State v. Tinoco-Camarena

489 P.3d 572, 311 Or. App. 295
Court of Appeals of Oregon·Decided May 12, 2021·No. A165374·Published·Cited by 10 cases

Opinion

Argued and submitted December 10, 2019, reversed and remanded May 12, petition for review denied September 16, 2021 (368 Or 561)

STATE OF OREGON, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

JAIME ALFREDO TINOCO-CAMARENA, Defendant-Appellant.

Washington County Circuit Court C150795CR; A165374

489 P3d 572

Defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him of one count of aggravated murder, ORS 163.095(2)(d), and one count of unlawful use of a weapon, ORS 166.220(1)(a). Defendant, in part, challenges the admission of specific other- acts evidence describing his rape of a different victim, which the trial court admitted for the purpose of demonstrating defendant’s asserted motive to rape the victim in this case. Defendant challenges that evidence as impermissible propensity evidence in violation of OEC 404(3). Held: The trial court erred in admitting specific, descriptive evidence of defendant’s rape of another victim, because it relied upon impermissible character-based reasoning in violation of OEC 404(3). Accordingly, that evidence—in particular the extensive testimony from the rape victim, photos of the rape victim, and testimony from the investigating detective regarding the rape—should have been excluded.

Reversed and remanded.

Kirsten E. Thompson, Judge. Marc D. Brown, Deputy Defender, argued the cause for appellant. Also on the briefs was Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate Section, Office of Public Defense Services.

Timothy A. Sylwester, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.

Rhett G. Fraser filed the brief amicus curiae for Oregon Justice Resource Center.

Before DeVore, Presiding Judge, and DeHoog, Judge, and Mooney, Judge.

DeVORE, P. J. Reversed and remanded.

296 State v. Tinoco-Camarena

DeVORE, P. J., Defendant, who was 17 years old at the time of the crimes, appeals from convictions on one count of aggravated murder, ORS 163.095(2)(d) (2013),1 and one count of the unlawful use of a weapon, ORS 166.220(1)(a). Under Measure 11, he was tried as an adult. The jury determined that defendant should be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. ORS 163.150 (2013).2 On appeal, defendant raises four assignments of error. We write to address defendant’s second assignment, in which he challenges the admission of specific other-acts evidence describing his rape of a different victim. We agree with defendant that the admission of the challenged other- acts evidence was dependent upon impermissible character- based reasoning in violation of OEC 404(3). Accordingly, we reverse and remand defendant’s conviction.

We reject without discussion defendant’s first assignment of error, in which he asserts that the trial court abused its discretion when it denied defense counsel’s request that defendant be re-evaluated for fitness to proceed.

Because we reverse and remand, we do not reach the merits of defendant’s third and fourth assignments of error, in which he asserts that a jury instruction and his sentence of life without the possibility of parole violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution based on the principles expressed in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 US 190, 136 S Ct 718, 193 L Ed 2d 599 (2016), and Miller v. Alabama, 567 US 460, 132 S Ct 2455, 183 L Ed 2d 407 (2012).3 As it happens, recent statutory amendments exclude the possibility of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles with “sentences imposed on or after 1 The version of the statute in effect at the time of the crime was ORS 163.095 (2013), amended by Or Laws 2015, ch 614, § 149; Or Laws 2019, ch 635, § 1. All references in this opinion are to the 2013 version.

2 The version of the statute in effect at the time of the crime was ORS 163.150 (2013), amended by Or Laws 2017, ch 359, § 4; Or Laws 2019, ch 635, § 5. All references in this opinion are to the 2013 version.

3 The Supreme Court has recently issued another decision, Jones v.

Mississippi, ___ US ___, 141 S Ct 1307 (2021), discussing the principles in Montgomery and Miller.

Cite as 311 Or App 295 (2021) 297

January 1, 2020.” See Or Laws 2019, ch 634, §§ 5, 24, 32. Therefore, if defendant were convicted after retrial, he would not be subject to the possibility of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. The issues posed by defendant ’s third and fourth assignments will not arise again on remand.

We review a trial court’s determination of whether other acts evidence is relevant for a nonpropensity purpose under OEC 404(3) for errors of law. State v. Baughman, 361 Or 386, 406, 393 P3d 1132 (2017).

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on August 19, 2014, a man called 9-1-1 to report that a woman, N, had been stabbed. The caller, a resident at an apartment complex in Portland called the Commons at Timber Creek (“Timber Creek”), testified that, as he and his wife came down the stairs of their apartment building and walked toward the parking lot, he heard a scream. He looked to his right, and he saw N running toward them, saying, “He stabbed me, he stabbed me.” N told the couple that she did not know her attacker but that he was wearing camo pants and a black hoodie. N died moments later. Following an autopsy, a state medical examiner found that N had no defensive wounds and that she died from a single stab wound to her heart.

N had worked at Timber Creek as a leasing consultant . As part of her duties on August 19, she had been driving a golf cart around the complex to deliver lease renewal letters. Along with each letter, N had been delivering a balloon tied to a package of popcorn for each applicable resident . As she made the deliveries, N marked each apartment on a map stored in the golf cart. Based on N’s notations on the map and the time when the apartment residents heard N screaming, detectives determined that the attack likely occurred in a specific stairwell breezeway at Timber Creek.

During the investigation by the Washington County Sherriff’s Office, several witnesses reported seeing a suspicious young male dressed in some form of a black hoodie and camo pants in the vicinity of Timber Creek around the time of the attack. Combining the reports and timelines of each sighting, detectives deduced the path that the suspect took into and out of Timber Creek. The detectives, working with 298 State v. Tinoco-Camarena

one of the witnesses, released a sketch of the suspect around September 15, 2014.

A few days later, Detective Roth from the Eugene Police Department contacted Officer George of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, who was leading the investigation of N’s murder. The Eugene detective believed that the person in the sketch resembled defendant. On September 13, 2014, defendant had assaulted and raped a woman, H, admitted it, and was in custody in Eugene. Officer George discovered that defendant lived in an apartment building directly across the road from Timber Creek. About five days later, Officer George drove to Eugene and interviewed defendant. Although defendant denied involvement with N’s murder during that initial interview, defendant remained the lead suspect.

The day following that interview, Officer George visited defendant’s apartment where he lived with his parents. In defendant’s bedroom, Officer George found a black hoodie and camo pants matching the witnesses’ descriptions.

Defendant pleaded guilty to the assault, rape, and kidnapping of H, and, on March 23, 2015, was sentenced . After sentencing, Detective Roth visited defendant. Defendant admitted to stabbing N. Roth called George to let him know that defendant was willing to talk about N’s murder . George drove to Eugene and joined Roth’s interrogation of defendant that same day.

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State v. Tinoco-Camarena, 489 P.3d 572, 311 Or. App. 295 (Or. Ct. App. 2021).

489 P.3d 572 (State v. Tinoco-Camarena) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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