Oregon Supreme Court grants review to two cases of significant importance to criminal defense
by: Ryan • March 8, 2013 • no comments
Yesterday, according to the Oregon Supreme Court press release, the court granted review to two cases: Felipe Pereida-Alba v. Rick Coursey is the first and State v. Nix is the second.
Perieda-Abla is a PCR case (hello, PCR lawyers down in Eugene!). It involves the defense attorney's failure to ask for a lesser-included offense.
On review, the issues are:
(1) When a post-conviction petitioner alleges that his trial counsel provided constitutionally inadequate assistance by not requesting an instruction for a lesser- included offense, what must the petitioner show to establish that his counsel's performance was deficient?
(2) Assuming that all reasonable trial attorneys would have requested an instruction for a lesser -included offense, what must a petitioner prove to establish that his counsel's failure to request an instruction prejudiced him?
It's the second question that is somewhat scary. I'd hate to see the OSC reverse the COA on an issue for which I have praised them for their insight and commonsense. See this post.
The second case is State v. Nix. The question presented is: Are animals "victims" pursuant to ORS 161.067 when a criminal defendant has violated ORS 167.325?
Now, I know people who hate, hate, hate the result in Nix. But I liked it a bit despite the result because I believe it bolsters my argument that dead people can't be "victims." See my post entitled "Class of Victims: animals, the dead, the uninjured."
You may not get many animal abuse cases, but I guarantee you that whatever is decided in Nix will have a huge impact on merger of convictions in all sorts of cases, especially identity theft and encouraging child sex abuse
Speaking of which, hello defense lawyers at Saturday's OCDLA presentation on merger!
