Court Opinion

ID: 9569865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:18:08.586061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:11.289568
License: Public Domain

JOSEPH, C. J.,
dissenting.
Defendant contends that State v. Noble, 94 Or App 123, 764 P2d 949 (1988), rev dismissed 307 Or 506 (1989), was wrongly decided and should be overruled in its entirety. He points out (and the lead opinion apparently agrees) that ORS 161.620 is not as clear and unambiguous as Noble treated it. He argues that the legislative history compels the conclusion that the legislature meant to bar imposition of any minimum term of imprisonment on a remanded juvenile, except in the specific instance of aggravated murder. The lead opinion reaches some sort of compromise, which I cannot quite comprehend, that seems to be based on some policy that the legislature did not express. It is wholly wrong. Judge *241Buttler is wrong in his concurrence and absolutely correct in his dissent.
The state does not dispute defendant’s legislative history, but it argues that that history leads to a different result from the one that defendant seeks. In its supplemental brief, the state quotes what it calls “[t]he only discussion * * * in the legislative history that might shed any light on the issue” between a committee member and a witness in a hearing on a proposed amendment to the bill and characterizes the discussion as “distinctly inconclusive.” That is close to the mark. In the absence of clear legislative history from which to devise intent, I would read the statute in the most straightforward manner and without inventing meanings for supposedly new legal terms, as the lead opinion apparently does.
Read without the lead opinion’s policy gloss, ORS 161.620 prohibits the imposition of any mandatory prison term on a remanded juvenile, except if the conviction is under ORS 163.105. Noble was wrongly decided, and we should overrule it in its entirety.