Court Opinion

ID: 9791581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:13:52.925829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:36.949063
License: Public Domain

HOLMAN, J.,
dissenting.
In the present case the state’s evidence was that defendant, a stranger to complainants, was found in complainants’ home during the nighttime with a gun with which he menaced complainants while inquiring where the money and drugs were kept. He was subsequently arrested upon the premises by police who responded to a call by one of the complainants who had crawled out a window. Defendant did not testify before the jury.
By refusing to instruct the jury on criminal trespass as a lesser included offense of that of burglary, the trial court would not permit the jury to find that defendant was in the complainants’ dwelling without authority but was not otherwise criminally involved, which is the definition of criminal trespass in the first degree. First degree burglary is defined as follows:
OBS 164225. “(1) A person commits the crime of burglary in the first degree if he violates OBS 164215[①] and the building is a dwelling, or if in effecting entry or while in a building or in immediate flight therefrom he;
(a) Is armed with a burglar’s tool as defined in OBS 164235 or a deadly weapon; or
(b) Causes or attempts to cause physical injury to any person; or
*165(c) Uses or threatens to nse a dangerous weapon.
ÍÉ# # # * JJ
By refusing to give the requested instruction the trial judge was not giving the jury the option of disbelieving that part of complainants’ testimony concerning defendant’s possession and use of the gun and his demands upon them.
This is illogical to me. If the jury is obligated to believe either all of the complainants’ testimony or none of it, defendant is forced to testify, whether he desires to do so or not, in order to be entitled to a lesser included instruction. It is the only place in the law, to my knowledge, where such an “all or nothing” situation exists. If ORS 136.660 is generally construed to entitle a defendant to the submission of lesser included crimes, I see no adequate basis for avoiding the consequences of the statute by changing the usual manner in which a jury may treat the believability of evidence submitted to it by requiring that there must be a dispute in the evidence before the jury has the option of disbelieving part of it.

 ORS 164.215. “(1) A person commits the crime of burglary in the second degree if he enters or remains unlawfully in a building with intent to commit a crime therein.
# * * * >>