State v. Hudson

380 P.3d 1025, 279 Or. App. 543, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 929
CourtJosephine County Circuit Court, Oregon
DecidedJuly 20, 2016
Docket11CR0529; A153860
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 380 P.3d 1025 (State v. Hudson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Josephine County Circuit Court, Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Hudson, 380 P.3d 1025, 279 Or. App. 543, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 929 (Or. Super. Ct. 2016).

Opinion

GARRETT, J.

During a street altercation between defendant and his neighbor, Salomon, defendant stabbed Salomon in the back with a knife, which resulted in Salomon’s death. Defendant argued at trial that Salomon was choking him from behind and that defendant stabbed him in self-defense. The jury acquitted defendant of murder but convicted him of the lesser-included charge of first-degree manslaughter, ORS 163.118.

On appeal, defendant raises three assignments of error. We reject the second and third assignments without discussion and write only to address the first assignment of error, in which defendant challenges an evidentiary ruling of the trial court that excluded, as irrelevant, certain computer-generated images. According to defendant, those images would have bolstered his theory of self-defense and supported the credibility of a key defense expert witness, which had been attacked by the prosecution. For the reasons explained below, we conclude that the trial court erred in excluding the evidence on relevance grounds. We further conclude that that error was not harmless. Accordingly, we reverse and remand.

Defendant and Salomon lived across the street from each other. They had a verbal encounter one evening after Salomon became upset that defendant’s child and his friends had caused a ball to enter Salomon’s yard. The next evening, defendant and his family returned home from an outing at approximately 9:00 p.m. As they exited their vehicle, Salomon asked to speak with defendant. Defendant replied that he needed to get his family inside. The two men engaged in a shoving match. Another neighbor, Eggleston, saw the altercation, and, aware of Salomon’s poor health, ran over and “tackled [defendant] from behind, and took [defendant] down into the street.” During the struggle, Eggleston told defendant to “calm down” because the police had been called. Defendant bit Eggleston’s forearm, and Eggleston let him go. Eggleston then went back to his house to put his dog inside. At some point during the altercation, defendant’s wife and children went inside their house.

[546]*546By the time Eggleston returned to the street, between 30 to 45 seconds later, Salomon was lying on the pavement with defendant standing over him. Eggleston saw that Salomon’s back was bloodied and that defendant was holding a knife. Salomon made a “gurgling sound.” Defendant, whose head was bleeding, walked across the street to his house, returned moments later and said, “I’m going to be arrested.”

Officer Moore was the first emergency responder on the scene and saw a group of people standing in the street. He then saw Salomon lying in the street. Moore asked the group what had happened, and several people pointed towards defendant. Moore arrested defendant and signaled to emergency medics that the area was safe to enter. After detecting that Salomon had no pulse, Moore asked defendant where he had put his knife, and Moore found it in a box in defendant’s garage. Another officer heard defendant’s wife say that her “husband had been strangled.”

Defendant was later interviewed at a police station. During that interview, defendant said that his relationship with Salomon had previously been “cordial” and that their verbal altercation became physical when Salomon hit defendant’s wife. Defendant described Eggleston as the one who “escalated everything” when he “threw” defendant on the ground and “was choking” defendant. Defendant told police that, when he wrestled free from Eggleston, Salomon “grabbed me from behind and we fell down in the street.” He added that Salomon “was choking me and I couldn’t get him off.”

An autopsy of Salomon was performed by Dr. Olson, who testified to three stab wounds: one in “the right shoulder,” one “just to the left of center in the mid-back or upper back,” and one “in the back of the thigh, just below the buttock on the right side.” Olson testified at trial that one of the back wounds had perforated Salomon’s aorta, causing his death.

At trial, the state’s theory was that defendant murdered Salomon after feeling “disrespected in front of his wife and son” and the “defendant could not let that go.” Defendant’s [547]*547theory was that Salomon was choking him from behind and that defendant accidently fatally wounded Salomon when defendant tried to force Salomon off by “pok[ing]” him in the shoulder with a knife.

Neither the state nor defendant offered witnesses to the specific acts that caused Salomon’s death. Eggleston testified that he did not see what happened between defendant and Salomon during the brief period when Eggleston returned to his house. Defendant offered evidence regarding police interviews, from the night of the stabbing, in which Eggleston told officers that Salomon grabbed defendant from behind after defendant had gotten away from Eggleston.

Defendant testified that, when he freed himself from Eggleston, he was “grabbed again from behind” and “pulled tightly * * * [in] another choke hold.” Defendant also testified that he did not know at that moment if it was Salomon who had grabbed him. He and the other person “both went down.” Defendant explained that, at some point during the struggle, the person’s “weight was on top of me, with his arm around my neck and his weight across my shoulders and * * * left side.” Defendant “got to a point [where he] couldn’t breathe” and “was panicking.” Defendant took hold of a knife that was clipped to his pants and swung behind him at least two times. He “did not feel the knife hit anything either time” but soon felt the arm around his neck “loosen up.” Defendant testified that when he stood back up, he saw that it was Salomon who had tackled him.

The state offered evidence that Salomon, who was 60 years old at the time of his death, was in poor health and that his physical abilities were limited. He had had “numerous surgeries” and used an oxygen tank for “COPD [,] ” a condition that “slowed him down in walking and breathing.” Dr. Purtzer, Salomon’s physician, testified that he did not believe that Salomon had the strength to tackle a man and choke him to death. The state also offered evidence that, by contrast, defendant was a significantly “younger, fitter man.”

A major point of contention at trial was whether defendant’s account of the stabbing was anatomically possible. [548]*548Testifying for the state, Olson, the medical examiner, said that defendant’s version was not plausible. Olson testified that defendant’s account “requires you twist and turn your hand to get it to go under the scapula and go from this direction out. It just seems very difficult to envision that that’s physically possible in that scenario.”

During his cross-examination of Olson, defendant offered several computer-generated images depicting ways in which defendant’s struggle with Salomon could have occurred consistently with defendant’s version of events. Exhibit 509 showed how abrasions to Salomon’s left shin could have happened; Exhibits 511 and 513 showed how the stab wound to the back of Salomon’s upper leg could have happened; and Exhibits 515 and 516 showed how the stab wounds to Salomon’s back could have happened. In particular, Exhibits 515 and 516 were offered to show that defendant could have fatally stabbed Salomon in the back, while lying on the ground with Salomon on top of him, by swinging his right arm over his own right shoulder and over Salomon’s back.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
380 P.3d 1025, 279 Or. App. 543, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 929, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-hudson-orccjosephine-2016.