State v. Jones

195 P.3d 78, 223 Or. App. 70, 2008 Ore. App. LEXIS 1483
Court of Appeals of Oregon·Decided October 15, 2008·No. 200210573; A132275·Published·Cited by 9 cases

Opinion

*72 LANDAU, P. J.

Defendant was charged in Lane County with felony driving while suspended (FDWS). ORS 811.182(3) (2001). 1 He moved to suppress evidence of a prior order of the Department of Transportation, Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division (DMV), suspending his driving privileges on the ground that the suspension order was unlawful. The trial court granted the motion. The state appealed, arguing that the trial court had, in effect, permitted defendant to collaterally attack the prior DMV suspension order. We reversed and remanded, but on slightly different grounds. State v. Jones, 199 Or App 424, 112 P3d 356 (2005), rev den, 340 Or 34 (2006) (Jones I). On remand, defendant again moved to suppress the prior DMV suspension order, and the trial court granted the motion. The state appeals a second time. We again reverse and remand.

The relevant facts are not in dispute. They are also, unfortunately, not simple. We begin with the facts that we described in the first appeal:

“In 2001 defendant was charged in Coos County with two counts of assault in the third degree ‘by means of a Yamaha 4-wheeler, a dangerous weapon[,]’ and one count of driving while under the influence of intoxicants (DUII). Defendant entered into a plea agreement with the state in which he agreed to plead guilty to DUII and to assault in the fourth degree as a lesser included offense of one of the assault in the third degree counts. Pursuant to the agreement, defendant admitted in court that he recklessly caused serious physical injury to the victim. Defendant did not admit that he was operating a motor vehicle at the time that he committed the assault. The trial court thereafter stated, during the hearing on the change of plea, ‘On that Count I, I’ll change that so it’s clear on the record the charge of Assault in the Fourth Degree, I deleted all the words after [the victim’s name].’ The effect of the court’s ruling was to strike the language in the charging instrument alleging that defendant committed assault in the third degree by means of‘a Yamaha 4-wheeler, a dangerous weapon[.]’
*73 “Subsequently, in an order dated November 14, 2001, DMV suspended defendant’s driving privileges and his right to apply for driving privileges because ‘you were convicted of Assault 4 resulting from the operation of a motor vehicle.’ ”

Jones I, 199 Or App at 426-27 (brackets in original). Defendant did not seek administrative review of the 2001 DMV suspension order.

In 2002, defendant was charged in this case in Lane County with FDWS based on the fact that he had been operating a motor vehicle on a public highway while still subject to the 2001 DMV suspension order. He moved to suppress evidence of the suspension order on the ground that, because the reference to the “Yamaha 4-wheeler” had been struck from the charging instrument in the Coos County case, the resulting assault conviction had not included a determination that he was operating a motor vehicle on premises open to the public when that assault occurred. As we have noted, the trial court granted that motion. It did so on the ground that, the reference to the “Yamaha 4-wheeler” having been struck from the charging instrument in the criminal case, DMV had no authority later to suspend defendant’s driving privileges.

The state appealed, arguing that defendant could not collaterally attack the validity of the DMV suspension order on which his Lane County FDWS charge is based. The state conceded that it had not preserved that contention before the trial court. It nevertheless contended that we should review the matter as plain error, based on the Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Sims, 335 Or 269, 66 P3d 472 (2003), which had been published after the trial court’s decision to grant defendant’s motion. In the alternative, the state argued that, even if it were permissible to collaterally attack such an order, the trial court erred in concluding that DMVs authority in issuing a suspension order is limited to considering the facts that appear on the face of a charging instrument. Jones 1, 199 Or App at 428.

We concluded that the state had not preserved the broader issue whether defendant could collaterally challenge the 2001 DMV suspension order and that the issue was not *74 subject to review as plain error. We acknowledged that, in Sims, the Supreme Court held that a different provision in an earlier version of ORS 811.182 — the 1997 version of the provision criminalizing driving while suspended or revoked and making it a felony if the suspension or revocation “resulted from” the defendant’s “[hjabitual offender status under ORS 809.640” — did not permit a defendant to collaterally attack the validity of the suspension. We noted, however, that the text of the provision of ORS 811.182 at issue in this case was “qualitatively different” from the text at issue in Sims; accordingly, the issue was not beyond dispute. Jones I, 199 Or App at 429-32. See also State v. Brown, 310 Or 347, 355, 800 P2d 259 (1990) (unpreserved error is plain where claimed error is one of law, it is obvious and not reasonably in dispute, and it appears on the face of the record, without requiring the court to choose between competing inferences).

We accepted the state’s alternative argument, however. We concluded that the trial court had erred in determining that DMV’s suspension order was invalid solely by reason of the fact that, in the charging instrument in the Coos County assault case, the reference to the assault occurring by means of a motor vehicle, although still legible, had been crossed out. Jones 1,199 Or App at 432-33. We reversed and remanded for reconsideration of whether the entire record before DMV supported its suspension order. In remanding, we explicitly stated that “our ruling does not prohibit the parties on remand from litigating the issue of whether, under the circumstances of this case, defendant can make a collateral attack against DMV’s order.” Id. at 433-34.

On remand, defendant again moved to exclude evidence of DMV’s suspension order. This time, the state argued that defendant cannot, as a matter of law, collaterally attack the validity of the 2001 DMV suspension order. The trial court rejected that contention and concluded both that defendant was entitled to collaterally attack the order and that the record on which DMV based its order was not adequate to support it.

As to the former, the trial court reasoned that, when we explained in Jones I why the changes between the 1997 and 2001 versions of the statute meant that Sims did not *75

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State v. Jones, 195 P.3d 78, 223 Or. App. 70, 2008 Ore. App. LEXIS 1483 (Or. Ct. App. 2008).

195 P.3d 78 (State v. Jones) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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