Court Opinion

ID: 9756290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:20:53.786921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:18.294259
License: Public Domain

SERCOMBE, J.,
concurring.
I concur with the majority’s analysis. This court decided in State v. William, 199 Or App 191, 110 P3d 1114, rev den, 339 Or 406 (2005), that the production of a declarant at trial or a showing of his or her unavailability was not a necessary predicate to admission of a hearsay statement by that declarant in a public record under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution. We reached that conclusion notwithstanding the seemingly broad requirement in State v. Moore, 334 Or 328, 341, 49 P3d 785 (2002), that, “[bjefore the state may introduce into evidence a witness’s out-of-court declarations against a criminal defendant, the state must produce the witness at trial or demonstrate that the witness is unavailable to testify.” We qualified that holding in William:
“Again, we hesitate to read the Supreme Court’s decision too broadly. As in [State v.] Campbell[, 299 Or 633, 705 P2d 694 (1985)], the issue before the court in Moore was narrow. It did not involve the sort of historical exception that is involved in this case [(the public records exception)] and that the court recognized in prior cases such as [State v.] Saunders[, 14 Or 300, 12 P 441 (1886), overruled in part on other grounds by State v. Marsh, 260 Or 416, 490 P2d 491 (1971), cert den, 406 US 974 (1972),] and [State ex rel.] Gladden [v. Lonergan, 201 Or 163, 269 P2d 491 (1954)], in which the court held that ‘[t]here is nothing to indicate that the framers of our constitution intended thereby to do away with the well-established exceptions to the confrontation rule.’ [Lonergan], 201 Or at 177. In fact, the Moore court *371cited both cases, without suggesting that either was no longer good law. 334 Or at 339-40.”
199 Or App at 197.
As I say, William decided the issue in this case. However, I suspect that the Supreme Court’s requirement of production or unavailability in Moore was intended to be broader in effect than we acknowledged in William. In State v. Birchfield, 342 Or 624, 631-32, 157 P3d 216 (2007) — a case that did, involve the admissibility of hearsay in a public record under Article I, section 11 — the court flatly stated:
“We hold that the trial court’s admission of the laboratory report without requiring the state to produce at trial the criminalist who prepared the report or to demonstrate that the criminalist was unavailable to testify violated defendant’s right to confront the witness against him under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution.”
Indeed, had the Supreme Court applied the confrontation rule that it espoused in Lonergan, the result in Birchfield would have been different.
Given our analysis in William — that the court’s unequivocal requirement of production or unavailability of a declarant to admit hearsay under Article I, section 11, in Moore was really equivocal — we presumably must conclude that the court’s unequivocal holding in Birchfield is also subject to caveat. In light of Birchfield, however, I am not sure that the analysis in William continues to be correct. For that reason, I concur with misgivings.