Court Opinion

ID: 9796038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:46:34.240529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:44:44.899548
License: Public Domain

*167EDMONDS, P. J.,
concurring.
This case comes to us on remand by the Oregon Supreme Court for reconsideration after it decided State v. Camarena, 344 Or 28, 176 P3d 380 (2008). In our original decision, State v. Graves, 212 Or App 196, 157 P3d 295 (2007), vac’d and rem’d, 344 Or 401 (2008), we held that D’s initial statements to the officers who had arrived at the scene were nontestimonial for purposes of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted in Crawford v. Washington, 541 US 36, 124 S Ct 1354, 158 L Ed 2d 177 (2004), and Davis v. Washington, 547 US 813, 126 S Ct 2266, 165 L Ed 2d 224 (2006). We reasoned,
“the statement was made under circumstances that objectively indicate that the primary purpose of the officer’s question was to enable the officer to respond to a potential ongoing emergency, because the officers were responding to a domestic disturbance where the 9-1-1 call had been disconnected and the people inside the home would not answer the door. Under those circumstances, it was reasonable for the officer to be concerned for the safety of the occupants of the home, even if the victims indicated that defendant was not inside the home.”
212 Or App at 202-03 (emphasis in original).
On remand, the majority again concludes that the first statement given by D to the officers was nontestimonial in nature, presumably adopting our reasoning in our original opinion. Additionally, the majority observes that the statement from D is “essentially cumulative” of the 9-1-1 call in which D indicated that his mother had been kicked in the face before the phone call was disconnected. For the reasons explained below, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the initial statement made by D to the officers after they arrived at the scene was nontestimonial in nature.
The facts that give rise to our decision in this case are as follows. Emergency dispatch received a 9-1-1 call from D at about 3:00 a.m. on February 15, 2003. The call was not completed, and two Portland Police Officers, including Officer Debler, were dispatched to the location from which the *168call had been made. When they arrived, Debler knocked on the door, but no one answered. The officers could see movement inside the house through the blinds. Debler continued to knock on the door and ring the bell for about 30 to 40 seconds. Eventually, D opened a second-floor window, leaned out and said, “She won’t come to the door.” Debler informed the boy that he would kick the door down if he did not open it because Debler was concerned that someone inside the residence might need medical attention. Debler then asked D what happened, and D related,
“Alonzo had left on foot. [D] didn’t give me any direction or anything like that, but he left it that [Alonzo] had left on foot. He also told me, ‘He kicked her in the face when she was sleeping.’ ”
 A statement is “testimonial” for purposes of the Confrontation Clause when a statement or affirmation is primarily “made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.” Crawford v. Washington, 541 US at 51.1 In contrast, a 9-1-1 call, or at least the initial questioning by the 9-1-1 operator of a 9-1-1 caller, is ordinarily not designed to establish or prove some past fact but to discern whether current circumstances require police assistance. In Davis, the 9-1-1 caller was speaking to the 9-1-1 operator about events as they were actually happening rather than describing past events. Consequently, the court held those statements to be non-testimonial for purposes of the Confrontation Clause. In Camarena, the court held that the complainant’s initial recorded responses to the 9-1-1 operator’s questions were nontestimonial under the Sixth Amendment because, in part,
*169“a reasonable person could infer from the complainant’s responses that she faced an ongoing emergency. The complainant was shaken and had sustained an injury to her eye. Defendant’s exact whereabouts were unknown when the complainant spoke with the 9-1-1 operator, and there was a reasonable likelihood that defendant might immediately return to their apartment given the extremely short period of time between his exit and the complainant’s 9-1-1 call.”
344 Or at 41. In other words, the complainant’s statements were intended to describe current circumstances requiring police assistance in an effort to terminate an “ongoing emergency” rather than to communicate the occurrence of a past event.
There are obvious differences between the circumstances in this case and the circumstances in Camarena and Davis. First, this case involves statements made by a witness after the police arrived at the scene of a domestic violence call rather than statements made during a 9-1-1 call. Second, unlike in Camarena, there is no evidence in this case that suggests that defendant’s return to the scene was imminent. Indeed, D informed the officers that defendant had left the scene. In that light, this case is more like the circumstances in Hammon v. Indiana, 547 US 813, 126 S Ct 2266, 165 L Ed 2d 224 (2006),2 where Amy Hammon spoke with police after they responded to a reported domestic disturbance at the Hammon residence. The court held those statements to be testimonial in nature because her declarations were about what had occurred before the police arrived.
Applying the above rules to the circumstances of this case, I am persuaded that I voted incorrectly for our reasoning in our original opinion. As indicated above, we reasoned that, because the primary purpose of the officer’s question to D was to enable the officer to respond to a potential ongoing emergency, defendant’s confrontation right under the Sixth Amendment was not implicated. But in Camarena, the court held that our focus on the nature of the questions directed at *170the complainant by the emergency operator to the exclusion of the complainant’s responses was error. 344 Or at 40. Rather, the appropriate focus under Davis is on whether Debler’s testimony about D’s statements related to events as they actually were occurring in D’s presence, or whether D was describing to Debler what had occurred in the past.
In light of that focus, it is evident that D’s statements that Alonzo “had left on foot” and that “[h]e kicked her in the face when she was sleeping” are reports of events that had already occurred and are, therefore, testimonial in nature. There may have been an emergency regarding the victim’s physical condition that existed at the time, but D’s statements do not pertain to that emergency.
That said, the majority’s result is correct. Defendant’s convictions on Counts 1, 2, and 3 must be reversed because the trial court erred in admitting statements made by D (who did not testify at defendant’s trial) in violation of his Sixth Amendment Confrontation right.

 Under Davis, the differences between testimonial and nontestimonial statements are that:
“Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecutions.”
Davis, 547 US at 822.

 The United States Supreme Court decided Davis v. Washington and Hammon v. Indiana in a consolidated opinion. 547 US 813, 126 S Ct 2266, 165 L Ed 2d 224 (2006).