Court Opinion

ID: 9791854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:19:31.224284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.014764
License: Public Domain

LANGTEY, J.
This appeal is from dismissal of a post-conviction relief petition. OES 138.510 to 138.680. The defendant’s demurrer to the petition was sustained, petitioner refused to plead further, and the dismissal followed.
Petitioner was originally indicted under OES 167.040 (1): “Any person who commits * * * any act * * * of sexual perversity, either with mankind or beast * * is guilty of a felony. The indictment charged petitioner with “* * * an act of sexual perversity by seizing, grasping and urinating upon * * *” a named woman. Defendant pleaded guilty to the indictment and was sentenced. His demanded post-conviction relief is based upon his allegation that the indictment does not state a crime and that the statute (OES 167.040 (1)) is vague, both in violation of equal protection and due process constitutional requirements.
The petitioner having understandingly entered a guilty plea and having been represented by counsel whose competency he does not challenge, cannot now collaterally seek to avoid his admission of the material *212facts alleged in the indictment. Richardson v. Williard, 241 Or 376, 378, 406 P2d 156 (1965); Lay v. Cupp, 1 Or App 296, 462 P2d 443 (1969).
The fact that the acts, or part of them, alleged against petitioner were possibly punishable as a misdemeanor under some other statutory proscription does not prevent prosecution for the same acts as a felony under OES 167.040. State v. Dumont, 3 Or App 189, 471 P2d 847 (1970).
The part of OES 167.040 quoted above was challenged for the same reasons it is here in State v. Anthony, 179 Or 282, 305, 169 P2d 587, cert denied, 330 US 826, 67 S Ct 865, 91 L Ed 1276 (1946). The court said:
“* * ® By this statute the legislature has ventured into the dim and uncertain mazes of abnormal psychology. If the act were to be left unlimited and undefined by construction * ° * we think it would * * * be void for uncertainty * * *. But we hold that the statute may be so limited by construction as to render it valid as here applied.”
The court then held that an act prohibited by this part of the act must “be limited to cases directly involving the sex organ” and “to unnatural conduct contrary to the course of nature.” The court further required that the act “* * ® must * * * have been performed for the purpose of accomplishing abnormal sexual satisfaction on the part of the actor.” 179 Or at 307. The defendant, in effect, urges that use of these rules of construction was made inapplicable by the decision in State v. Hodges, 254 Or 21, 457 P2d 491 (1969). In effect, he says that if the part of the statute held unconstitutional in Hodges (contributing to the delinquency of a minor, OES 167.210) cannot stand *213under the rules of construction formerly applied, then the part of ORS 167.040 under attack here also cannot continue to stand under the rules of construction formerly applied to it.
The defendant pled guilty long after State v. Anthony, supra, was decided, and its rules of construction formulated. We think those rules of construction may reasonably be applied to a situation where a man grasps, seizes and urinates upon a woman. Depending upon the detañed facts evidence might show, the application of the rules might wed result in a mature person of ordinary understanding inferring that the acts, taken together, were for the purpose of the actor accomplishing abnormal sexual satisfaction. Having pled guilty to the alleged acts as acts of “sexual perversity” under these rules of construction, we conclude that the defendant admitted violation of ORS 167.040 (1) under a construction of that statute which is not unconstitutionally vague.
The construction of the statute and the manner of its application in Anthony is binding as precedent in this case.
Affirmed.