Court Opinion

ID: 9503311
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:41:07.029946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:23.046141
License: Public Domain

LINDER, J.,
dissenting.
It will come as a surprise to the trial judge in this case to learn that he erred by failing to redact from the recorded conversation the four statements that the majority sets out in footnote 1 of its opinion. 343 Or at 478 n 1. The Court of Appeals will be equally surprised. Until defendant filed his petition for review with this court, defendant did not identify those four statements as ones that could be and should be selectively removed from the recording to reduce any prejudice to his defense. Defendant’s objection, instead, ran to the entire recording. Defense counsel argued that there was a “huge amount of stuff’ and “a lot of inadmissible material” in the recording that would reflect his client’s bad opinion of him. Defense counsel identified one, and only one, way to redact the recording to make it less objectionable — by playing “a portion only” in which defendant had said he was “going to sign the kids over to the state.” In defense counsel’s view, the jurors should “just hear that.” If they heard the rest, the “ball game” was over — he could not be an effective advocate for his client “with all that garbage” on the recording.
The majority, by its holding in this case, makes it the trial court’s responsibility to sort through the garbage to decide what is admissible and what is not. That traditionally has not been, and should not be, a trial court’s responsibility. If evidence is admissible in part and inadmissible in part, a party may not object to it as a whole; instead, an objecting party must identify with particularity the inadmissible parts. See, e.g., State v. Brown, 310 Or 347, 358-59, 800 P2d *486259 (1990) (objecting party has the responsibility of segregating inadmissible portions of testimony from admissible ones); Brown v. J. C. Penney Co., 297 Or 695, 704-05, 688 P2d 811 (1984) (same rule for exhibits). The majority does not quarrel with that settled principle. Remarkably, howevér, the majority finds it satisfied here. It does so because defense counsel asserted, as his reason for objecting to the entire recording, that the recording contained derogatory statements that would make it difficult for him to advocate for his client. 343 Or at 479-80. From that much, without more, the majority asserts that it has “every confidence” that the trial court knew defense counsel wanted four specific statements redacted from the recording and defense counsel did not need to identify them with any particularity. 343 Or at 480 n 2.
I respectfully disagree. In my view, the record supports neither half of the majority’s confident assertion — it does not support that defendant wanted four specific statements redacted from the recording; it does not support that the trial court would have understood that. Defendant’s recorded conversation with his mother was replete with statements reflecting his dissatisfaction with his lawyer and his insistence that his mother hire a different lawyer for him. Some of the statements reflected defendant’s dissatisfaction directly (e.g., by calling his counsel a “motherfucker”). Others reflected his dissatisfaction indirectly (e.g., by demanding that his mother get him a “good lawyer”). But in the context of the recording as a whole, the statements all had the same flavor, and defense counsel’s objection encompassed them all when he argued that the recording contained a “huge amount” of derogatory statements and was full of “all that garbage.” Defense counsel’s obvious point was that the recording was infused with objectionable statements. The trial court expressly agreed. As a result, when the issue of the recording’s admissibility first arose, the trial court ruled that no part of the recording would be admitted, except for the one portion in which defendant said he would relinquish custody of his kids to the state, which would be admissible if defendant denied making the statement.
In effect, at that point, the trial court agreed with defendant that all but a small portion of the recording was more prejudicial than probative, and would not be admitted. *487There was no reason, given that ruling, for defendant to urge that the rest should be admitted only if some or all of defendant’s statements about his lawyer were redacted. There was no reason, as well, for the trial court to consider redacting any of the remainder of the recording. In fact, defense counsel did not so argue, and the trial court never considered the possibility of redacting any particular derogatory statements. Later, when defendant admitted making the statement and went on to give an explanation for why he said it, one that the recorded conversation flatly belies, defense counsel agreed that the explanation opened the door to the admission of the entire conversation, which revealed defendant’s real reason for making the threat. If defense counsel had in mind that the trial court should redact specific derogatory statements, defense counsel logically would have voiced any proposal to redact them at that time. But defense counsel did not do so. Instead, as the quotation set forth in the majority opinion reveals, defense counsel argued only that he could not effectively advocate for his client if “that tape comes in” because “the totality of it” made it too prejudicial. 343 Or at 476. For the trial court and the parties the issue of the recording’s admissibility at that point was an all or nothing proposition. Defense counsel objected to the entire recording because of the derogatory statements it contained; defense counsel never suggested that there was a way to cure or minimize the prejudice by redacting those statements.1
*488Now, for the first time on review in this court, defendant argues that four of his statements should have been redacted from the recording, and the state then could have been permitted to impeach his testimony with the rest. Aided by a written transcription of the recording that was prepared for the appeal (but was not available at trial), defendant proposes that four of the statements that directly attack his trial counsel’s competence could have been redacted from the recording, and the indirect attacks could remain so that the recording retains some evidentiary value.2 At trial, however, no such proposal was ever made. There was no written transcript that anyone could dissect with surgical precision; the trial court and the parties had only the oral recording, which was played once outside of the presence of the jury so that the trial court could rule on defendant’s motion. No one parsed the conversation or defendant’s statements the way that the appeal has permitted. The record simply provides no basis to conclude, as the majority does with “every confidence,” that the trial court understood that defense counsel wanted the court to redact the four specific statements defendant identifies in his briefing to this court.
The issue properly before us, therefore, is not whether the trial court should have redacted the four statements from the recording before admitting it. Rather, the issue properly before us is the same one that the trial court and the Court of Appeals were asked to decide — whether the trial court abused its discretion in concluding that the recorded conversation as a whole, which included the derogatory statements, was more probative than prejudicial under OEC 403.3
*489In making that OEC 403 assessment, the trial court did not err. As a starting point, it is worth remembering (as the majority notes as well) that trial courts are granted broad discretion in performing the necessary balancing under OEC 403, as long as they make findings to back up their discretionary call. State v. Mayfield, 302 Or 631, 647, 733 P2d 438 (1987). This case well illustrates the importance of the deference we give to a trial court’s superior position to make the assessment that OEC 403 requires.
The first factor in the OEC balancing — the relevancy of the evidence — is readily satisfied. See Mayfield, 302 Or at 645 (identifying test). This was purely a credibility dispute: everything turned on whether the jury believed the victim or defendant. Defendant offered the jury only one reason to believe him — at great length and in great detail, he portrayed himself as a devoted, ethical, and sacrificing parent who would never do anything to harm his kids or those of his live-in girlfriend {i.e., the victim). That defense made it relevant for the state to show that defendant was willing to callously relinquish his kids to state custody. When asked whether he made the statement, defendant readily admitted it and then, without prompting by his counsel, insisted on explaining why. The recording, by showing the context in which the statement was made, revealed the actual reason— i.e., defendant told his mother explicitly that he would sign his children over to the state as a way of punishing her if she did not somehow hire a different attorney for him, despite her financial inability to do so. From the recording, the jury could conclude that the explanation defendant gave on the stand and under oath was a blatant lie, but one that continued defendant’s self-portrayal as a saint-like father and family man — i.e., he could not burden his aging mother or his sister *490with the care of his children, and he was willing to turn them over to the state solely out of love for them and for the rest of his family. The fact that his real reason was extortion and self-interest directly impeached defendant on an issue he had made central to his defense. The recording was, for that reason, directly and powerfully relevant.
The second OEC 403 inquiry is the danger of “unfair prejudice” inherent in the evidence. Mayfield, 302 Or at 645. The majority, based on its reading of the record, concludes that the trial court placed a low value on the fact that defendant’s derogatory statements might impair defense counsel’s ability to represent his client effectively. I disagree. To the contrary, the trial court recognized the danger, and said so expressly. Because of that danger, the trial court initially ruled that the recording could not come in at all, except for the limited portion in which defendant said he would relinquish custody of his kids to the state (and then, only if defendant denied making the statement). The trial court admitted the evidence only after defendant insisted on giving an explanation to the jury that directly furthered his defense and that was, point blank, directly contradicted by the recording. In doing so, the trial court expressly found that defendant had brought the problem on himself, a finding that has direct bearing on the degree to which any prejudice inherent in the derogatory statements was “unfair.”
The majority says little about defendant’s role in bringing on the problem himself. The trial court’s finding takes on particular significance, however, when viewed in the broader context of defendant’s pretrial conduct before the same trial judge. Defendant’s trial counsel was not the first attorney appointed to represent him. Months before the trial, his first counsel moved to withdraw because of defendant’s unhappiness with his representation. The trial court was not initially satisfied that defendant had articulated an adequate basis for the court to give him substitute counsel. Defendant’s first counsel, however, asked to be heard on the matter. After explaining that he was usually resilient in the face of such motions, he could not personally look past “some of the things that [defendant] has said both in telephone calls to his family and [in] letters regarding my abilities.” Because of defendant’s statements, defense counsel feared that he would not *491zealously represent defendant and that defendant’s case would be prejudiced. Counsel’s representations in that regard convinced the trial court that counsel should be permitted to withdraw.
In the months that followed, defendant persistently tried to remove the next attorney appointed for him and have the court appoint one that he had identified as acceptable to him. The trial court repeatedly emphasized to defendant that he was entitled to competent counsel at public expense, not to an attorney of his choosing. Although defendant’s second counsel (his eventual trial counsel) asked to withdraw because his client lacked confidence in him, the trial court denied the motion and advised defendant that the court was not going to continue appointing attorneys for defendant until defendant finally found one that he would accept. Sometime between that admonition and the scheduled trial date, defendant spoke with his mother from jail to coerce and intimidate her into retaining an attorney for him. As he had with his first attorney, defendant criticized and insulted his appointed counsel’s abilities in highly derogatory terms. The recording of the conversation was the one that would later be the source of controversy at trial.
By the morning of trial, defendant’s mother had retained an attorney to represent defendant, one that defendant approved of, but who would take the case only if the trial was continued. Defendant’s second counsel moved for a continuance. He also moved to withdraw, both because of defendant’s desire to be represented by retained counsel and because defendant and his family had made serious accusations of dishonesty against counsel. The trial court denied the motions for a continuance and for withdrawal of counsel. Defendant responded by explaining that he “desperately” needed retained counsel to represent him and that he could not go to trial with the appointed second counsel. Despite defendant’s protestations, and within moments of them, the trial began.
Thus, when defendant took the stand, he had nothing to lose and possibly, in his mind, had everything to gain by admitting that he was willing to give custody of his kids to *492the state, and then giving an explanation that was flatly contradicted by the recording. On the one hand, if he got away with the contradiction, it bolstered his defense. On the other, if the state introduced the entire recording to impeach him, the prejudice of his. derogatory statements might well work to his benefit. Those kinds of statements had, after all, caused the trial court to permit his first attorney to withdraw; defendant was “desperate,” after all, not to go to trial with his second appointed counsel.
Again, one of the reasons for giving trial courts broad discretion in applying the OEC 403 balancing test is that they are in the better position to make the exact kind of assessment that the trial court made in this case. The derogatory statements that defendant made about his attorney may have had some tendency to reduce the jury’s opinion of defense counsel’s skills.4 But the trial court was in an excellent position to assess the degree to which defendant brought on that prejudice through his own conduct and choices. The trial court’s finding that defendant did so should weigh heavily in the calculus, especially on this record.
The third step of the OEC 403 analysis requires balancing the probative value versus the prejudicial effect of the proffered evidence. Mayfield, 302 Or at 645. The majority largely dismisses the trial court’s assessment, stating that “the most reasonable reading of the record is that the trial judge did not engage in a weighing process at all” and, instead, “merely concluded” that the jury “must unavoidably hear everything in the recording!.]” 343 Or at 483. The majority’s analysis is constructed on a false premise. Again, the issue of redaction of select statements was never presented to the trial court. Defense counsel’s objection was to the entire recording, because the derogatory statements were so pervasive and numerous. The trial court, confronted with an all or nothing choice to make, struck the balance accordingly. The *493trial court did not abdicate its responsibility to make the needed assessment.
That leaves only the fourth and final step under OEC 403 — for the trial court to make a ruling to admit all or part of the proponent’s evidence. Mayfield, 302 Or at 645. Because defendant did not preserve an argument that the recording was admissible if four of the derogatory statements were removed, the trial court properly considered only whether to admit the recording in toto. In making its OEC 403 ruling, 'the trial court correctly exercised sound discretion and did not err.
I would affirm defendant’s conviction and the decision of the Court of Appeals. I therefore respectfully dissent.
Kistler, and Walters, JJ., join in this dissent.

 There are two reasons why the subject of redacting the derogatory statements may never have come up. First, as I have already described, no one suggested that some statements could be distinguished from others, so that^only four had to be removed. Redacting them all, however, likely would have removed so much of the substance and context of the conversation as to render the recording inaccurate. See State v. Harberts, 315 Or 408, 417-18, 848 P2d 1187 (1993) (redaction of inadmissible matters from otherwise relevant evidence may be permitted if the meaning of what remains is not significantly altered). Second, the record suggests significant doubt whether such redaction of the conversation at the sentence or phrase level was possible. After the prosecutor offered to make an altered recording containing only the portion of defendant’s statements about relinquishing custody of his kids, the prosecutor asked for clarification of her task. She asked what she was expected to do with, for example, defendant’s statement, “If you don’t get me a new attorney, I’m going to sign over the kids.” She explained that it was hard to break up the recording to delete part of a statement like that. The trial court acknowledged the difficulty and told the prosecutor she did not have to sanitize it completely; the court was asking her only to extract the portion about signing over the kids from the rest of the conversation. Defense counsel took no issue with the prosecutor’s comments about the difficulty of redacting highly select portions of the recording.

 With the direct attacks on defendant’s counsel removed, the other statements become much more benign — they appear to be mere requests for a lawyer, rather than requests for a different lawyer. For example, the recording would still contain: (1) defendant’s threat to give custody of his kids to the state if his mother and girlfriend “cannot get me a good lawyer;” (2) his statement that he just wants to find a lawyer and doesn’t care if it is “Mr. Magoo and on his first case;” and (3) his acknowledgment that the investigator on the case was on his side, but the investigator was not a lawyer. It is the written transcript, however, that makes it possible, on careful examination, to find a way to leave some statements in, while removing others.

 Significantly, defendant did not on appeal give the Court of Appeals the benefit of the same list of objectionable statements. Indeed, out of the 13 pages of argument in defendant’s Court of Appeals brief, defendant’s entire argument on *489redaction was a single sentence in which defendant urged that his statements expressing his opinion about his counsel’s competence “could have been redacted without changing the import of defendant’s remarks about his children.” Defendant was nonspecific and did not identify the four statements that he has enumerated in his briefing to this court. Defendant therefore failed to preserve the redaction issue in two ways: by not making that argument to the trial court and by not presenting that issue to the Court of Appeals. See State v. Wyatt, 331 Or 335, 341-47, 15 P3d 22 (2000) (court will not consider an issue not preserved before the trial court); Tarwater v. Cupp, 304 Or 639, 644-45, 644 n 5, 748 P2d 125 (1988) (a petitioner in this court cannot shift or change position on review and argue or raise an issue that was not before the Court of Appeals).

 I am far less confident of that conclusion than the majority is. It seems equally or more probable that the jurors, who can observe the attorneys and their skills throughout the trial, will make and trust their own judgments about the abilities of the defense counsel and the prosecutor (and, for that matter, the trial court). For present purposes, however, I accept that the statements pose some danger of prejudice, albeit difficult to quantify.