Court Opinion

ID: 9599487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:19:02.709674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:33.932074
License: Public Domain

TANZER, J.,
specially concurring.
While I concur in the result, I must respectfully disagree with the reasoning of the majority. I believe that the quotation from State v. Welch, 264 Or 388, 505 P2d 910 (1973), is controlling. There the Supreme Court acknowledged that the legislature had apparently not considered the problem at bar in its drafting of the statute and, instead of indulging in the customary fictions of assessing legislative intent in the absence of legislative intent, it construed the statute in the manner in which it concluded that the legislature would have acted had it considered the problem.
In this case, the majority escapes the duty of filling in the legislative omission by concluding that the legislature did indeed consider the issue of burden of proof regarding extreme emotional disturbance. It is on this point, and upon the conclusions that logically follow from it, that I must disagree. I think the legislative history is quite clear that burden of proof of extreme emotional disturbance was not considered and that, had it been, the legislature would have allocated the burden of proof in the same manner as it did for other defenses based upon mental impairment.
When the Senate Committee on Criminal Law and Procedure considered the subject of the insanity defense, now ORS 161.295, it approved the draft which expressly placed the burden of proof upon the defendant by a preponderance. Minutes, Feb. 10, 1971, p. 10.
*172When the draft regarding partial responsibility, now ORS 161.300, was considered, witnesses pointed out that the burden of proof was not allocated and the committee therefore amended Section 38 of the Proposed Oregon Criminal Code by adding language to assure that proof of partial responsibility would be treated at trial in the same manner as insanity. The result is ORS 161.305 and the added language is here emphasized:
“Mental disease or defect excluding responsibility under ORS 161.295 or partial responsibility under ORS 161.300 is an affirmative defense.”
There was some explanatory mention during the committee’s consideration of partial responsibility that any defense which is not designated as affirmative would have to be disproved by the state once evidence of it was introduced. This does not demonstrate that they considered the issue anew when they later came to the homicide sections. It is upon this fact that the majority errs. “Extreme emotional disturbance” was not considered when defenses were considered and was not thought of as a defense.① The question of whether *173it was an affirmative defense, an ordinary defense or a defense at all did not arise.
The committee considered the “extreme emotional disturbance” clause of the manslaughter statute after it had completed its work on the responsibility sections and had moved on to the homicide sections. There was no mention whatever of the problem of burden of proof. The only objection was to the relaxation of the objective standard of the prior “heat of passion” test to the subjective standard of the new test.② The language of the draft section 89 (1) (b) was changed for the sole purpose of making the test more objective and less subjective. The language change did not deal with burden of proof.③ The discussion of this section related to the *174need to narrow the application of the exception. There was no discussion whatever of the issue of burden of proof. In sum, there is nothing from which it can be inferred that burden of proof had been considered.
I therefore see no foundation for the assertion of the majority that its reading of the commentary and the legislative minutes “tends to indicate” that burden of proof of extreme emotional disturbance was considered and that the legislature intended that it be an ordinary defense.
Had the legislature considered the issue of burden of proof of extreme emotional disturbance, I think it would have allocated the burden in the same manner which it did for those most analogous defenses which also deal with impaired mental ability, i.e., insanity and partial responsibility, rather than like dissimilar defenses, e.g., self-defense or entrapment. Regarding insanity, the legislature was satisfied with the proposed allocation of proof to the defendant by a preponderance. Regarding partial responsibility, the legislature was dissatisfied with the omission of the proposed code *175and amended it to specifically place the burden of proof upon the defendant by a preponderance. Had it considered the matter, it would surely have treated extreme emotional disturbance in the same manner.
Allocation to the defendant makes good trial sense. Proof uf mental state is a matter peculiarly within the power of the defendant to produce, particularly now that the courts cannot compel a defendant to cooperate with a psychiatric examiner, see Shepard v. Bowe, 250 Or 288, 442 P2d 238 (1968).
Furthermore, evidence of all degrees of mental impairment is likely to be presented by the same witnesses, just as in this case the same psychiatrists testified both to mental disease and defect and to extreme emotional disturbance. It would cause confusion at trial to no good end to divide the order of proof between the defenses of insanity and partial responsibility and that of extreme emotional disturbance.
Finally, it would confuse the jury, again to no good end, to instruct it (1) that the defendant has the burden of going forward with proof and the burden of persuasion by a preponderance of the evidence regarding mental disease or defect, (2) that the defendant only has the burden of going forward with evidence of extreme emotional disturbance and the state has the burden of disproving it beyond a reasonable doubt, and (3) that the defendant has the burden of going forward with the proof and the burden of persuasion by a preponderance of the evidence regarding partial responsibility, when most commonly all three defenses are proved by the same witnesses.
I must conclude that the legislature, had it considered the issue, would have opted for consistency *176rather than for inconsistency, for trial order instead of trial disorder. I conclude that it would have treated “extreme emotional disturbance,” the mitigating exception to murder, in the same manner as an affirmative defense by placing the burden of proof and persuasion upon the defendant by a preponderance of the evidence.
Because I agree with the majority on the other ground of appeal and because the instructions given were more favorable to the defendant than those to which he would have been entitled under this theory of the case, I disagree with the majority and specially concur in the result.

 Through the rest of the criminal code there is no hesitation of the draftsmen, when creating a defense, to call it that. For example, ORS 161.190 provides:
“In any prosecution for an offense, justification, as defined in ORS 161.195 to 161.275, is a defense.”
See also ORS 161.475 (2) which describes a “defense” to solicitation and conspiracy, ORS 162.035 (1) which describes what is a “defense” and what is not a “defense” to bribery, ORS 164.035 which labels each defense to theft as a “defense,” ORS 163.345 which labels proximity of age a “defense” to statutory rape, ORS 162.105 which makes retraction a “defense” to perjury or false swearing, ORS 163.285 which describes a “defense” to coercion, and ORS 163.605 which provides that good faith or privilege is a “defense” to defamation. Had the legislature intended extreme emotional disturbance to be a defense, they could easily have so stated. Since the legislature did not treat extreme emotional disturbance as it treated defenses throughout the code, I see no reason that we should do so.

 The legislative history of ORS 163.125 reflects that the Criminal Law Revision. Commission intended “extreme emotional disturbance” in its proposed form to be a liberalized equivalent of the common law “heat of passion” qualification of murder, Commentary to Proposed Oregon Criminal Code 88-89, § 89 (1970). Thus the state argued here that extreme emotional disturbance should be treated analogously to “heat of passion” under prior law. The argument for this alternative, however, is also fallacious. “Heat of passion” was a negation of the element of malice aforethought as murder was defined under old ORS 163.010 (1) and at common law, 1 Wharton, Criminal Evidence 45-46, § 25 (13 ed 1970). Malice aforethought is no longer an element under ORS 163.115 (1) (a) which requires only that the criminal homicide be committed “intentionally” to constitute murder. Therefore, since negation of malice aforethought is no longer relevant in a murder trial and because extreme emotional disturbance does not negate the intentional quality of a homicide, extreme emotional disturbance is not the equivalent of “heat of passion” and need not be treated in the same manner.

Draft section 89 (1) (b) read as follows:
“A homicide which would otherwise be murder is committed under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance for which there is a reasonable explanation and excuse shall be determined from the standpoint of a person in the actor’s situation under the circumstances as he believes them to be * *
*174After amendments and deletions, ORS 163.125 was enacted which provides:
“(b) A homicide which would otherwise be murder is committed under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance, which disturbance is not the result of his own intentional, knowing, reckless or criminally negligent act, and for which disturbance there is a reasonable explanation * * *
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“(2) For the purposes of paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of this section, the reasonableness of the explanation for the disturbance shall be determined from the standpoint of an ordinary person in the actor’s situation under the circumstances as the actor reasonably believes them to be.