Oregon Supreme Court - October 17, 2013

by: Alex Flood and Abassos • October 18, 2013 • no comments

Venue is No Longer an Element of a Crime. It Is a Jurisdictional Issue.

Venue is a jurisdictional issue, not an element of the crime. Thus, it needs to be alleged pre-trial, prior to jeopardy attaching. Pushing aside stare decisis, a unanimous court sitting en banc, finds that prior cases indicating that venue is an element of the crime were a mistake and should be overruled:

1. Article I, section 11 says nothing about either venue being a material allegation or matters of proof for any of the listed rights.

2. Historically, the common law venue cases are about the jurisdiction of the court, not venue as a material allegation.

3. Constitutionally, venue provisions arose out of anger at England for transporting treason cases to England for trial. I.e, not related to the material elements of a crime.

Summarizing these issues, the court says:

"We are left, then, with constitutional wording that even defendant concedes says nothing about requiring proof of venue as a material element of the state's case, as well as contemporaneous history that fails even to hint at the possibility that the constitution was intended to have that effect."

Reversed and remanded for resolution of the jurisdictional issue of venue. State v Mills, 354 Or ___ (2013)

J. Walters: "Same Criminal Episode" Can Encompass Dissimilar Acts With a Single Objective.

In a rare concurrence on an improvidently granted review, J. Walters writes solely to make this point: offenses based upon the same criminal episode (ORS 131.515) “need not be similar, need not have the same elements, need not be proved by the same evidence and need not share the same statutory intent.” Multiple offenses may fall under the same criminal episode so long as they fall under a single overarching criminal objective. J. Walters highlights the importance simultaneity plays in determining what is an overarching criminal objective, noting that “When a defendant drives unlawfully and, at the same time, illegally possesses contraband . . . there is only one criminal episode" since both acts occur at the same time. State v. Campbell, 354 Or ___ (2013)