Court Opinion

ID: 9486219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:41:16.540525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:35.226974
License: Public Domain

TANG, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I share Judge Poole’s concern with this case; Oregon appears on the verge of criminalizing pure (albeit bad) thought. But in finding sufficient evidence of a “substantial step” toward rape and sodomy in Walters’s efforts to have his intended victim get into his truck, the Oregon Supreme Court retains at least a vestige of the actus reus requirement.
The actus reus element of state criminal laws is generally a matter of state law. As the Supreme Court has stated:
The doctrines of actus reus [and] mens rea ... have historically provided the tools for a constantly shifting adjustment of the tension between the evolving aims of the criminal law and changing religious, moral, philosophical, and medical views of the nature of man. This process of adjustment has always been thought to be the province of the States.
Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514, 536, 88 S.Ct. 2145, 2156, 20 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1968). Here, Oregon has declared that “enticement” constitutes one form of the “substantial step” required for an attempt conviction under state law. State v. Walters, 311 Or. 80, 85-86, 804 P.2d 1164, cert. denied, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2807, 115 L.Ed.2d 979 (1991).
Because there is sufficient evidence to support a finding of enticement under Oregon law, we must defer to state law and uphold Walters’s convictions. See Estelle v. McGuire, — U.S. -, -, 112 S.Ct. 475, 480, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991) (“[I]t is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state court determinations on state law questions. In conducting habeas review, a federal court is limited to deciding whether a conviction violated the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.”).