Court Opinion

ID: 9503480
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:46:28.508552+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:30.114679
License: Public Domain

VAN HOOMISSEN, J.,
concurring.
In this proceeding for judicial review of an order of the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB), I agree with the analysis and holding of the majority. I write separately to record a few impressions that I have formed after more than a decade of reviewing PSRB orders.
First, it is not unusual for a petitioner on conditional release to request a full discharge from PSRB’s jurisdiction within a relatively short time after his or her original commitment to PSRB. The record on review in such cases, however, frequently contains only the sketchiest evidence of the criminal conduct that resulted in the petitioner being found guilty except for insanity. I should think that, if someone were found to be guilty except for insanity a relatively short time before a PSRB hearing, then the likelihood that that person no longer would be affected by mental disease or defect, or, if so affected, no longer would present a substantial danger to others at the time of the hearing would be, at best, doubtful. For that reason, I should think that the state would want to present, and that PSRB would want to consider, the record of the petitioner’s trial and evidence of the petitioner’s entire psychiatric and criminal history.
ORS 161.346(3) provides in part:
“The board shall consider all evidence available to it which is material, relevant and reliable regarding the issues before the board. Such evidence may include but is not limited to the record of trial, the information supplied by the attorney representing the state or by any other interested *130party, including the person, and information concerning the person’s mental condition and the entire psychiatric and criminal history of the person. All evidence of a type commonly relied upon by reasonably prudent persons in the conduct of their serious affairs shall be admissible at hearings. * * **
That kind of evidence has been missing in several of the PSRB cases recently reviewed by this court.
Second, ORS 161.336(3) provides:
“For purposes of this section, a person affected by a mental disease or defect in a state of remission is considered to have a mental disease or defect requiring supervision when the disease may, with reasonable medical probability, occasionally become active and, when active, render the person a danger to others. The person may be continued On conditional release by the board as provided in this section.”
The fact that a person affected by a mental disease or defect in a state of remission presently is not evidencing conduct rendering him or her a danger to others might be the consequence of that person’s current supervision, treatment, and medication. PSRB must be alert to the reality that a petitioner’s discharge from PSRB’s jurisdiction might result in the abrupt cessation of those ameliorating influences.
Third, it cannot be overemphasized that the burden of proof at an ORS 161.336(7) discharge hearing is on the petitioner. ORS 161.336(7)(a) provides in part:
“Any person conditionally released under this section may apply to the board for discharge from or modification of an order of conditional release on the ground that the person is no longer affected by mental disease or defect or, if still so affected, no longer presents a substantial danger to others and no longer requires supervision, medication, care or treatment. * * * The applicant, at the hearing pursuant to this subsection, must prove by a preponderance of the evidence the applicant’s fitness for discharge or modification of the order of conditional release.”
In this case, the Court of Appeals held that, once petitioner offered evidence that he no longer suffered from the disease, the state had the burden to overcome that evidence and to *131show that petitioner still suffered from a mental illness. That is incorrect. The burden of proof does not shift to the state. The state is not required to introduce affirmative evidence of the petitioner’s unfitness for discharge or modification of the order of conditional release. PSRB is entitled to find that petitioner’s evidence is unpersuasive. If PSRB was not persuaded that petitioner in this case had sustained his burden of proof, then it was entitled to deny his application for discharge on that ground alone, and, in this case, that probably is what it should have done.
I note finally, that, as in all proceedings for judicial review of administrative decisions, this court’s task is facilitated by a cogent explanation of the reasons for PSRB’s decision.1

 ORS 183.470(2) provides:
“A final order shall be accompanied by findings of fact and conclusions of law. The findings of fact shall consist of a concise statement of the underlying facts supporting the findings as to each contested issue of fact and as to each ultimate fact required to support the agency’s order.”