Court Opinion

ID: 9541160
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:23:08.774249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:37.514375
License: Public Domain

HASELTON, J.,
concurring.
I agree with the result, and virtually all of the analysis of the majority opinion, but write separately to address this court’s treatment of parties’ concessions of error.
The majority states: “[W]e are not bound by the state’s concession of error in our disposition of the case.” 129 Or App at 416. That proposition has been repeated, without amplification, in our cases for the last decade, and more. See, e.g., Fine v. Zenon, 114 Or App 183, 185, 834 P2d 509 (1992) (“[although we are not bound by that concession, we accept it”); State v. Louden, 101 Or App 367, 369, 790 P2d 1182 (1990) (“[w]erejectthe state’s concession”). In particular, we have routinely intoned the “we are not bound” mantra without reference to our original discussion of the effect of concessions in State v. Cloutier, 33 Or App 121, 575 P2d 996 *420(1978) , rev’d on other grounds 286 Or 579, 596 P2d 278 (1979) .
In State v. Cloutier, supra, we noted:
‘ ‘It has generally been the practice and policy of this court to accept and not to look behind any litigant’s confession that a lower tribunal committed reversible error.” 33 Or App at 124.
In Cloutier we “deviated” from that general practice and policy and declined to give effect to the state’s concession of error because of the “unusual” circumstance of an intervening change of law after the state had confessed error. 33 Or App at 124.
A year after Cloutier, we articulated the “we are not bound” proposition for the first time in State v. Shipley, 39 Or App 283, 592 P2d 237 (1979):
“[D]efendant argues that the sentence is invalid because the court failed to state the reasons for imposing the sentence as required by ORS 137.120. The state confesses error * * *. The confession is not binding upon us * * 39 Or App at 285. (Emphasis supplied.)
As support for the emphasized proposition, the court, without further explanation, cited our opinion in State v. Cloutier, supra, and the author’s concurring opinion in State v. Galloway, 31 Or App 393, 570 P2d 113 (1977) (Tanzer, J., concurring).1
Thus, Shipley transmutes Cloutier’s holding that concessions are generally honored into authority for the proposition that we are not bound by the parties’ concessions. The two statements are not necessarily inconsistent. But regular incantation of only the second devalues the first.
*421State v. Cloutier, supra, strikes a judicious balance between our responsibilities and the adversarial process.2 Cloutier’s principle that we should accept the parties’ concessions of errors absent “unusual” circumstances should guide our future assessment of such concessions.

 The concurring opinion in State v. Galloway, supra, which asserts that reversal “does not follow automatically from a confession of error,” cites with approval this language from Sibron v. New York, 392 US 40, 58, 88 S Ct 1889, 20 L Ed 2d 917 (1968):
“[Cjonfessions of error are, of course, entitled to and given great weight, but they do not ‘relieve this court of the performance of the judicial function.’ Young v. United States, 315 US 257, 258, 86 L Ed 832, 834, 62 S Ct 510 (1942).” 31 Or App at 393.

 The state’s concessions of error in criminal cases have special force because the sovereign is, or at least should be, more than a mere adversarial litigant in such proceedings. Cf. Berger v. United States, 295 US 78, 88, 55 S Ct 629, 79 L Ed 1314 (1935):
“The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereign whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.”