Court Opinion

ID: 9792597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:31:36.598525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:43.839241
License: Public Domain

LENT, C. J.,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that Section 11 of Article I of the Oregon State Constitution1 guarantees to a defendant not only the right to have process to compel witnesses to attend his trial but the right to have them testify. I must dissent, however, from the majority’s holding that the legislature can preclude a defendant’s witness from testifying because defendant’s counsel did not allow discovery.
The majority holds, in effect, that as a sanction for noncompliance with a rule of procedure, a defendant may be wrongly convicted of an entirely different crime. Such a sanction cannot be consistent with our most basic constitutional principles.
Under the statutory law of Oregon, one charged with the commission of a crime is assumed to be innocent *281until his guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt. See former ORS 17.250(5) and 41.360(1), and present ORS 10.095(6) and Rule 309, Oregon Evidence Code. See also State v. Burrow, 293 Or 691, 693-94, 653 P2d 226, 234-239 (1982) (dissenting opinion). If our state law did not so provide, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution would do so. In re Winship, 397 US 358, 364, 90 S Ct 1068, 1073, 25 LEd 2d 368, 375 (1969), and Jackson v. Virginia, 443 US 307, 99 S Ct 2781, 61 LEd 2d 560 (1979).
Accordingly, the trial upon a criminal charge is for the purpose of establishing whether the defendant has committed the crime charged. As the majority acknowledges, the defendant is constitutionally entitled to have his witnesses testify in order to establish a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. Nevertheless, the majority here decides that the legislature and the courts may vitiate that constitutional right. The majority has adopted an exclusionary rule, not to further the purposes of the Constitution, not to protect the citizenry from the sometimes lawless acts of the government, not to remove the courts from participation in such lawless acts.
This exclusionary rule does no more than to further the prosecution’s statutory right to discovery at the expense of preventing the trier of fact from considering evidence from which the true facts might be found. If the defendant’s right to present his evidence arose only from statute, what the majority does here would be permissible, but it is not permissible to enervate the defendant’s constitutional right.
The sanction authorized by the legislature, and now sustained by this court, for failure of defendant’s counsel to permit discovery prevents the factfinder from having relevant evidence. This sanction may well result in the conviction of one who did not commit the charged crime. Surely the legislature is not so lacking in imagination as to prevent it from fashioning a sanction for failure to allow discovery that does not silence witnesses who have evidence favorable to an accused.
The majority turns to examples of how the defendant’s right to compulsory process may be conditioned by *282the legislature. For instance, the majority notes that if a defendant does not jump through certain hoops, he may not be able to subpoena a witness into court. That the witness in such circumstances is not present is not a sanction imposed by the state. The example is helpful, however, in drawing attention to a more aptly comparable situation. Suppose that defendant desires the presence of a witness but fails to request and serve a subpoena. In the course of the trial and during the defendant’s case in chief, the witness is discovered to be in the courtroom and comes forward, willing to testify when called by the defendant. Would the majority hold that the witness would not be permitted to testify because the defendant failed properly to subpoena the witness?
Likewise, the example of excluding the unruly defendant from the courtroom does not prevent the presentation of relevant evidence to the factfinder; the exclusion simply permits the trial to continue.
Other matters mentioned by the majority have no more relevance to the issue. No one argues that the defendant is not bound by certain rules of procedure, such as the time at which his evidence is to be presented, the order of opening statements and argument, etc. Nor does anyone argue that the defendant is not bound by the rules of evidence, which keep certain matters such as hearsay from the factfinder because hearsay injures the search for truth.
There is little to be gained by proceeding through the majority’s opinion paragraph by paragraph. An attentive reading will show that it is almost entirely devoted to explaining that it is permissible to require a defendant to disclose his witnesses in advance of calling them. But that is not challenged, and it is not the issue. To belabor the point that this requirement is reciprocal merely draws attention away from the real issue. The real issue is not the requirement but the sanction of trying the case without the testimony of a witness, although that testimony may be entirely truthful, persuasive, and decisive of the defendant’s innocence of the substantive charges. The majority opinion simply ducks this issue of the mismatch between the *283violation of the disclosure requirement and the sanction of a possibly wrongful conviction of a serious crime.2
One more premise should be mentioned, however, and that is the admonition to the trial judge to use the sanction of preclusion only as a last resort. That would not make it permissible as against the Constitution. Suppose that the statute merely said that the defendant could not call a witness unless his name were given to the state 72 hours in advance of trial. What the majority is saying is that the state, acting through the court, could prevent the defendant from having his unannounced witness testify. It does not become any more constitutionally palatable to have the judge go through some sort of checklist of lesser sanctions before proceeding to the ultimate sanction. If he can exercise the ultimate sanction at all, he can do it without considering whether there are lesser sanctions that might be applied.
I do not argue that reciprocal discovery is not a worthy object. If the state fails to allow discovery, it does not lose any right guaranteed to the state under the Constitution, but if the defendant disobeys the statute, the rule of this case is that he loses for failure to abide by a statute, a constitutional right; moreover, it is the loss of a constitutional right, the exercise of which is an aid to the factfinder in deciding whether an accused is guilty.
As acknowledged by the majority, the constitutional guarantee with which we are here concerned is the right to present a defense so that the factfinder may decide where the truth lies. The majority’s decision is not in accord with its acknowledged premise.
Today’s decision is no way to deal with one of the most basic guarantees in criminal procedure. It is an aberration in the name of “reasonable” departures from constitutional guarantees. We must look forward to another day when the court will once again treat the Constitution as binding law, not as mere weights to be balanced in the majority’s own scale of values.
Linde, J., joins in this opinion.

 Oregon Constitution, Article I, Section 11 provides:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the right * * * to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; * * *.”

 Moreover, when the nondisclosure is the fault of defendant’s counsel, as in this case, excluding the witness may merely set the stage for a post-conviction claim of inadequate representation.