State v. King

852 P.2d 190, 316 Or. 437, 1993 Ore. LEXIS 74
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedMay 28, 1993
DocketDC 90-61827 CA A69804 SC S39537, DC 90-60221 CA A71859 SC S39624, Consolidated for Argument and Opinion
StatusPublished
Cited by61 cases

This text of 852 P.2d 190 (State v. King) 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 v. King, 852 P.2d 190, 316 Or. 437, 1993 Ore. LEXIS 74 (Or. 1993).

Opinion

*439 CARSON, C. J.

In each of these cases, consolidated for oral argument and opinion, the defendant was arrested and tried for Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants (DUII). The prosecution presented evidence in each case that defendants were driving, that each had a blood alcohol content (BAC) exceeding .08 percent, a violation of subsection (a) of ORS 813.010(1), 1 and that the driving of each was perceptibly impaired by the ingestion of alcohol, a violation of subsection (b) of the same statute. Citing this court’s decision in State v. Boots, 308 Or 371, 780 P2d 725 (1989), 2 that required jury unanimity on the precise statutory subsection of the aggravated murder statute that a defendant has violated, each defendant requested a jury instruction requiring the jury in his case to agree unanimously as to which of the two DUII subsections he had violated. 3 Both *440 trial courts declined to give an instruction based on Boots. Defendants were convicted, and each appealed.

1. The Court of Appeals affirmed, respectively, in State v. King, 114 Or App 32, 834 P2d 463 (1992), and State v. Layton, 114 Or App 637, 834 P2d 553 (1992). We allowed review and consolidated the cases to consider whether this court’s decision requiring jury unanimity in State v. Boots applies in the context of a DUII prosecution. 4 We conclude that it does not. We also consider and reject defendants’ contention that their federal due process rights were denied by failure to require jury unanimity in this context. Accordingly, we affirm the decisions of the Court of Appeals and the judgments of the trial courts.

*441 THE BOOTS DECISION

State v. Boots, supra, established that, in order to convict, a jury must agree unanimously upon which statutorily-defined set of factual circumstances made a particular murder an aggravated murder. The defendant in that case was charged with committing murder under circumstances implicating two of the 17 separate aggravating factors listed in ORS 163.095. 5 This court held that the trial court erred by not instructing the jury that, to convict, the jury had to agree upon the defendant’s guilt under at least one single aggravating factor listed in the aggravated murder statute. It was not sufficient that all members of the jury merely agreed as to defendant’s guilt. State v. Boots, supra, 308 Or at 377.

Nothing in Boots limits its holding to aggravated murder cases, and we assume for the purposes of our analysis here that its rationale is not necessarily limited to such cases or even to cases requiring jury unanimity. We proceed to defendants’ contention that a so-called “Boots instruction” is required in a DUII prosecution.

The basic rationale of State v. Boots, supra, 308 Or at 375 and 381 n 9, is that each of the 17 special circumstances or “aggravating factors” listed in ORS 163.095 is an element of a separate and distinct crime. 6 Each element of each crime must be proven to each juror beyond a reasonable doubt. To further illustrate the court’s conclusion in Boots, the elements upon which a jury must agree in a particular aggravated murder case could be murder plus intentional maiming, ORS 163.095(l)(e), or murder plus use of an explosive, ORS *442 163.095(2)(c), but it would not suffice if the jury agreed to an element defined as “murder plus either intentional maiming or use of an explosive.” Said another way, the crime of aggravated murder is composed of the element of murder plus the element of a particular aggravating circumstance.

Central to the Boots decision was a concern for the possibility that, at the close of trial, a jury could agree on guilt by agreeing that some one or another of a number of aggravating factors was proved without agreeing that any particular aggravating factor was proved. State v. Boots, supra, 308 Or at 379. Logically, such failure to agree on an aggravating factor (a factor having been defined by the court as an element of the offense) would result in a jury’s failing to agree that a defendant had committed a particular crime of aggravated murder at all. The court stressed that jury unanimity is required for “facts that the law (or the indictment) has made essential to a crime,” not for “factual details, such as whether a gun was a revolver or a pistol and whether it was held in the right or left hand.” Ibid.

ANALYSIS OF THE DUII STATUTE

DUII is defined in ORS 813.010, which provides:

“(1) A person commits the offense of driving while under the influence of intoxicants if the person drives a vehicle while the person:
“(a) Has .08 percent or more by weight of alcohol in the blood of the person as shown by chemical analysis of the breath or blood of the person made under ORS 813.100, 813.140 or 813.150; [or]
“(b) Is under the influence of intoxicating liquor or a controlled substance; or
“(c) Is under the influence of intoxicating liquor and a controlled substance.”

Do those statutory subsections describe essential elements of three separate offenses, as do the 17 aggravating factors that are essential elements of ORS 163.095, or do they establish three sets of circumstances, any or all of which go to prove a single essential element (being under the influence of intoxicants)?

*443 If the language of the statute under consideration is ambiguous, we must attempt to construe the statute. In construing a statute, we must attempt to discern the intent of the legislature. ORS 174.020; State ex rel Juv. Dept. v. Ashley,

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
852 P.2d 190, 316 Or. 437, 1993 Ore. LEXIS 74, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-king-or-1993.