State v. Lhasawa

55 P.3d 477, 334 Or. 543, 2002 Ore. LEXIS 612
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 19, 2002
DocketCC 9702-41629; CA A97609; SC S46749
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 55 P.3d 477 (State v. Lhasawa) 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. Lhasawa, 55 P.3d 477, 334 Or. 543, 2002 Ore. LEXIS 612 (Or. 2002).

Opinion

*545 GILLETTE, J.

The City of Portland (the City) has adopted several “civil exclusion” ordinances, under which the City temporarily excludes from designated areas of the city persons who the police have arrested for certain crimes. In the present case, we are asked to decide whether exclusion under one of those ordinances is “jeopardy” for purposes of the former jeopardy provision of the Oregon Constitution or the double jeopardy prohibition in the United States Constitution. If it is “jeopardy,” then the person on whom the City has imposed such an exclusion cannot later be prosecuted criminally for the underlying crime. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that exclusion under the ordinance does not create jeopardy. We therefore affirm the Court of Appeals’ decision to that same effect.

The following facts are undisputed. In February 1997, defendant was arrested for prostitution, ORS 167.007, a Class A misdemeanor, in an area that the City had designated as a “prostitution-free zone” (PFZ). At the time of the arrest, police issued to defendant a “notice of exclusion” under Portland City Code (PCC) section 14.150.030. 1 The notice stated that, effective six days from the date of the arrest and for a period of 90 days thereafter, defendant was prohibited from entering or remaining in any area of the city that had been designated as a prostitution-free zone. Prostitution-free zones are areas that have been designated as such by the Portland City Council based on the high number of prostitution-related crimes in those areas. PCC § 14.150.010. At the time of defendant’s exclusion, the City Council had designated three PFZs that extended along several of the *546 City’s major thoroughfares and made up approximately three percent of the City’s area.

Although defendant was entitled to request a hearing on the validity of his exclusion, he did not to do so. 2 However, when the state later proceeded criminally against defendant on the underlying prostitution charge, he moved to dismiss, arguing that the 90-day exclusion was criminal punishment and that any further attempt to prosecute or punish him for prostitution would constitute former or double jeopardy.

The trial court allowed defendant’s motion, holding that criminal prosecution under the circumstances would violate state and federal double jeopardy principles. 3 In reaching that decision, the court employed the Fifth Amendment double jeopardy analysis described and applied by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Halper, 490 US 435, 109 S Ct 1892, 104 L Ed 2d 487 (1989), which since has been disavowed. See Hudson v. United States, 522 US 93, 118 S Ct 488, 139 L Ed 2d 450 (1997) (disavowing in large part the method of analysis used in Halper). The trial court did not analyze separately defendant’s jeopardy challenge under Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution, but instead assumed that the state constitutional analysis would be the same.

On the state’s appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed. In a brief per curiam opinion, the court cited its own opinion in State v. James, 159 Or App 502, 978 P2d 415 (1999), to the *547 effect that criminal prosecution for a drug crime that previously had triggered civil exclusion under a Portland “drug-free zone” ordinance did not implicate double jeopardy concerns. 4 After noting that the ordinance at issue in the present case was “virtually identical” to the drug-free zone ordinance at issue in James, the Court of Appeals held that the trial court had erred in dismissing the indictment against defendant on double jeopardy grounds. State v. Lhasawa, 159 Or App 667, 668, 979 P2d 774 (1999).

Defendant petitioned for review. We allowed his petition to decide whether criminal prosecution on prostitution charges of a person who already has been excluded from a PFZ under Portland’s civil exclusion ordinance subjects that person to former or double jeopardy. Consistent with our usual practice, we first consider that question under the former jeopardy provision in the Oregon Constitution. See State v. Kennedy, 295 Or 262, 262, 666 P2d 1316 (1983) (Supreme Court addresses all issues of state laws before turning to federal constitution).

I. FORMER JEOPARDY UNDER ARTICLE I, SECTION 12, OF THE OREGON CONSTITUTION

A. Multiple Punishments versus Multiple Prosecutions

Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution, provides that “[n]o person shall be put in jeopardy twice for the same offence.” In the present case, the parties agree that indicting and proceeding against defendant criminally will *548 put him “in jeopardy” within the meaning of Article I, section 12. However, they differ as to whether civil exclusion under the Portland PFZ ordinance already had placed defendant “in jeopardy.” Initially, the parties couched their differences in that regard in terms of whether Article I, section 12, prohibits “multiple punishments” in addition to “multiple prosecutions.” In the Court of Appeals, the state argued that Article I, section 12, pertains only to multiple criminal prosecutions and that defendant had no double jeopardy claim, because he could not show that.he already had been subjected to a criminal prosecution. 5 The state appears to have retreated from that view to some degree, and now argues that “jeopardy” may arise out of a criminal punishment, i.e., a punishment that lawfully may be imposed only after a criminal prosecution with all of the constitutional protections required in such proceedings. The state also argues, however, that defendant’s exclusion under Portland’s prostitution-free zone ordinance is not a criminal punishment.

The foregoing focus on whether Article I, section 12, applies to cases of multiple punishment is an unnecessary detour, in our view. Although it may be that multiple punishments that arise out of a single proceeding do not create a double jeopardy issue, 6 that proposition does not describe the circumstances of this case. Here, although there is or will be only one formal criminal proceeding, the “punishment” of exclusion has no real connection to that proceeding. Instead, the exclusion arises out of a separate process, which is initiated by an individual police officer’s decision to arrest a suspected offender on prostitution charges and which may, if the offender desires, involve a hearing in court before the exclusion takes effect. See PCC § 14.150.160 (providing for appeal of exclusion notice).

*549

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
55 P.3d 477, 334 Or. 543, 2002 Ore. LEXIS 612, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lhasawa-or-2002.