Court Opinion

ID: 9788707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:16:07.903227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:16.129029
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, P. J.,
concurring.
I concur that the decision in this case is governed by the rule of law in State v. Garrett, 187 Or App 201, 66 P3d 554 (2003), and I disagree with the dissent that Garrett was wrongly decided. The issue, as I perceive it, is whether the trial court had the authority to require the state to accept defendant’s offer to stipulate in lieu of the state offering evidence on the issue of defendant’s prior conviction for assaulting the same victim. I agree that the principle of stare decisis applies and that we should affirm this case because of our ruling in Garrett. However, the dissent raises interesting questions about whether Garrett was correctly decided. Consequently, I write separately to express a rationale alternative to that expressed by the lead opinion as to why Garrett should not be overruled.
Although not expressed, the lead opinion perceives the ruling in Garrett to constitute a policy choice among several alternatives made by this court based on the inherent exercise of this court to decide procedural matters. In contrast to the lead opinion, I believe that the issue in Garrett and in this case, whether a trial court has the authority to force a party to accept a stipulation of fact in lieu of presenting evidence over its objection, is a question that had already been answered by the legislature before we decided Garrett.
OEC 402 is clear in its mandate and provides that “[a] 11 relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Oregon Evidence Code, by the Constitutions of the United States and Oregon, or by Oregon statutory and decisional law. Evidence which is not relevant is not admissible.” In essence, OEC 402 operates to circumscribe a trial court’s authority concerning the admission of relevant evidence. Any exclusion of relevant evidence outside the boundaries of the rule is beyond the authority of the court under OEC 402.
In this case, the evidence of a prior conviction of defendant for assaulting the same victim is relevant because the legislature has provided that an element of felony assault under ORS 163.160(3)(a) is that “[t]he person has previously *318been convicted of assaulting the same victim!.]”1 Assuming that the evidence that the state offers to prove the fact of the previous conviction is otherwise admissible under the Oregon Evidence Code, the only other provision of the code that comes into play is OEC 403. It provides that, “[although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” It cannot be said, in light of the fact that the legislature has made a prior conviction an element of the crime of felony assault in the fourth degree, that evidence of that fact is unfairly prejudicial, nor does such evidence fall within the other exceptions to admissibility in OEC 403.
The understanding that the legislature has already spoken on this issue is confirmed by the provisions of ORS 813.326(1) (in a prosecution for felony driving while under the influence, ORS 813.010(5), the state may be required to accept a defendant’s stipulation regarding a prior DUII conviction) and by the provisions of ORS 163.103(1) (where the state is required to accept the stipulation of a defendant charged with aggravated murder to the existence and validity of a prior conviction). Those statutes demonstrate that the legislature knows how, when it so desires, to require the state to accept a stipulation of fact in lieu of the entitlement to offer other relevant evidence. The presence of such provisions in ORS 813.326(1) and ORS 163.103(1) tends to imply a legislative intent not to otherwise limit the ability of a party to offer relevant evidence to satisfy its burden of proof. See Smith v. Clackamas County, 252 Or 230, 233, 448 P2d 512 (1969), overruled on other grounds by Whipple v. Howser, 291 Or 475, 487 n 6, 632 P2d 782 (1981) (“the inclusion of specific matter tends to imply a legislative intent to exclude related matters not mentioned”).
In summary, the above statutes, when read in light of OEC 402’s declaration that “[a]ll relevant evidence is admissible” (subject to the exceptions enumerated) persuade *319me that the legislature has already made the policy choice that the lead opinion employs to support our result in Garrett. It also follows that I disagree with the dissent because the legislature’s choice trumps the precedents on which the dissent relies. The dissent also posits that under Article I, section 11, “defendant had a right to waive a jury trial. A fortiori, he had a right partially to waive a jury trial, that is, to judicially admit to the prior conviction.” 189 Or App at 323 (Schuman, J., dissenting). In other words, the dissent reasons that, because the right to waive a jury trial exists under the constitution, necessarily included within that right is the right to waive a jury trial on some elements of the charge and obtain a jury trial on other elements. However, no part of section 11 authorizes or refers to a partial jury waiver of elements of a charge. Rather, the relevant portion of Article I, section 11, provides that an accused person “with the consent of the trial judge, may elect to waive trial by jury and consent to be tried by the judge of the court alone * * “Trial” in that context can only mean the “trial” of all the elements of the charge against the accused. In effect, the dissent rewrites section 11 rather than adhering to its text.
For the above reasons, I concur with the lead opinion’s result.

 “Relevant” evidence is “evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” OEC 401.