State v. Lusk

340 P.3d 670, 267 Or. App. 208, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1612
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedNovember 26, 2014
Docket12C41821, 10C50297; A152028, A152029
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 340 P.3d 670 (State v. Lusk) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Lusk, 340 P.3d 670, 267 Or. App. 208, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1612 (Or. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

NAKAMOTO, J.

Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for, among other offenses, giving false information to a peace officer for service of an arrest warrant, ORS 162.385(l)(b).1 In a single assignment of error, defendant argues that the trial court erred when it failed to enter a judgment of acquittal on that charge, Count 2. Defendant contends that, because the evidence was insufficient to allow a rational trier of fact to find that the officer asked for defendant’s identification for the purpose of arresting him on a warrant, as required for a conviction under ORS 162.385(l)(b), the trial court erred when it failed to acquit him. See State v. Moresco, 250 Or App 405, 408, 281 P3d 263 (2012) (“ORS 162.385(l)(b) requires that an officer request the defendant’s identification for the purpose of arresting the defendant on a warrant, not merely for the purpose of ascertaining whether a warrant exists.” (Emphasis in original.)); State v. Allen, 222 Or App 71, 77, 191 P3d 762, rev den, 345 Or 503 (2008) (same). Defendant concedes that he did not preserve that argument below, but argues that it is plain error and that we should exercise our discretion to correct it. Although the state agrees that the asserted error qualifies as plain error, it argues that we should not exercise our discretion to correct it. We choose to correct the error, reverse defendant’s conviction on Count 2, and remand for resentencing; we otherwise affirm.

We agree with the parties that the trial court erred and that the error is plain. By a grand jury indictment, the state charged defendant with giving false information to a peace officer under ORS 162.385. That statute provides, in pertinent part:

“(1) A person commits the crime of giving false information to a peace officer for issuance or service of a citation or for an arrest on a warrant if the person knowingly uses or gives a false or fictitious name * * * to any peace officer for the purpose of:
[211]*211“(a) The officer’s issuing or serving the person a citation under authority of ORS 133.055 to 133.076 or ORS chapter 153; or
“(b) The officer’s arresting the person on a warrant.”

In the indictment, the state alleged that defendant had violated subsection (l)(b) when he “did unlawfully and knowingly use and give to a peace officer a false name for the purpose of the officer’s arresting defendant on an arrest warrant.” The state did not allege that defendant violated subsection (l)(a). To prove that defendant violated ORS 162.385(l)(b), the state had to establish that “the officer asked for that information for the purpose of * * * ‘arresting the person on a warrant.’” Allen, 222 Or App at 77. Furthermore, the officer must have been aware of the outstanding warrant when the officer asked the defendant for the identifying information. Moresco, 250 Or App at 408.

Here, there was no evidence at trial that the officer had asked for defendant’s identification for the purpose of arresting him on a warrant. To the contrary, the officer testified unequivocally that he had requested defendant’s driver’s license after stopping defendant for driving a car with overly tinted windows, a traffic violation. When the officer requested defendant’s identification, the officer did not know who defendant was or whether he had any outstanding warrants. Indeed, the officer did not learn about defendant’s true identity or his outstanding warrants until dispatch provided him with that information some time after he had requested defendant’s identification. Accordingly, the evidence failed to support a conviction, and the trial court plainly erred when it entered a conviction on that charge. See State v. CardosaMarlowe, 264 Or App 576, 577, 333 P3d 1078 (2014) (holding that the trial court plainly erred in denying the defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal because the state failed to present evidence sufficient to support the defendant’s conviction under ORS 162.385(1)(b)).

We must decide, however, whether this is an appropriate case for us to exercise our discretion to correct that error. Ailes v. Portland Meadows, Inc., 312 Or 376, 382, 823 P2d 956 (1991). Among the factors that we consider in deciding whether to exercise our discretion are

[212]*212“the competing interests of the parties; the nature of the case; the gravity of the error; the ends of justice in the particular case; how the error came to the court’s attention; and whether the policies behind the general rule requiring preservation of error have been served in the case in another way, i.e., whether the trial court was, in some manner, presented with both sides of the issue and given an opportunity to correct any error.”

Id. at 382 n 6. Since its decision in Ailes, the Oregon Supreme Court has identified several additional considerations that may be relevant, including whether the defendant encouraged the trial court to make the error; whether the defendant made a strategic choice not to object; and whether the trial court could have corrected the error if the defendant had raised it below. State v. Reynolds, 250 Or App 516, 521, 280 P3d 1046, rev den, 352 Or 666 (2012) (citing State v. Fults, 343 Or 515, 523, 173 P3d 822 (2007)).

We note, as we did in Reynolds, that we have often declined to exercise our discretion to correct a plain error when the defendant failed to move for a judgment of acquittal, or made such a motion but failed to specify its theory. “That is because the trial court has not, consistently with the purposes of preservation, been apprised of the issue and given an opportunity to avoid the error by allowing supplemental evidence to be introduced.” Reynolds, 250 Or App at 521. That is not to say, however, that we cannot exercise our discretion to correct such an error if we conclude that there are sound reasons to do so. See id. (concluding that it was appropriate to exercise discretion to correct plain error relating to sufficiency of the evidence despite the fact that the defendant failed to preserve the error when he only made a general motion for judgment of acquittal); accord State v. Hockersmith, 181 Or App 554, 557-58, 47 P3d 61 (2002) (stating that an unpreserved challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence may be raised on appeal and that we may, in our discretion, consider the unpreserved assignment of error if it qualifies as plain error). In this case, we conclude that there are sound reasons to exercise our discretion to correct the error, despite the fact that defendant did not make the appropriate motion below.

[213]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
340 P.3d 670, 267 Or. App. 208, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1612, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lusk-orctapp-2014.