State v. Watkins-McKenzie

400 P.3d 1012, 286 Or. App. 569, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 864
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedJuly 6, 2017
Docket14CR05521; A158912
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 400 P.3d 1012 (State v. Watkins-McKenzie) 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. Watkins-McKenzie, 400 P.3d 1012, 286 Or. App. 569, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 864 (Or. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

LAGESEN, J.

Defendant, who was convicted of five counts of first-degree aggravated theft, ORS 164.057, and sentenced under ORS 137.717, the repeat property offender sentencing statute, seeks review of her sentence. She contends that the trial court erroneously understood the scope of its authority under ORS 137.717 in two ways: (1) in concluding that ORS 137.717 precluded the court from imposing downward departure sentences on other convictions once it had imposed one downward departure sentence in the same case; and (2) in concluding that it lacked discretion to elect the particular count on which it downwardly departed. We review the trial court’s interpretation and application of ORS 137.717 for legal error and conclude that, although the trial court correctly determined that it lacked the authority to downwardly depart more than once, it erred when it determined that it lacked discretion to elect the count on which it downwardly departed. We therefore remand for resentencing but otherwise affirm.

The relevant facts are procedural and not disputed. Defendant, who had no prior criminal convictions before this case, pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree aggravated theft for several thefts from her employer that she committed over the course of a year and a half. On Count 1, the trial court sentenced defendant under the sentencing guidelines to probation, with an upward durational departure to 60 months. That conviction, in turn, triggered the application of ORS 137.717 for the purpose of sentencing defendant on the remaining counts. For each conviction to which it applies, that statute requires a sentencing court to impose the longer of the presumptive guidelines sentence and the presumptive statutory sentence. ORS 137.717(l)(a). The statute permits a sentencing court to impose a downward departure sentence, but only if the offender “has not previously received a downward departure from a presumptive sentence for a crime listed in subsection (1) of this section.” ORS 137.717(6)(b). The court applied the statute to sentence defendant on Count 2, determining that the presumptive sentence under ORS 137.717 was longer than the presumptive sentence under the sentencing guidelines. It therefore sentenced defendant under ORS 137.717, downwardly departing dispositionally [571]*571to impose a term of probation, but upwardly departing dura-tionally to extend that probationary term to 60 months. With respect to the remaining counts, the court sentenced defendant to the following terms of incarceration provided for in ORS 137.717 after determining that those terms of incarceration were longer than the presumptive sentences under the guidelines:

• Count 3: 26 months’ imprisonment.
• Count 4: 28 months’ imprisonment.
• Count 5: 30 months’ imprisonment.

The sentencing court ordered each of defendant’s sentences to run concurrently, for an aggregate sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment and 60 months’ probation.

At sentencing, defendant urged the trial court to impose downward departure sentences on all counts. The trial court ruled that ORS 137.717(6)(b) precluded it from doing so once it had downwardly departed on any single count. Defendant also requested, in the alternative, that if the court’s authority was limited to a single downward departure, that the court downwardly depart with respect to the sentence on Count 5, rather than on the earlier counts. The court ruled that it lacked the authority to do so.

On appeal, defendant challenges each of those conclusions: (1) that ORS 137.717(6)(b) precluded the court from imposing downward departure sentences on all counts; and (2) that ORS 137.717 precluded the court from electing the count on which to grant a downward departure. In response, the state argues (1) that ORS 138.222(2)(a) bars review of defendant’s claims of error; and (2) that the trial court correctly concluded that ORS 137.717(6)(b) precluded it from imposing a downward departure sentence on more than one count. The state concedes, however, that if defendant’s claims of error are reviewable, the trial court erred when it concluded that ORS 137.717 precluded it from electing on which count to downwardly depart. We conclude that defendant’s claims of error are reviewable, that ORS 137.717(6)(b) barred the court from downwardly departing on more than one count to which ORS 137.717 applied, and that the state’s concession is well taken. We therefore remand for [572]*572resentencing so that the trial court can exercise its discretion to determine whether to downwardly depart on a different count.

We start with reviewability. ORS 138.222(2)(a) states that an appellate court “may not review *** [a]ny sentence that is within the presumptive sentence prescribed by the rules of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission.” Pointing to that provision, the state argues that defendant’s claims of sentencing error are not reviewable because her “challenge pertains to presumptive sentences * * * imposed under ORS 137.717, which expressly provides that the prescribed prison sentence is a ‘presumptive sentence.’” In support of its claim that a statutory presumptive sentence is a presumptive sentence under the guidelines, the state points out that the sentencing guidelines definition of “presumptive sentence” purports to cover any sentence “designated as a presumptive sentence by statute.” OAR 213-003-0001(16).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
400 P.3d 1012, 286 Or. App. 569, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 864, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-watkins-mckenzie-orctapp-2017.