Court Opinion

ID: 9758825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:51:25.86995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:56.542782
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, S. J.,
concurring.
Petitioner appeals after the post-conviction court ruled that he failed to prove the allegations in his petition that he was prejudiced by his trial counsel’s failure to exercise reasonable professional skill and judgment under Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution and the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. On appeal, he argues that the court erred “in finding that petitioner was not denied adequate and effective assistance of trial counsel due to [the] failure to interview, subpoena and call to the [witness] stand [a] number of essential defense witnesses.” The majority affirms on the basis that the evidence that petitioner claims his trial counsel should have offered would have distracted from his theory at trial, was not admissible, or was unknown to petitioner and his counsel until after trial. I agree with the majority’s result but would affirm on a more fundamental ground that I believe to be essential to the integrity of review of post-conviction relief proceedings.
*622In the underlying criminal proceeding following a trial to the court, petitioner was convicted of sexual abuse in the first degree involving his eight-year-old daughter. The abuse allegedly occurred at a time when petitioner, the victim, and the victim’s sister were present. At trial, the sister testified that she did not observe any abuse. Also, the victim was unable to testify that the abuse occurred. Rather, she testified that she had a dream about petitioner touching her vagina. The state offered, however, out-of-court statements made by the victim, including a videotape of the victim made at a diagnostic facility in which the victim related the circumstances regarding petitioner touching her vagina. The videotaped interview, along with the out-of-court statements of the victim, was the only direct evidence against petitioner and became the critical part of the state’s prosecution because of the weakness of the victim’s trial testimony.
At the criminal trial, petitioner denied that he had abused the victim or touched her vagina. He also claimed that the victim’s statements had been induced by her mother and her sister and were false. The state, on the other hand, contended that the victim’s trial testimony was due to her fear of petitioner. Ultimately, after viewing the videotape and the other evidence concerning the credibility of the victim, the court in the criminal proceeding, sitting without a jury, found the victim’s claim of abuse to be credible and convicted petitioner of sexual abuse in the first degree.
The gravamen of petitioner’s claim in his post-conviction relief petition and on appeal in this proceeding is that, although requested by petitioner, his trial counsel refused to call as witnesses a number of family members. Those witnesses were prepared to testify that the victim’s mother had a history of emotional and psychological instability, had an obsessive attachment to her children, and had made numerous false allegations of sexual abuse against others. In petitioner’s view, his trial counsel’s failure to call the family members as witnesses constituted constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel and deprived him of a fair trial. Accordingly, he seeks to have his criminal conviction for sexual abuse in the first degree vacated.
*623In response, defendant argues initially on appeal that the post-conviction court did not have the same evidentiary record regarding the victim’s demeanor before it as existed in the criminal trial. Specifically, defendant points to the absence of the videotape of the victim made at the diagnostic facility in the evidentiary record before the post-conviction court. Instead, a transcript of the videotape was admitted as evidence in the post-conviction trial. In his view, that difference in the evidentiary record is fatal to petitioner’s appeal in light of the fact that the post-conviction court ruled that petitioner had failed to carry his burden of proving that he was prejudiced by his trial counsel’s decision not to call the family members as witnesses. Defendant explains:
“Because petitioner did not offer the videotape in the post-conviction proceeding, however, the post-conviction court could not evaluate the evidence from petitioner’s potential witnesses in light of the strength of key evidence of petitioner’s guilt. Necessarily, then, petitioner did not prove to the post-conviction court that his would-be evidence from those potential witnesses had a tendency to affect the ultimate result of the case — petitioner’s conviction. On that basis alone, petitioner necessarily failed to carry his burden to prove that his counsel’s performance (if defective) prejudiced his case, and thus, this court should affirm the post-conviction court’s denial of relief * *
Oregon’s post-conviction legislation is codified in ORS 138.510 to 138.686. ORS 138.540(1) provides, with certain exceptions not applicable to this case, that “a petition pursuant to ORS 138.510 to 138.680 shall be the exclusive means, after judgment rendered upon a conviction for a crime, for challenging the lawfulness of such judgment or the proceedings upon which it is based.” The grounds for post-conviction relief under ORS 138.530(1), in the alternative, are: (1) a substantial denial in the proceedings resulting in the petitioner’s conviction or in the appellate review thereof under the United States Constitution or the Oregon Constitution such as to render the conviction void; (2) lack of jurisdiction of the court to impose judgment upon the conviction; (3) a sentence in excess of the sentence authorized by law or the unconstitutionality of such a sentence; and (4) the *624unconstitutionality of the statute making criminal the acts for which the petitioner was convicted.
Also, ORS 138.630 governs evidence in the post-conviction relief proceeding of events that occur in the underlying criminal trial of a petitioner for post-conviction relief. It provides:
“In a proceeding pursuant to ORS 138.510 to 138.680, events occurring at the trial of petitioner may be shown by a duly authenticated transcript, record or portion thereof. If such transcript or record cannot be produced, the affidavit of the judge who presided at the trial setting forth the facts occurring at the trial shall be admissible in evidence when relevant. When necessary to establish any ground for relief specified in ORS 138.530, the petitioner may allege and prove matters in contradiction of the record of the trial of the petitioner. When the record is so contradicted, the defendant may introduce in evidence any evidence which was admitted in evidence at the trial to support the contradicted matter and may call witnesses whose testimony at such trial supported the contradicted matter. Whenever such evidence or such witnesses cannot be produced by defendant for any reason which is sufficient in the opinion of the court, such parts of the duly authenticated record of the trial as support the contradicted matter may be introduced in evidence by the defendant. A duly authenticated record of the testimony of any witness at the trial may be introduced in evidence to impeach the credibility of any testimony by the same witness in the hearing upon the petition.”1
The purpose of those post-conviction statutes, when read together, is obvious: to test the validity of the underlying criminal proceeding with respect to the grounds for relief under ORS 138.530(1) based on the record made in the criminal trial. In Atkeson v. Cupp, 68 Or App 196, 199, 680 P2d 722, rev den, 297 Or 546 (1984), the court observed that the drafters of the post-conviction relief statutes intended to ensure that post-conviction relief would be as broad as *625habeas corpus relief in order to avoid constitutional problems that might arise from the decision to make post-conviction relief the exclusive means to challenge the lawfulness of criminal convictions. See also Collins and Neil, The Oregon Postconviction-Hearing Act, 39 Or L Rev 337, 346, 363-64 (1960). In light of the purpose of the post-conviction relief statutes, it is essential that, for purposes of review, the record before the post-conviction court on a material issue be the same record that existed in the criminal proceeding, except as authorized by ORS 138.630.2 Otherwise, the validity of the underlying criminal proceeding cannot be properly tested as the Act intends.
Defendant’s initial argument regarding petitioner’s failure to offer the videotape of the complaining witness frames an issue of preliminary reviewability. Essentially, defendant argues that the post-conviction court and this court are unable to conduct the review required by the post-conviction relief statutes because material evidence from the criminal proceeding on the issue of the demeanor of the complaining witness was not before the post-conviction court or this, court regarding the issue of constitutional prejudice. In particular, he points to the trial court’s statement at the end of the trial in support of his argument:
“The bottom line — and I have reviewed my notes from the child’s testimony and my notes from her statement, the tape at Liberty House — is do I believe this child or do I believe that she has been put up to this by desperate and/or scheming mother and possibly even sister?
“I think those tears were real that I saw from both children, and I think the statements by the child — the fact that she couldn’t remember a lot of details, is, in my opinion, almost more credible. * * *
“* * * [Biased on the evidence that I have heard and the testimony from [the child], I find the evidence has established that * * * you did this crime, you committed this *626offense, and I find you guilty of the crime of sexual abuse in the first degree.”3
Defendant concludes that the “constitutional prejudice inquiry” required the post-conviction court to evaluate the evidence that petitioner claims should have been presented in light of the evidence that was actually presented at the criminal trial. Under defendant’s reasoning, because the post-conviction court did not have the videotape evidence before it, the post-conviction court’s conclusion that petitioner did not carry his burden of proof as to prejudice must be affirmed on appeal.
ORS 138.530(l)(a) places the burden on a petitioner to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that trial counsel failed to exercise reasonable professional skill and judgment resulting in prejudice to petitioner. Trujillo v. Maass, 312 Or 431, 435, 822 P2d 703 (1991). By providing in ORS 138.630 that “events occurring at the trial of petitioner may be shown by a duly authenticated transcript, record or portion thereofl,]” the legislature obviously contemplated that an entire record of the underlying court proceedings may not always be necessary to the determination of whether post-conviction relief is available. (Emphasis added.) Nonetheless, the assessments required by the statutes of a post-conviction court and a reviewing appellate court must be made in light of the totality of the circumstances that are material to the issues raised by a petitioner. Horn v. Hill, 180 Or App 139, 148, 41 P3d 1127 (2002) (citing Carias v. State of Oregon, 148 Or App 540, 543, 941 P2d 571 (1997)); see also Cunningham v. Thompson, 188 Or App 289, 296, 71 P3d 110 (2003), rev den, 337 Or 327 (2004) (holding that, where a petitioner’s claim of inadequate assistance is based on trial counsel’s failure to adduce or controvert evidence pertaining to a particular issue, “an assessment of other evidence pertaining to the issue, as well as any other aspects of the criminal trial that are pertinent to the issue * * *, considered in light of the issues at trial in their entirety, is the proper method for determining whether, in the totality of the circumstances, *627counsel’s error had the required ‘tendency to affect the jury’s verdict’ ” (citation omitted; emphasis in original)).
In this case, petitioner contends that the proffered testimony, if it had been admitted, would have had a tendency to affect the criminal verdict in light of the totality of the evidence regarding the victim’s credibility. Before deciding that issue, the preliminary issue framed by defendant’s initial argument is whether this court can conduct the review required by the post-conviction relief statutes in the absence of the videotape in the evidentiary record of the post-conviction proceeding. The answer to that question depends on the materiality of the videotape as evidence of the victim’s credibility and whether the post-conviction court otherwise had an adequate record before it in order to determine whether, as a matter of law, constitutional prejudice resulted from trial counsel’s failure to call petitioner’s witnesses.
In the abstract, a criminal defense attorney’s failure to call witnesses or adduce evidence does not always have a tendency to affect the outcome of a prosecution. However, in this case, the outcome of the criminal proceeding depended on whether the criminal court believed petitioner or the victim. The videotape was material evidence of the victim’s demeanor at a time when she was first making the claim that she had been abused by petitioner. Although the transcript of the interview at Liberty House is evidence of information she reported during the evaluation, it is not evidence of her demeanor while providing that information. Only the videotape itself constitutes evidence of her demeanor while reporting the abuse at the diagnostic facility. It is also apparent from my inspection of the record that the trial court’s finding that the victim was credible was dependent in a material way on its viewing of the videotape. To be sure, it was not the post-conviction court’s role to retry the criminal court’s credibility determination; instead the post-conviction court had the responsibility, as do we, to assess whether trial counsel’s omissions had constitutional implications that tended to affect the prosecution and outcome of the case. In fulfilling that responsibility, the post-conviction court was required to evaluate the evidence of the credibility of the victim’s accusations in light of the evidence that petitioner contends his trial counsel should have offered. Without the ability to view *628the videotape, the post-conviction court and this court are effectively deprived of the opportunity to make the analysis of prejudice required by the post-conviction relief statutes, because we do not have before us all of the evidence pertaining to the victim’s credibility that existed in the criminal proceeding.
The majority’s rejoinder that this court typically reviews the issue of prejudice in post-conviction relief cases based on transcripts alone is of little assistance when the verdict in the underlying criminal case depends on evidence that is not in the post-conviction record. The result of the majority’s viewpoint is that it ends up reviewing a different case from the case heard by the criminal trial court, contrary to what the post-conviction relief statutes contemplate. In other words, no transcript of the Liberty House interview can adequately substitute for the viewing of the videotape in this case when the verdict was based on the evidence of the demeanor of the complaining witness, evidence that is only available from the videotape. For this reason, I write separately to express my concurrence with the majority’s result but not with its analysis.4
Brewer, C. J., and Wollheim, J., join in this concurrence.

 ORS 138.650(1) provides, in part, that either party to a post-conviction relief proceeding may appeal to this court and that the manner of taking the appeal and scope of review shall be the same as that provided by law for appeals in criminal actions except that “[t]he trial court may provide that the transcript contain only such evidence as may be material to the decision of the appeal!.]”

 Moreover, ORS 138.650(1) provides, regarding appeals of post-conviction relief judgments, that “[t]he manner of taking the appeal and the scope of review by the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court shall be the same as that provided by law for appeals in criminal actions,” subject to exceptions not applicable here. Under ORS 138.220, a criminal judgment “appealed from can be reviewed only as to questions of law appearing upon the record.”

 “Liberty House” is the name of the diagnostic facility where the victim was evaluated and the videotape was recorded.

 The majority appears to concede that, if petitioner’s counsel should have offered the evidence, some of petitioner’s proffered evidence may have been relevant to his ex-wife’s motives to induce the complaining witness to fabricate her claims but concludes that “it would not have appreciably bolstered the defense theory at trial: that she and the children were frightened of petitioner and wanted him out of the picture for good.” 239 Or App at 618. Although I would not reach the merits of petitioner’s argument for the reasons stated above, I note that the criminal case was, as the majority also concedes, a credibility contest in which there were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence to corroborate the claim of abuse. Consequently, assuming that it should have been offered by reasonable counsel, any admissible evidence bearing on the complaining witness’s lack of credibility would have added to the state’s burden of proving petitioner’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and overcoming the presumption of innocence, resulting in a “close” issue regarding constitutional prejudice for purposes of post-conviction relief.