State v. Hamann

422 P.3d 193, 363 Or. 264
Oregon Supreme Court·Decided July 5, 2018·No. CC C142425CR (SC S064546)·Published·Cited by 5 cases

Opinion

NAKAMOTO, J.

**266When a defendant has been convicted of driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII) three times in a 10-year period, the third DUII offense becomes a felony. ORS 813.010(5). In this case, defendant was charged with felony DUII based on his two prior convictions in the preceding 10 years, but he successfully asserted a statutory challenge to one of them, a Georgia conviction, because it had been obtained in violation of his right to legal counsel. See ORS 813.328(1) (a defendant may challenge "the validity of prior convictions alleged by the state" as an element of felony DUII). As a result, defendant was convicted of misdemeanor rather than felony DUII. However, the trial court counted the Georgia conviction when it permanently revoked defendant's driving privileges. See ORS 809.235(1)(b) (court shall permanently revoke a defendant's driving privileges when convicted for a third time of DUII).1 The Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion. State v. Hamann , 282 Or. App. 369, 385 P.3d 103 (2016).

On review, defendant reasserts that, once he proved that the Georgia conviction was constitutionally invalid, the trial court's imposition of any additional consequence on him based on that conviction was inconsistent with his right to counsel, as articulated in City of Pendleton v. Standerfer , 297 Or. 725, 688 P.2d 68 (1984) (applying Sixth Amendment right to counsel). We conclude that the trial court correctly relied on the Georgia conviction to revoke defendant's driving privileges as a civil disability-not a criminal punishment-and that the revocation was consistent with defendant's right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Therefore, we affirm the judgment of the trial court and the decision of the Court of Appeals.

FACTS

The relevant facts are undisputed. Defendant drove while under the influence of alcohol and was arrested. The **267state charged him with felony DUII because defendant had two previous DUII convictions. See ORS 813.010(5) (a person's third DUII within a 10-year period is a Class C felony). Defendant had been convicted of DUII in Georgia in 2007, and then again in Clackamas County, Oregon in 2010.

Before trial, defendant moved to prohibit the use of the 2007 Georgia DUII conviction to aggravate the DUII from a misdemeanor to a felony. During the hearing on that motion, defendant testified that he had pleaded guilty to the Georgia DUII, but that he did not have an attorney at the time of his plea and was not advised about the benefits of having an attorney or the risks of proceeding *195without one. He also testified that, at the time of his arraignment in Georgia, he did not know that he had a right to counsel.

After hearing evidence about the Georgia proceeding, the trial court in this case determined that the Georgia conviction could not be used against defendant to aggravate the DUII from a misdemeanor to a felony, noting that the record from the Georgia case did not contain any indication that there had been a valid waiver of the right to counsel. The court proceeded with a stipulated facts trial and found defendant guilty. Accordingly, the trial court convicted defendant of misdemeanor DUII as a lesser-included offense.

At sentencing, defendant moved to prohibit the use of the 2007 Georgia DUII conviction to permanently revoke his driving privileges under ORS 809.235(1)(b). Defendant argued that the court's determination that the Georgia conviction was obtained in violation of Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution and the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution meant that the Georgia conviction was invalid as a matter of Oregon law and could not be used for any purpose. The trial court disagreed and imposed a permanent revocation of defendant's driving privileges.

Defendant appealed, arguing that Article I, section 11, and the Sixth Amendment both prohibited the use of uncounseled prior convictions to impose a less favorable disposition in a later proceeding. The Court of Appeals affirmed without issuing a written opinion.

**268ANALYSIS

On review, defendant argues that the trial court's use of the prior uncounseled DUII conviction to permanently revoke his driving privileges as part of his criminal sentence violated his right to counsel under Article I, section 11, and the Sixth Amendment. For the reasons stated below, we decide only the Sixth Amendment issue, and we begin with that analysis.

The Sixth Amendment provides that, "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall * * * have the Assistance of Counsel for his [defense]." The Sixth Amendment requires that a defendant in a criminal prosecution have the benefit of counsel or that the defendant validly waive counsel. Gideon v. Wainwright , 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963). The right to counsel also extends to plea proceedings. Padilla v. Kentucky , 559 U.S. 356, 130 S.Ct. 1473, 176 L.Ed.2d 284 (2010). The parties have assumed, as do we, that defendant's Georgia DUII conviction was obtained in violation of defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

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State v. Hamann, 422 P.3d 193, 363 Or. 264 (Or. 2018).

422 P.3d 193 (State v. Hamann) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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