State Ex Rel. Click v. Brownhill

15 P.3d 990, 331 Or. 500, 2000 Ore. LEXIS 985
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 29, 2000
DocketCC 98-1296; SC S46732
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 15 P.3d 990 (State Ex Rel. Click v. Brownhill) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Oregon Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State Ex Rel. Click v. Brownhill, 15 P.3d 990, 331 Or. 500, 2000 Ore. LEXIS 985 (Or. 2000).

Opinions

[502]*502GILLETTE, J.

In this original mandamus proceeding, the State Court Administrator and the Clatsop County Trial Court Administrator (relators) seek a peremptory writ of mandamus commanding the trial court to vacate an order that requires relators to provide certain jury lists to the defendant in a pending criminal case. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the trial court did not err in ordering the production of those lists.

In 1998, a Clatsop County grand jury indicted Anthony Scott Garner on two counts of aggravated murder. Before the case was set for trial, Garner served relators with subpoenas duces tecum requesting, among other things, a number of jury-related records, including Clatsop County source lists, master lists, term lists, and individual voir dire lists from 1990 to the date of the subpoena. Relators filed a motion to quash those subpoenas on numerous grounds, including an assertion that relators were precluded from disclosing the jury lists under ORS lO^lSQ).1 Both parties filed further documents, and Clatsop County Circuit Court Judge Brownhill heard testimony and argument on the matter.

The trial court allowed the motion in part and denied it in part. The court’s order required relators to produce master and term jury lists for Clatsop County from 1996 to 1999, lists of jurors who were summoned and who returned summons for each jury term from 1996 through 1999 in Clatsop County, various jury selection manuals, and jury studies, surveys, and statistics. In the letter announcing its ruling, the court restricted Garner’s use of the jury information to purposes related to the pending litigation and prohibited Garner from contacting persons whose names were on the jury lists.

This mandamus proceeding followed. Before this court, relators challenge the trial court’s order only to the extent that the order requires them to provide the three types of jury lists. The dispositive issue presented in the case is [503]*503whether ORS 10.215(1), by implication, prohibits relators from providing those lists to Garner.2

ORS 10.215(1) provides:

“The clerk of court shall cause to be prepared at least once each year a master jury list containing names selected at random from the source lists. The source lists are the most recent list of electors of the county, the records furnished by the Department of Transportation as provided by ORS 802.260(2) and any other sources approved by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that will furnish a fair cross section of the citizens of the county. Any source list obtained from a public or private entity and any jury list containing names selected from a source list shall not be used for any purpose other than the selection and summoning of persons for service as jurors and the drawing of names of jurors.”

(Emphasis added.) Relators contend that the last sentence of ORS 10.215(1) unambiguously defines and limits the way in which the jury lists described in the trial court’s order may be “used.” They assert that Gamer’s proposed utilization of the lists is a “use,” but not one of the enumerated ones. And, they reason, because Garner would not be “using” the lists in one of the authorized ways, the statute implicitly forbids relators to provide the lists to Garner. More specifically, relators explain that “selecting and summoning” persons for jury duty are functions performed exclusively by court personnel or the sheriff and that neither of those functions is performed by parties to litigation. Because parties to litigation cannot put the jury lists to either of the specified statutory uses, relators conclude, the statute does not authorize disclosure of jury lists to them.

Gamer responds that examining the lists to determine whether the jury pool represents a fair cross-section of the county is, in fact, using those records for the purpose of jury selection and, therefore, is a use that is permitted by the [504]*504statute. He contends that relators construe the word “selection” too narrowly.

Whether ORS 10.215(1) forbids disclosure of the jury lists in this case is a matter of statutory interpretation. In construing the statute, we use the analytical framework described in PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or 606, 610-12, 859 P2d 1143 (1993), in an effort to discern the intent of the legislature. At the first level of analysis, we examine the text and context of the statute itself, giving words of common usage their plain, natural, and ordinary meanings. Id. at 610-11. Analysis of the text also includes consideration of “rules of construction * * * that bear directly on how to read the text,” including “the statutory enjoinder ‘not to insert what has been omitted, or to omit what has been inserted.’ ” Id. at 611 (quoting ORS 174.010). If the legislature’s intent is clear from the text and context, then our analysis ends. PGE, 317 Or at 611.

We begin with two preliminary observations. First, we note that there is no dispute that the master and term jury lists for the years 1996 to 1999, and the lists of jurors who were served and who returned summons for each jury term from 1996 to 1999, are “jury list[s] containing names selected from a source list” as that phrase is used in ORS 10.215(1).3 Second, although ORS 10.215(1) does not speak directly to disclosure of jury lists (the statute speaks, rather, in terms of the “purposes” for which those materials may be “used”), Garner does not assert that relators may disclose the materials at issue for any unauthorized “use.”

The first question before the court, then, is the scope of the limitation on “uses” contemplated by the last sentence of ORS 10.215(1). As noted, that sentence limits the authorized purposes for which the jury lists may be used to two: the “selection and summoning” of prospective jurors and “the drawing of names of jurors.”

[505]*505As noted, Garner attempts to bring himself within the scope of the term “selection.” He argues that, because he intends to use the jury lists to perform a statistical analysis to determine whether the grand and petit juries in his case are drawn from a jury pool that contains a fair cross-section of the citizens of the county, he will, in fact, be using the jury lists for the “selection” of jurors.

The scope of ORS 10.215

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

State v. Running
87 P.3d 656 (Oregon Supreme Court, 2004)
State Ex Rel. Click v. Brownhill
15 P.3d 990 (Oregon Supreme Court, 2000)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
15 P.3d 990, 331 Or. 500, 2000 Ore. LEXIS 985, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-click-v-brownhill-or-2000.