Court Opinion

ID: 9755117
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:25:55.682156+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:03.004850
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, S. J.,
dissenting.
I generally agree with Judge Haselton’s interpretation of ORS 165.540 except as expressed below.
The statute is composed of two requirements that the state must prove in order to obtain a conviction under the statute that are discrete and independent of each other, unlike other criminal statutes that often focus on a series of circumstances that are attendant to or connected with the actions of the criminal actor. First, under ORS 165.540, the state must prove that the person charged with violating the *202statute obtained the conversation of another participant in the conversation. Second, the state must prove that the person who is the subject of the protection of the statute was not informed that his or her conversation is being obtained at the time that it was being obtained. How these requirements relate or correspond to each other is at the core of the dispute between the majority’s and the dissents’ interpretations of the statute.
The statute does not require that the defendant or anyone else must provide the requisite notice to the person whose conversation is being obtained at the time that it is being obtained. Under the statute’s language, the content of the notice determines the reach of the statute. Thus, the state is able to obtain a conviction under the statute by proving a negative, i.e., that the person whose conversation was being obtained by a specific person (the defendant) was not specifically informed of that fact by any manner. Although the first requirement focuses on the actions of the person who is charged under the statute, the second requirement focuses on the state of circumstances or lack of awareness of the person whose conversations are protected under the statute. Thus understood, the statute is violated only when a person acts to obtain the conversation of another and there also exists the circumstance that the person protected under the statute has not been informed in some manner that his or her conversation is being obtained by the actor referred to in the first requirement of the statute.
Consequently, under circumstances where a person enters into a conversation and the participants in the conversation are advised generically that “all conversations are subject to being recorded,” no violation could be proved by the state under the statute because each person has been specifically informed of the fact that his or her conversation is being obtained by whoever exercises control over the recording of the conversation. However, if that conversation is obtained by someone else not within the contemplation of the generic notice to the participants, then the statute’s requirements apply to that person separately.
In this case, ORS 165.540 applies separately to the actions of both persons. The officer gave notice under the *203statute as it requires, and, therefore, no violation occurred. However, defendant did not give the notice required by the statute. Defendant is in violation of the statute because the officer’s notice that the officer was obtaining his conversation did not inform the officer that his conversation was being obtained by defendant.
It follows that the trial court did not err, and, accordingly, I dissent.