Court Opinion

ID: 9531909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:15:56.247536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:37.353603
License: Public Domain

FADELEY, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent because of the majority’s rulings that evidence of political beliefs and passing out a “political pamphlet” is admissible in evidence with respect to future dangerousness in this case. 324 Or at 417.
I do not agree that labeling a person’s social or political beliefs should be permitted in the death-penalty phase of an aggravated murder case, however aberrant or abhorrent those beliefs may be, or that evidence of passing out a political pamphlet should be so admitted. The label “neo-Nazi” is not merely cumulative of another type of labeling, i.e., “white supremacist.” Those terms may convey different, but still prejudicial, thoughts to a juror. Basing future dangerousness on political beliefs (rather than on violent conduct) is a net that, from the point of view of King George III, would have caught at least some of the founders of this country who expressed themselves against the colonial government in their time. The founders sought to leave all that behind. We should heed their lesson.
Further, I do not see that evidence of defendant’s social or political beliefs is “tied in any way to the murder”1 of defendant’s wife’s parents. That was not a political act but was a family affair. The family, not political beliefs, is the source of the passion and anger here.
I respectfully dissent.

 The wording quoted is from Dawson v. Delaware, 503 US 159, 166, 112 S Ct 1093, 117 L Ed 2d 309 (1992).