Court Opinion

ID: 9622525
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:19:21.722708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:27:08.363491
License: Public Domain

DE MUNIZ, J.,
dissenting.
In our opinion, we identified “the prosecution and conviction of persons who have committed criminal acts” as the unifying principle that logically connects all the provisions of SB 936, thereby immunizing the bill from defendant’s single-subject attack. State v. Fugate, 154 Or App 643, 654, 963 P2d 686 (1998). On reconsideration, defendant contends that the Supreme Court’s decision in Armatta v. Kitzhaber, 327 Or 250, 959 P2d 49 (1998), invalidating Measure 40 on the separate-vote requirement of Article XVII, section 1, of the Oregon Constitution, contains language and analysis that suggests we were wrong in concluding that SB 936 embraces only one subject. The majority states that “we are unable to discern anything that the [Armatta] court said by way of dictum in that case that sheds new light on the meaning and proper application of Article VI, section 20.” 156 Or App at 612.1 agree with the majority that Armatta implies no new formal analysis for the single-subject requirement. However, in my view, the court’s substantive analysis in Armatta, *615although involving the more narrow separate-vote requirement, compels us to conclude on reconsideration that SB 936 does indeed violate the single-subject requirement.
In Fugate, we concluded that the various provisions of SB 936 are related in that they
“directly concern the prosecution and conviction of persons who have committed criminal acts, and it is that unifying principle that logically connects all of the provisions of the act.” 154 Or App at 654.
We explained:
“The prosecution of any charged crime begins with arrest and continues through pretrial procedures that include pretrial release decisions, plea bargaining and jury selection. Next, the case may move to the trial stage, which involves issues about the admissibility of evidence. If the defendant is convicted, the next phase of the prosecution involves sentencing, probation or imprisonment, release on parole, and possibly probation or parole revocation proceedings.” Id.
However, in Armatta, the Supreme Court explicitly stated that the rights affected by several of the procedures we listed are not related to each other by the principle we offered. The court stated:
“Many of the constitutional provisions affected by Measure 40 are related in the sense that they pertain to constitutional rights that might be implicated during a criminal investigation or prosecution. However, not all * * * share even that relationship.” 327 Or at 283 (emphasis added).
That contradicts the unifying principle we identified in our initial opinion. For example, in Armatta, the court commented that the requirement that the jury pool in criminal cases be drawn from registered voters, which is also a provision of SB 936, does not pertain to constitutional rights that might he implicated during a criminal investigation or prosecution. Id. That implies that that requirement is not logically connected to the prosecution and conviction of criminals. The court goes on to state that
“the right of all people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures under Article I, section 9, has virtually nothing to do with the right of the criminally accused to *616have a unanimous verdict rendered in a murder case under Article I, section 11. * * * Similarly, the right of the criminally accused to bail by sufficient sureties under Article I, section 14, bears no relation to legislation concerning the qualification of jurors in criminal cases under Article VII (Amended), section 5(l)(a).”/d. at 283-84.
The court in Armatta made it clear that Measure 40 implicates unrelated rights that are not logically connected to one another.
In Armatta, the court was analyzing Measure 40 to determine whether it violated the more narrow separate-vote requirement of Article XVII, section 1, of the Oregon Constitution (“the separate-vote requirement * * * imposes a narrower requirement than does the single-subject requirement,” id. at 276 (emphasis in original)) when it made those observations. However, they are still relevant to a single-subject analysis because those observations were made as part of the analysis of whether the constitutional changes effected by Measure 40 were “closely related.” After determining that various parts of Measure 40 changed five different sections of the Oregon Constitution, the court concluded that those changes were “not closely related.” Id. at 283. Unlike the majority, I can only infer that if the various provisions of the constitution affected by Measure 40 have insufficient relation to one another, then the provisions of Measure 40 also have insufficient relation to one another. Those same provisions are contained in SB 936. Therefore it must follow, in light of Armatta, that those same provisions in SB 936 are “unrelated” and not connected, as we initially concluded, by a “unifying principle logically connecting all provisions in the act, such that it can be said that the act embraces but one subject.” Senate Bill 936 contains more than a single subject, and we err in concluding otherwise.
For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Wollheim, J., joins in this dissent.