Oregon Supreme Court - September 20, 2018

by: Rankin Johnson • September 25, 2018 • no comments

Summarized by Rankin Johnson, OCDLA

SENTENCING - Separate criminal episodes If double-jeopardy principles require that multiple crimes be tried together, then those crimes are necessarily part of the same criminal episode, and none increase the defendant’s criminal history for the others. Remanded for resentencing.

Defendant was convicted of multiple counts of encouraging child sexual abuse based on the presence of multiple images saved on his hard drive. The Supreme Court reasoned that, the defendant was prosecuted for the possession of multiple things possessed at the same time, and that constituted a single criminal episode.

The state argued that defendant downloaded the images on multiple dates. In rejecting that argument, the Supreme Court explained the jury did not specify whether it based its verdict on a a possession theory or a downloading theory. The sentencing court could not make that finding.

State v. Dulfu 363 Or 647 (September 20, 2018) (Duncan) (Lane County County, McAlpin)