Court Opinion

ID: 9900366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-18 22:11:43.944972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:04.863036
License: Public Domain

78                   September 13, 2023          No. 459

          IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                  STATE OF OREGON

                    SIDNEY NEWTON,
                     Petitioner-Appellant,
                               v.
                      Brandon KELLY,
                       Superintendent,
                  Oregon State Penitentiary,
                   Defendant-Respondent.
                 Marion County Circuit Court
                    19CV16817; A177335

     Donald D. Abar, Judge.
     Submitted August 8, 2023.
   Margaret Huntington and O’Connor Weber LLC filed the
briefs for appellant.
   Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Peenesh Shah, Assistant Attorney
General, filed the briefs for respondent.
   Before Lagesen, Chief Judge, and Kamins, Judge, and
Kistler, Senior Judge.
     KAMINS, J.
     Affirmed.
Cite as 328 Or App 78 (2023)                                 79

        KAMINS, J.
         Petitioner appeals from a judgment granting sum-
mary judgment for the superintendent and denying post-
conviction relief (PCR). Petitioner challenges his 2010 con-
victions for 26 crimes, including coercion, harassment, and
assault in the first, second, and fourth degrees. Most of the
offenses were committed against his then wife, who testified
about the abuse at the criminal trial. We affirm.
         Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to
petitioner, we review a post-conviction court’s grant of sum-
mary judgment to determine “whether the court correctly
concluded that there are no genuine issues of material fact
and that the superintendent was entitled to judgment as a
matter of law.” Bean v. Cain, 314 Or App 529, 530, 497 P3d
1273 (2021) (brackets and citation omitted).
         Actual Innocence. Petitioner’s first assignment of
error challenges the PCR court’s denial of his freestanding
claim of actual innocence. In support of that claim, peti-
tioner submitted declarations by his former wife and one of
her friends asserting that petitioner received an unjustly
long sentence, that petitioner did not cause long-term injury
to the victim’s back, that the victim felt compelled to testify
at the trial because Child Protective Services threatened to
take her children, and that her emotions while testifying
came in part from trauma she suffered before meeting peti-
tioner. As we will explain, that evidence falls far short of the
“exacting standard of proof” that would govern any claim of
actual innocence, assuming such a claim exists. Reeves v.
Nooth, 294 Or App 711, 732, 432 P3d 1105 (2018), rev den,
364 Or 680 (2019); id. at 738 (“[S]uch claims would require
petitioner to demonstrate, at the very least, that newly dis-
covered and reliable evidence makes it more likely than not
that no reasonable juror could have found petitioner guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt, when the new evidence is consid-
ered in the context of the record as a whole.”).
         As the PCR court observed, the “only evidence” in
the victim’s declaration that suggests that the victim lied
at trial was her claim that petitioner “did not cause her
long-term injuries [or disability].” In other words, the “newly
80                                                           Newton v. Kelly

discovered evidence” does not raise questions about any of
the key facts of any of the crimes, including assault in the
first degree. In particular, it does not undermine the find-
ing that petitioner injured the victim nor that those injuries
were “serious” for purposes of the crime of assault, which
does not require long-term disability. See ORS 161.015(8)
(defining “serious physical injury” as one which causes “pro-
tracted” disfigurement or loss); State v. Alvarez, 240 Or App
167, 171, 246 P3d 26 (2010), rev den, 350 Or 408 (2011) (con-
cluding that a condition that persisted five months after an
assault was protracted). Because a reasonable juror could
still have found petitioner guilty of first-degree assault
under ORS 163.185(1)(a),1 considering the new evidence in
the context of the record as a whole, the PCR court did not
err in granting summary judgment to the superintendent
on petitioner’s actual innocence claim.
         Nonunanimous Jury. Petitioner’s remaining assign-
ments of error relate to the fact that the jury that convicted
him was instructed that only 10 jurors needed to agree on
his guilt, a practice later held to be unconstitutional by
Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 US ___, 140 S Ct 1390, 206 L Ed 2d
583 (2020). Petitioner’s second and fifth assignments of error
challenge the PCR court’s denial of his claims that trial and
appellate counsel rendered inadequate and ineffective assis-
tance by not objecting to the nonunanimous jury instruction
and not raising the issue on appeal. Those arguments are
foreclosed by our decision in Smith v. Kelly, where we held
that counsel did not perform deficiently by failing to raise
the unanimity issue before Ramos was litigated. 318 Or App
567, 569, 508 P3d 77 (2022), rev den, 370 Or 822 (2023) (“[T]he
obligation to exercise reasonable professional skill and
judgment—under either constitution—does not encompass
an obligation to augur an about-face by the United States
Supreme Court.”).
        Petitioner’s third and fourth assignments of error
challenge the PCR court’s denial of his stand-alone claims
that his convictions were obtained in violation of the state
    1
      ORS 163.185(1)(a) provides, “[a] person commits the crime of assault in
the first degree if the person [ ] [i]ntentionally causes serious physical injury to
another by means of a deadly or dangerous weapon[.]”
Cite as 328 Or App 78 (2023)                                  81

and federal constitutions, because they were based on
nonunanimous jury verdicts. Because the record is silent
on whether the verdicts were actually nonunanimous, peti-
tioner has not met his burden of proof as to those claims. See
ORS 138.620(2) (in PCR proceedings, the burden of proof is
on the petitioner); Mandell v. Miller, 326 Or App 807, 811,
___ P3d ___ (2023) (“[P]ost-conviction petitioners cannot
prove that a Ramos violation was consequential in their case
when the record does not indicate whether the jury that con-
victed them was, in fact, nonunanimous, and are therefore
not entitled to relief.”). As a result, the PCR court did not err
in granting summary judgment to the superintendent.
         Affirmed.