Patton v. Cupp

485 P.2d 644, 6 Or. App. 1, 1971 Ore. App. LEXIS 625
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMay 28, 1971
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 485 P.2d 644 (Patton v. Cupp) 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
Patton v. Cupp, 485 P.2d 644, 6 Or. App. 1, 1971 Ore. App. LEXIS 625 (Or. Ct. App. 1971).

Opinion

FOLEY, J.

Petitioner appeals from a judgment dismissing his petition for post-conviction relief. The petition asserted two causes for relief, both arising out of petitioner’s 1956 trial for armed robbery which resulted in a conviction and life sentence: (1) that the trial court’s failure to submit to the jury alternative verdicts on lesser included • offenses, over petitioner’s exception, was a denial of due process and of the right [3]*3to jury trial on those lesser offenses; and (2) that the in-court identifications of petitioner by three witnesses were tainted by unfair pre-trial identification procedures, thereby denying petitioner due process of law. The state demurred to the petition, contending that it faded to state facts sufficient to justify exercise of jurisdiction or to authorize the relief demanded. The court, without stating on which ground, entered an order sustaining the demurrer as to petitioner’s first cause of action but overruling it as to the second. After a hearing on the second cause of action, the circuit court entered the judgment now appealed from.

ORS 138.550 provides in part:

“(2) When the petitioner sought and obtained direct appellate review of his conviction and sentence, no ground for relief may be asserted by petitioner in a petition for relief under ORS 138.510 to 138.680 [the Post-Conviction Hearing Act] unless such ground was not asserted and could not reasonably have been asserted in the direct appellate review proceeding. * * *
“(3) All grounds for relief claimed by petitioner in a petition pursuant to ORS 138.510 to 138.680 must be asserted in his original or amended petition, and any grounds not so asserted are deemed waived unless the court on hearing a subsequent petition finds grounds for relief asserted therein which could not reasonably have been raised in the original or amended petition. * * •”

The state contends that petitioner, whose conviction and sentence were reviewed and affirmed on appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court in State v. Patton, 208 Or 610, 303 P2d 513 (1956), and whose original petition for post-conviction relief filed in 1961 was dismissed, has faded to show that the assertion of his first cause of action is not precluded by these pro[4]*4visions. The petition states that this ground for relief, raised for the first time, “could not reasonably have been asserted” in petitioner’s direct appeal or in his original post-conviction proceeding because Braley v. Gladden, 403 F2d 858 (9th Cir 1968), was not decided until November 21, 1968.

The unusual facts in Braley do not match those present here. In reversing an Oregon conviction for first degree murder because of the trial court’s failure to submit to the jury a not guilty verdict form the Court of Appeals said this:

“* * * [I]t is equally reasonable to assume that the jury inferred that the judge intended that only one verdict was possible, a verdict of guilty upon the one and only form which he supplied.
“All recognize that a trial judge’s influence upon the jury is profound. * * * Hence, the oversight in not furnishing the not guilty verdict form along with the opposite form constituted, in effect, a severely adverse comment by the trial judge, an impermissibly grave insinuation of judicial attitude toward the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence. Accordingly, we hold that the influence exerted by the trial judge * * * was so significantly irregular as to require a new trial.” 403 F2d at 860.

Whether or not it was error, the trial court’s failure in petitioner Patton’s case to submit alternative verdicts on lesser included offenses could in no way have been interpreted as a comment on petitioner’s guilt or innocence of the charge of armed robbery. Petitioner’s reliance upon Braley v. Gladden, supra, is not a showing that his first cause of action is based upon a new constitutional principle not recognized at the time of his direct appeal or of his original petition. Cain v. Gladden, 247 Or 462, 430 P2d 1015 (1967); ORS 138.530 (1) (a). Whatever the circuit court’s rea[5]*5son for sustaining the state’s demurrer, it could properly have done so for the foregoing one.

Petitioner also assigns as error the post-conviction court’s finding that in-eourt identifications of petitioner made by three named witnesses were neither the products of nor tainted by any suggestive pre-trial identification procedures. The basis for petitioner’s due process challenge is the second of two rules of law enunciated by the United States Supreme Court in Stovall v. Denno, 388 US 293, 87 S Ct 1967, 18 L Ed 2d 1199 (1967).

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Related

State v. Davis
512 P.2d 1366 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1973)
Bartholomew v. Cupp
510 P.2d 355 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1973)

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Bluebook (online)
485 P.2d 644, 6 Or. App. 1, 1971 Ore. App. LEXIS 625, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/patton-v-cupp-orctapp-1971.