Kinkel v. Persson

367 P.3d 956, 276 Or. App. 427, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 150
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedFebruary 10, 2016
Docket13C13698; A155449
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 367 P.3d 956 (Kinkel v. Persson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kinkel v. Persson, 367 P.3d 956, 276 Or. App. 427, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 150 (Or. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

SERCOMBE, P. J.

When he was 15 years old, petitioner shot and killed both of his parents. The next day, petitioner went to school and shot more than two dozen students, killing two and injuring the others. Once in custody, using a knife, petitioner attacked a police officer. Ultimately, petitioner pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and 25 counts of attempted murder; he pleaded no contest to an additional count of attempted murder based on his attack on the police officer. Following a lengthy sentencing hearing, the trial court sentenced petitioner to four concurrent 25-year prison terms on the murder convictions. On each of the attempted murder convictions, the court sentenced petitioner to a 90-month prison term, with 40 months of each sentence to run consecutively to all other counts. Thus, in the aggregate, petitioner was sentenced to 1,340 months (approximately 112 years) in prison. We affirmed those sentences on direct appeal, and the Supreme Court denied review. See State v. Kinkel, 184 Or App 277, 56 P3d 463, rev den, 335 Or 142 (2002) (Kinkel I).

In 2003, petitioner sought post-conviction relief, requesting that the judgment of conviction be set aside and the sentences be vacated. The post-conviction court denied relief and, on appeal from the post-conviction judgment, we affirmed and the Supreme Court, again, denied review. See Kinkel v. Lawhead, 240 Or App 403, 246 P3d 746, rev den, 350 Or 408 (2011) (Kinkel II).

In 2013, petitioner filed a successive petition for post-conviction relief, asserting that the nearly 112-year sentence imposed by the trial court violates the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against cruel and unusual punishments, as explained by Graham v. Florida, 560 US 48, 13 S Ct 2011, 176 L Ed 2d 825 (2010), and Miller v. Alabama, 567 US___, 132 S Ct 2455, 183 L Ed 2d 407 (2012). Petitioner and defendant (the superintendent) filed cross-motions for summary judgment and, ultimately, the post-conviction court granted the superintendent’s motion and entered a judgment dismissing the petition with prejudice. Petitioner appeals the post-conviction court’s judgment. As explained below, we conclude that the state statutory rule against successive [430]*430petitions bars the grounds for relief that petitioner raised in this case and, therefore, we affirm.

The relevant facts are not in dispute. As noted, petitioner’s convictions arise from the murders of his parents and his “subsequent shooting rampage at Thurston High School in Springfield in May 1998, when petitioner was 15 years old.” Kinkel II, 240 Or App at 405. Petitioner entered into a plea agreement under which he pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and 25 counts of attempted murder and pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder. In exchange, the state agreed to seek concurrent 25-year sentences for the four murder charges. Petitioner acknowledged that, for each count of attempted murder, he would “receive a sentence of 90 months” and that sentencing on those counts would be “open.”

At the sentencing hearing, which lasted six days, the court heard evidence regarding petitioner’s history and mental illness.1 We described the evidence from the sentencing hearing in Kinkel I:

“Evidence presented at sentencing demonstrated that defendant had been fascinated by weapons and explosives for many years. He had made comments to other students about his ability to build bombs and his desire to shoot people and had expressed admiration for the Unabomber and for a school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He had suggested to classmates that he might bring a gun to school and start shooting people and that he might bomb the school during a pep rally. Handwritten notations by defendant confirmed his interest in weapons and explosives and also revealed defendant’s fantasies of killing people. Those fantasies did not simply focus on individuals, but on killing large numbers of people indiscriminately. Defendant had been disciplined for numerous instances of acting out at school over the course of several years, including various acts of aggression against other students. He had also been disciplined for throwing rocks off a highway overpass onto cars and for shoplifting. He had received a limited amount of mental health treatment for depression in 1997, but that treatment had been discontinued before the 1997-98 school year.
[?]*?“After the crimes, defendant was evaluated by numerous medical experts. He reported that he had been hearing voices since he was 12 years old, including a voice that generally advocated violence against others, a second voice that criticized defendant and sometimes advised him to commit suicide, and a third that echoed the words of the other two. Defendant stated that the voice that advocated violence against others, instructed him to commit the murders and attempted murders on May 20 and 21, and he felt he had no choice but to obey the voice. He thought that the voices might have come from a chip that the government had implanted into his head. He also expressed concern that the Walt Disney Company was taking over the country and felt that he needed to be prepared for an invasion by the Chinese. He expressed fears that he was being spied on and concerns that his medications were poisoned. He tried on several occasions, secretively, to avoid taking his medications. The medical experts, for the most part, concluded that defendant suffers from paranoid schizophrenia or, possibly, a schizoaffective disorder that combines some of the essential features of schizophrenia and depression.
“Evidence was adduced at sentencing that a significant number of defendant’s blood relatives have suffered from a variety of mental illnesses, including mood disorders, schizoaffective disorders, and schizophrenia. Several had been institutionalized. Expert testimony indicated that the presence of mental illness in defendant’s family could have been a contributing factor to his own mental illness.
“The experts who evaluated defendant agreed that he exhibited psychotic symptoms that correlated with the features of paranoid schizophrenia. People who suffer from paranoid schizophrenia often maintain well in school, work, or social situations until delusions, often per-secutory in nature, cause them to act out in violent ways. The experts also agreed that there is no cure for paranoid schizophrenia. There are medications, however, that can control symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, at least to some degree. One psychologist, Dr. Orin Bolstad, who conducted extensive testing of defendant, opined that some of defendant’s symptoms, including hearing voices, had diminished when defendant was given such medication. When asked about defendant’s future dangerousness, Bolstad was unable to make a prediction. He did observe, [432]*432however, that defendant’s initial response to antipsychotic medication was positive, that defendant was intellectually capable, and that defendant had not presented a management problem while incarcerated, all of which he thought were good prognostic indicators.

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Bluebook (online)
367 P.3d 956, 276 Or. App. 427, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 150, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kinkel-v-persson-orctapp-2016.