Court Opinion

ID: 9854180
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:02:26.87288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:57.907751
License: Public Domain

*382FADELE Y, J.,
dissenting.
I join in the dissent of Carson, J., other than part I.B.2.1 join that dissent because in the circumstances of this case he correctly answers the governing question: Did the legislature “clearly indicate” an intention to dispense with all reasoned defenses to a DUII charge when the only indicator of legislative intent is legislative silence? As Berry v. Branner, 245 Or 307, 311, 421 P2d 996 (1966), states: “Legislative inaction is a weak reed upon which to lean in determining legislative intent.” The criminal code interpretive guidelines still strongly favor culpability as a necessary element on the road to criminal punishment unless the legislature “clearly indicates” otherwise.
I also dissent for the additional reasons expressed here. As far as this court knows, defendant has been convicted of a crime because he drank a cup of coffee handed to him by a friend and thereafter drove a vehicle on the public way. After deliberation, I simply can’t bring myself to believe that the legislature intended to prevent any jury consideration and determination of a defense of the character that defendant asserts in this case.
The majority’s holding produces grave constitutional consequences. Criminal defendants may be deprived of a meaningful jury trial, as the practical result of the majority’s rule, because they will be prevented from presenting a defense showing that they are not criminally responsible in the parameters of the case. See Wardius v. Oregon, 412 US 470, 98 S Ct 2208, 37 L Ed 2d 82 (1973).
Under the majority’s analysis, the only things defendant could have done to avoid becoming a criminal with a record were to say no thanks for the coffee or to never drive after drinking any liquid the exact origin or contents of which the imbiber does not personally know. That analysis makes acts criminal in a way that impairs the guarantee to trial by jury in criminal cases.
Five weeks after his 18th birthday, defendant was cited for driving under the influence. He was driving. The breathalyzer indicated his blood-alcohol content was above the statutory limit of .08 percent. These two facts convict, the majority holds. I agree, if any alcohol was ingested knowingly, *383which it may not have been in this case. That is what a jury must decide.
Defendant attempted to prove at trial that he had neither knowingly nor voluntarily consumed any intoxicants before driving. He claimed that his volition was not exercised to place any alcohol in his body. Defendant’s counsel asserted the right to submit the defense to the fact finder for a fact determination as a matter of “fairness and due process of law.” The trial judge ruled as a matter of law that the trier of fact could not hear and could not consider the truth or falsity of that assertion. It didn’t matter on the question of criminal guilt, the judge ruled as a matter of law after stating: “I have some reservations about the fairness of it also.”
In a criminal context the Oregon Constitution, not to mention federal provisions, guarantees certain fundamental process. Article I, section 11, provides in part that “the accused shall have the right to public trial by an impartial jury.” The provision guarantees that the accused may be heard. ORS 136.320 contemplates that criminal guilt or innocence shall only be determined by a jury, or other fact finder if a defendant waives a jury. Compare Or Const, Art I, § 16 with ORS 136.310 and 136.320. The fact finder may not be legislatively instructed to enter a guilty verdict no matter what the defense claimed by the defendant may be. Otherwise, the jury-trial guarantee becomes meaningless. Otherwise, the legislature or, as in this case under the majority, the court usurps the role of the jury in an offense designated as a misdemeanor, i.e., a crime. Cf. Mitchell v. Superior Court,_Cal3d_, 265 Cal Rptr 144, 783 P2d 731, 737 (1989).
I believe we must notice the constitutional issue in this case, or countenance a criminal conviction of defendant which may not be founded on any reprehensible conduct or any acts he could know to avoid. See Or Const, Art VII (Amended), § 3. The following questions might frame that issue.
To what extent may the legislature or this court constitutionally prevent a jury from exercising any meaningful role in determining whether a person shall be declared to be a criminal or otherwise held criminally responsible by proscribing, as a crime, a status or act lacking any volitional component on the part of an accused defendant? May a jury be *384prevented from making a reasoned moral response to the question of criminal responsibility of a defendant found in a non-volitional status or performing a non-volitional act without knowledge that the act contributes to the person coming within the non-volitional status?
The majority’s labeling of an offense as a “strict liability crime” without distinguishing between the types of conduct or status proscribed seems to both prevent the jury’s reasoned moral response to defendant’s actual conduct and to promote a policy of punishment without knowing conduct that creates the status that the legislature defines as an element of a violation of criminal law. In this case, the truthfulness of defendant’s claims about how he came to be in the forbidden status is unknown because the trial court shut its ears to the defense. The mere label “strict liability crime” should not prevent a meaningful role for the jury in assessing criminal responsibility.
Rather than analyzing the defense offered under the facts of this case to decide whether the legislature “clearly indicates” an intention to prevent the jury or other trier of fact from hearing this defense, the majority sets up and knocks down the straw men of other defenses based on quite different facts. For example, the majority sets up and knocks down the defenses “I was so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing” and “dangerously intoxicated drivers often insist, at times sincerely, that the liquor they drank did not affect their driving ability.” Neither straw-man case is this case. I strongly agree with the majority that “one who drives after drinking intoxicating liquor takes the risk that his BAC [blood-alcohol content] violates the statute.” But what “risk” did Mr. Miller understandingly take?
The majority points out the policy of society is “to get drunken drivers off Oregon highways.” Again, I agree. Clearly, the police who apprehended defendant should have done so and should have arrested him and prevented his further driving. But that is not the issue. Rather, the question is whether that policy must mean that a person who asserts that he does not know he had anything at all alcoholic to drink should be prevented from telling that to the jury so it may decide whether he is truthful and, therefore, not a criminal. Even if one feels that it is not very likely that the jury will believe the *385defendant, that credibility question is what jurors and other triers of fact are to decide. Keeping drunken drivers off the road will not be achieved by convicting people who believed they drank coffee only. As the written decision in State v. Maguire, 78 Or App 459, 462, 717 P2d 226 (1986), aff’d without opinion by an equally divided court 303 Or 368, 736 P2d 193 (1987), points out, in discussing the policy foundation of the DUII statute:
“The legislature made DUII a crime in order to keep dangerous drivers off the road. It was undoubtedly aware of what experience with DUII cases shows: dangerously intoxicated drivers often insist, at times sincerely, that the liquor which they drank has not affected their driving ability.” 78 Or App at 462.
The majority also cite State v. Bunch, 87 Or App 386, 742 P2d 74 (1987), a ten-line per curiam opinion citing Maguire, supra. Maguire is about a defendant who knew she was drinking alcohol and doing so to excess as a “compulsive” drinker, not about a person who drank what he believed to be a cup of coffee, handed to him by a friend, as defendant here asserts.
Without doubt, the legislature intended that voluntary intoxication not be a defense to DUII. Becoming so drunk you don’t know what you are doing is certainly criminal under DUII if you drive. Moreover, that statutory defense is limited to specific intent offenses and does not apply generally as do the provisions of ORS 161.105, and it may well be that the legislature intended to exclude the specific defense that one is a compulsive drinker and couldn’t help himself, which is the extent of the holding on the facts of Maguire, supra. After all, one is not compelled to drive just because one is an uncontrollable alcoholic. A “risk” has been consciously or knowingly taken. But to move from those cases to this one is quite a jump. To hold that the legislature intended to make criminal the act of drinking a cup of coffee handed to you by a friend (or a truck-stop waiter) is, to borrow the majority’s word, “preposterous.”
A conviction here will not further the purpose of the statute to keep drinking drivers off the road. It will, instead, give a criminal record to a presumptively innocent 18-year-old who, according to his explanation, made no understanding *386choice which he could foresee would, even potentially, create a risk of going down life’s/foad as a convict. Further, a conviction here will permit this court, or the legislature, to deny jurors chosen from the community a meaningful role in the courtroom and deprive the defendant the right of trial by jury.
Nor is it likely that closing a jury’s eyes and ears to a defendant’s defense in a criminal case would pass federal constitutional muster. Making criminal the everyday conduct of drinking a cup of coffee and thereafter driving, without providing an opportunity to defendant to present claims to a jury for their assessment and determination, is far different from excluding testimony on the basis of state evidence rules about reliability or relevance.
The court would be expected to seek a construction of statutes which would avoid or minimize potential constitutional complications in a statutory interpretation case presented for decision. The court chose not to do so here, perhaps relying on the Oregon Constitution’s lack of an explicit “due process” clause.
Because I think the defense must be submitted to and decided by a jury, I would reverse and remand for trial.