Blaylock v. Laney

• Decision Date: 28 July 2021
• Docket Number: A169407
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals
• Parties: Steven Paul BLAYLOCK, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Garrett LANEY, Superintendent, Oregon State Correctional Institution, Defendant-Respondent.

313 Or.App. 519

494 P.3d 1000

Steven Paul BLAYLOCK, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.Garrett LANEY, Superintendent, Oregon State Correctional Institution, Defendant-Respondent.

A169407

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Submitted June 18, 2020

July 28, 2021

Jedediah Peterson and O'Connor Weber LLC filed the brief for appellant. Steven Paul Blaylock filed the supplemental brief pro se.

Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General, and Joanna Hershey, Assistant Attorney General, filed the brief for respondent.

Before Lagesen, Presiding Judge, and James, Judge, and Kamins, Judge.

LAGESEN, P. J.

Petitioner appeals a judgment denying his petition for post-conviction relief from his conviction for murder constituting domestic violence, ORS 163.115. Accepting the post-conviction court's supported implicit and explicit factual findings and reviewing for legal error, Green v. Franke , 357 Or. 301, 312, 350 P.3d 188 (2015), we affirm.

The facts underlying petitioner's criminal conviction are set forth in the opinion we issued in petitioner's direct appeal, State v. Blaylock , 267 Or. App. 455, 456-60, 341 P.3d 758 (2014), rev. den. , 357 Or. 299, 353 P.3d 594 (2015). Briefly, petitioner killed his wife. He initially made up stories about his wife leaving him, and even participated in a search party for her. Suspicious that petitioner was not telling the truth about his wife's disappearance, police obtained a warrant to search his house, discovering a letter that petitioner had written—an apparent intended suicide note—in which he admitted to killing his wife. Petitioner then admitted that he had killed his wife but told officers that he did so in self-defense, after he woke up to find his wife physically attacking him. While in jail, he wrote another letter to a relative repeating the self-defense version of events. Consistent with these latter stories, petitioner's defense at trial was self-defense. The jury rejected that defense and found petitioner guilty of murder constituting domestic violence. See generally id . We affirmed petitioner's conviction and sentence on appeal but remanded to the trial court for entry of a corrected judgment omitting an impermissible "no contact" provision contained therein. Id. at 475, 341 P.3d 758. Petitioner sought review in the Supreme Court but his petition was denied. State v. Blaylock , 357 Or. 299, 353 P.3d 594 (2015).

Petitioner thereafter initiated the current post-conviction proceeding. He alleged that his trial and appellate lawyers were inadequate, in violation of Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution, and ineffective, in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in multiple respects. The post-conviction court denied relief and petitioner appealed.

On appeal, petitioner has submitted a brief through counsel as well as a pro se brief raising three additional assignments of error. For the reasons that follow, we reject each of them.

Petitioner's first four assignments of error are of a piece. Each contends that the post-conviction court erred when it rejected petitioner's claims regarding trial counsel's handling of alleged vouching testimony by Hartley, Tabor, and Lasseter, all of which spoke to lies by petitioner. As we understand its ruling, the post-conviction court denied relief on those claims based on its determination that, in the context of petitioner's case—in which petitioner acknowledged lying to the police about killing his wife for a period of time—petitioner was not prejudiced by the challenged testimony.

On review of the record, including the evidence admitted and, most pertinently, the parties’ specific theories of the case, we agree with the post-conviction court's assessment. For purposes of Article I, section 11, a petitioner is prejudiced by an act or omission by trial counsel if that act or omission tended to affect the result of the prosecution. Johnson v. Premo , 361 Or. 688, 710-11, 399 P.3d 431 (2017). A comparable standard governs the determination of prejudice under the Sixth Amendment. Id . at 699-700, 399 P.3d 431. As the superintendent notes, it was not disputed—and very much in evidence—that petitioner told a number of lies about what happened to his wife before ultimately acknowledging that he killed her. Given that, the challenged testimony would not likely have been understood by the jury to comment on the truthfulness of petitioner's claim of self-defense, as distinct from the number of false statements that petitioner made before confessing to killing his wife, and, thus, had no tendency to affect the jury's assessment of the key issue: whether petitioner's killing of his wife was in self-defense.

Petitioner's fifth assignment of error challenges trial counsel's handling of alleged vouching testimony of a different nature. In that testimony, a coworker of the victim described what kind of person she was, stating, among other things, that, when there were tough situations at work, "She would be very—she would be calming. She would talk it out. She was firm. But she was kind. You could always count on [her] to tell you the truth, tell you what she thought."

Trial counsel objected to that testimony, and the trial court sustained the objection, but counsel did not move to strike or request a curative instruction. Rejecting petitioner's contention that trial counsel was constitutionally deficient for not moving to strike and request a curative instruction, the post-conviction court ruling, as we understand it, was that petitioner was not prejudiced.

On review of the record, we agree with the post-conviction court's ruling. We acknowledge that the victim's credibility was, to some extent, at issue in the case. That is because statements that the victim had made about abuse by petitioner were admitted at trial to counter petitioner's claim of self-defense. Nevertheless, the record demonstrates that the testimony that petitioner challenges did not have a tendency to affect the jury's assessment of petitioner's self-defense...