Court Opinion

ID: 9780714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 02:30:58.791372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:06.048945
License: Public Domain

HASELTON, P. J.,
concurring.
The law in this area is a mess, a judicially created mess. By a “mess,” I mean that — beginning with Cervantes and then continuing through our decisions in Tirado, Means, Davis, and up to today — it is impossible to identify a coherent principle that reconciles the outcomes of those cases.1 And that has not been for any lack of effort or ingenuity.
Cervantes and our holdings have rested on some permutation or combination of a variety of rationales, explicit or implicit, including:
(1) Indirect extrinsic “evidence.” See, e.g., State v. Cervantes, 319 Or 121, 126-27, 873 P2d 316 (1994) (evidence that coordinator of Coos County Crime Victims’ Assistance office had contact with the victim permitted jury to infer that charged conduct occurred in Coos County). One might wonder (respectfully) why such collateral references are deemed to be sufficient to support a rational, nonspeculative inference establishing an essential fact beyond a reasonable doubt. For example, in Cervantes, there was no evidence that the Coos County Crime Victims’ Assistance office assisted only persons who were victims of crime in Coos County, as opposed to persons from neighboring counties as well — or, for that matter, Coos County residents who had been victims of crimes in other counties. One might also wonder (respectfully) why, if venue can be established via such collateral and attenuated references, it would not be just simpler and more *655candid to hold that jurors can infer venue from the denomination of the county in the caption of the pleadings.
(2) “Any sentient resident of the county would know.” See, e.g., Cervantes, 319 Or 121 (Coos Bay is in Coos County); State v. Davis, 248 Or App 263, 273 P3d 251 (2012) (Medford is in Jackson County). But, as with any “we know it when we see it” approach, the problem is one of line-drawing — all Linn County residents of any tenure know that Lebanon is in the county, but what about Scio? Or Tangent or Crabtree? Thus, the result in this case (trier of fact, without further proof, could not determine that the City of North Plains is in Washington County). See also State v. Tirado, 118 Or App 294, 296, 846 P2d 1201 (1993) (trier of fact could not determine, without further evidence, that White City (or location very near White City) is in Jackson County).
(3) Jurors sitting in the ‘X” County courthouse in ICY” City could infer /find that charged conduct in “Y” City occurred in ‘X” County. See, e.g., Davis (where charged conduct allegedly occurred in Medford, and the trial occurred at the Jackson County courthouse in Medford). This rationale initially has great commonsensical appeal until one realizes that three Oregon county seats — Albany (Linn), Salem (Marion), and Portland (Multnomah) — are in cities that include parts of other counties (north Albany is in Benton County; west Salem is in Polk County; and parts of Portland are in Washington and Clackamas counties). That, in turn, may have been an implicit rationale for our holding in State v. Means, 213 Or App 268, 274, 160 P3d 1001 (2007) (proof of venue failed where there was no evidence that the Overlook neighborhood in Portland was in Multnomah County).
(4) Single inference versus “stacking” of multiple inferences. See, e.g., Davis, 248 Or App 263. There are at least two problems with this approach. First, in every case in which the location of the crime can be established with precision, the determination of whether that location is in a particular county requires only a single “inference.” Either it is, or it isn’t — and that is so whether the criminal conduct occurred in Coos Bay, or Medford, or White City, or near milepost 56 on US Highway 26. Second, in such circumstances, the determination of the requisite fact (viz., the *656county in which the charged conduct occurred) is not a matter of inference — it is a matter of knowledge. One does not, and cannot, infer from the predicate fact of “Medford” the ultimate fact of “Jackson County.” There is no logical relationship between the former and the latter; rather (with apologies), “It is what it is.”
I have no solution. Rather, I offer these ruminations in the hope that, in an appropriate case, the Supreme Court will revisit Cervantes and offer further, clarifying guidance on these matters that periodically bedevil our court, as well as the criminal trial bench and bar. For now, the majority’s approach in this case is as defensible as any. Accordingly, I concur.

 See, e.g., Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 28 (1975) (“[T]he problem which confronts the judge is in reality a two fold one: he must first extract from the precedents the underlying principle, the ratio decidendi; he must then determine the path or direction along which the principle is to move and develop, if it is not to wither and die.”).