this context. We also note that this court previously has stated that photographs of a victim's body that are relevant are not unfairly prejudicial solely because they are graphic. See State v. Barone, 328 Or. 68, 88, 969 P.2d 1013 (1998), cert. den., 528 U.S. 1135, 120 S.Ct. 977, 145 L.Ed.2d 928 (2000) (Although the photographs in question were graphic, they could not be said to be remarkable in the context of a murder trial.). Defendant has not suggested that the photographs in this case created a danger of undue prejudice other than to evoke a person's natural revulsion to death. We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the photographs and video of the victim's body.