State v. Davis

156 P.3d 93, 211 Or. App. 550, 2007 Ore. App. LEXIS 401
Court of Appeals of Oregon·Decided March 28, 2007·No. 040748506; A126406·Published·Cited by 10 cases

Opinion

*552 SCHUMAN, J.

Defendant appeals from a conviction for misdemeanor driving while suspended. ORS 811.182. On appeal, she assigns error to the trial court’s decision to admit into evidence two documents, together known as a “suspension packet,” prepared by the Oregon Department of Transportation, Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division (DMV). According to defendant, admitting the documents violated her constitutional right to confront the witnesses against her. We hold that one of the documents, a printout of defendant’s driving record, was admissible because it was not “testimonial.” As to the other document — a record of the fact that defendant was on notice that her driver’s license was suspended — we hold that, regardless of whether or not it was erroneously admitted, it played no role in either the state’s or defendant’s case and therefore its admission cannot serve as ground for reversal. We therefore affirm.

The facts are uncontested. On June 9, 2004, Officer Shepard stopped defendant for failure to drive within a lane, a violation of ORS 811.370. She was unable to provide Shepard with a driver’s license; subsequently, she told the officer that her license was suspended. Shepard “ran [defendant’s] number” through the Law Enforcement Data System and confirmed that fact. She then cited defendant for driving while suspended.

At trial, the state offered as evidence defendant’s “suspension packet,” which, as noted above, contains two documents. The first is a certified copy of a computer printout listing defendant’s driving infractions and the status of her license. At the bottom of the document is a statement, signed by the manager of the DMV customer services department, certifying that “the foregoing driving record copy is a correct transcript of the specified data contained within the data processing device or computer.” The second document, known as the “implied consent form,” is a copy of a two-page form dating from defendant’s earlier arrest for the driving under the influence of intoxicants offense that led to the suspension of her license. The document is captioned, “COMBINED REPORT, NOTICE OF INTENT TO SUSPEND DRIVER, AND TEMPORARY DRIVER PERMIT.” *553 Below the caption, the form contains boxes where a police officer filled in defendant’s personal information, followed by text informing defendant that, because she had failed a breath test, her “driving privileges will be suspended at 12:01 [a.m.] on the 30th day after the date of arrest” for a period of one year. At the bottom of the first page, a Portland Police Officer signed a statement affirming that “the foregoing events occurred.” The second page is illegible. Each page contains a statement by a DMV employee that the copy is accurate.

Defendant objected to the admission of the packet on the ground (among others not renewed on appeal) that it violated her right to confront witnesses under the Sixth Amendment as interpreted in Crawford v. Washington, 541 US 36, 124 S Ct 1354, 158 L Ed 2d 177 (2004). The state responded that the documents were not testimonial and that therefore Crawford did not preclude their admission. The court agreed with the state, and this appeal ensued.

In Crawford, the Supreme Court held that the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment 1 bars testimonial hearsay evidence unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant had the opportunity to cross-examine that witness, or the statement falls within a common-law exception to the hearsay rule that existed at the time of the founding (hardly any of which, the Court noted, applied to nontestimonial statements used against the accused in criminal cases). 541 US at 53-56. In the present case, defendant had no opportunity to cross-examine the declarants; the case, therefore, turns on whether the contested evidence is testimonial or within a historical exception. Because we conclude that it was not testimonial, we do not reach the historical exception question.

The Court in Crawford did not provide a definition of “testimonial,” noting only that, whatever the term meant, it clearly encompassed “prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and to police interrogations.” Id. at 68. It is possible, however, to mine Crawford and a subsequent case, Davis v. Washington, *554 _ US _, 126 S Ct 2266, 165 L Ed 2d 224 (2006), for clues. From Crawford, we can draw the inference that a testimonial statement is a “solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.” Crawford, 541 US at 51 (quoting II Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)). Further, testimony is made by an “accuser.” Crawford, 541 US at 51. Because the Confrontation Clause was designed to eliminate the civil law practice of using ex parte statements from earlier judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings, the modem equivalents of such statements are also inadmissible testimony. Id. So too are some statements to police officers, because “[t]he involvement of government officers in the production of testimonial evidence presents the same risk, whether the officers are police or justices of the peace.” Id. at 53.

Davis, although focusing on what type of police interrogation produces testimonial evidence, also provides guidance. In that case, the Court distinguished between interrogation designed to produce evidence for later use in a criminal prosecution — which does elicit testimonial responses — and interrogation designed to help police deal with an ongoing emergency, which does not elicit testimonial responses__US at_, 126 S Ct at 2276-77. In the latter situation, the declarant is “not acting as a witness', she was not testifying.” Id. at 2277 (emphasis in original).

We have applied the inferences drawn from Supreme Court opinions in at least two cases. In State v. Norman, 203 Or App 1, 125 P3d 15 (2005), rev den, 340 Or 308 (2006), decided after Crawford but before Davis, we held that certificates attesting to the accuracy of an Intoxilyzer machine were admissible against the defendant in a drunk driving case. In doing so, we held that Crawford did not require us to reexamine State v. Conway, 70 Or App 721, 690 P2d 1128 (1984), rev den, 298 Or 704 (1985), where we upheld the admission of similar evidence against state and federal constitutional challenges, reasoning that the certificates were admissible under the “well-established” public record exception to the hearsay mle. Id. at 724 (quoting State ex rel. Gladden v. Lonergan, 201 Or 163, 175, 269 P2d 491 (1954)). We provided three bases for our conclusion.

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

State v. Davis, 156 P.3d 93, 211 Or. App. 550, 2007 Ore. App. LEXIS 401 (Or. Ct. App. 2007).

156 P.3d 93 (State v. Davis) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

State v. Serini
566 P.3d 1199 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2025)
State of Tennessee v. Pascasio Martinez
Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee, 2017
State v. Velykoretskykh
343 P.3d 272 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2015)
State v. Leibel
286 Neb. 725 (Nebraska Supreme Court, 2013)
State v. Serr
Nebraska Court of Appeals, 2013
State Of Iowa Vs. Bradley Dale Shipley
Supreme Court of Iowa, 2008
State v. Shipley
757 N.W.2d 228 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2008)
People v. Espinoza
195 P.3d 1122 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2008)
State v. Dukes
174 P.3d 914 (Court of Appeals of Kansas, 2008)
State v. Kelsey
157 P.3d 262 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2007)