State v. Harris

• Decision Date: 18 August 2005
• Docket Number: CC No. C011903CR.,SC No. S51600.,CA No. A11718.
• Parties: STATE of Oregon, Respondent on Review, v. Zachary James HARRIS, Petitioner on Review.
• Court: Oregon Supreme Court

Page 236

118 P.3d 236

339 Or. 157

STATE of Oregon, Respondent on Review, v. Zachary James HARRIS, Petitioner on Review.

CC No. C011903CR.

CA No. A11718.

SC No. S51600.

Supreme Court of Oregon, En Banc.

Argued and submitted January 12, 2005.

Decided August 18, 2005.

On review from the Court of Appeals.^*

Andrew D. Coit, Portland, argued the cause and filed the briefs for petitioner on review.

Rolf C. Moan, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Hardy Myers, Attorney General, and Mary H. Williams, Solicitor General.

CARSON, C.J.

This case involves the use of prior juvenile delinquency adjudications to increase sentences for adult felony convictions under the Oregon Felony Sentencing Guidelines (guidelines). Under the guidelines, prior juvenile adjudications for person felonies,¹ like prior adult criminal convictions, increase a convicted defendant's criminal history score, which, in turn, usually operates to increase the convicted defendant's sentence. Unlike adult criminal trials, however, juvenile delinquency proceedings in Oregon are conducted without a jury.

On review, defendant first argues generally that, because juvenile adjudications in Oregon are accomplished without jury trials, any subsequent reliance upon those adjudications to increase a defendant's criminal sentence violates the jury trial guarantee of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.² Alternatively, defendant argues that, in any event, the trial court unconstitutionally used the fact of his past juvenile record to impose an increased criminal sentence in his particular case. Defendant's first argument is not well-taken. As to his second argument, however, we hold that, under Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), the manner in which the trial court used defendant's juvenile adjudication to increase his sentence amounted to an error that violated the Sixth Amendment. As a result, we vacate defendant's sentence and remand this case for resentencing.

The facts are undisputed. In 2002, defendant was indicted on 17 criminal counts in connection with a string of Washington County burglaries that occurred in 2001. In exchange for the prosecution's agreement to drop most of the charges against him, defendant agreed to plead guilty to three counts of first-degree theft, two counts of first-degree burglary, and one count of identify theft. Defendant's plea petition expressly called for open sentencing; no sentencing stipulations had been made as part of defendant's agreement to plead guilty. Among other things, the plea petition also required defendant to list his past criminal convictions and juvenile adjudications. Defendant reported that, as a 12-year-old juvenile, he had been adjudicated for first-degree rape. He had no prior adult convictions.

The trial court accepted defendant's guilty plea and later held a sentencing hearing. At that hearing, defendant relied upon the United States Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435, to argue that using his prior juvenile adjudication to enhance his adult criminal sentence would violate the Sixth Amendment, as well as Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution.³ In Apprendi, the Supreme Court had concluded that it was "unconstitutional for a legislature to remove from the jury the assessment of facts that increase the prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed." Id. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. In so holding, however, the Court also held that the existence of any prior convictions was a fact exempt from that general rule. Id. Building from that foundation, defendant in the present case argued that Apprendi's prior conviction exception rested upon the fact that such convictions were established through procedures satisfying the constitutional guarantees of fair notice, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and trial by jury before being used as sentence enhancements. Defendant pointed out that, in contrast, case law interpreting both the state and federal constitutions had made clear that jury trials were not constitutionally required in delinquency proceedings and, consequently, were not made available to juvenile offenders tried in Oregon's juvenile courts. Because his prior juvenile adjudication had lacked a jury trial, defendant argued that, unlike the fact of a prior conviction, the fact of his adjudication could not be used to increase his sentence and at the same time remain consonant with Apprendi. In arguing that point to the trial court, defendant's lawyer added:

"I think the State could have avoided those problems by pleading and proving prior conviction possibly, but it's not my job to build my client's criminal history or to put the State in a position where they can enhance his sentence based upon a prior criminal history."

Ultimately, the trial court rejected defendant's arguments and relied upon defendant's prior juvenile adjudication to increase his criminal history score and to impose an upward departure sentence under the guidelines. For the two first-degree burglary convictions, the trial court imposed respectively a 24-month and a 34-month term of incarceration, which it ordered to be served consecutively. On the remaining counts, the trial court imposed aggregated sentences totaling 36 months, all of which were to be served concurrently with the burglary sentences. Apart from credit for time served and the good-time credit that could accrue during his second burglary sentence, the trial court deemed defendant ineligible for sentence reduction, work release, alternative incarceration, and conditional or supervised release programs. The Court of Appeals affirmed defendant's sentence without written opinion. State v. Harris, 192 Or.App. 602, 89 P.3d 96 (2004). This court subsequently allowed defendant's petition for review to consider his constitutional arguments.

On review, defendant challenges his upward departure sentence solely based upon the United States Constitution. His primary assertion is that, because jury trial safeguards are not available in Oregon juvenile proceedings, any use of a prior juvenile adjudication to lengthen a subsequent criminal sentence in Oregon violates the jury trial right set out in the Sixth Amendment. Defendant reasons that, after Apprendi, use of juvenile adjudications to increase adult sentences without essentially reproving the offenses underlying those adjudications violates the Sixth Amendment because the resulting sentence is based upon facts that were not offered or proved to a jury. Defendant's position appears to be that using a juvenile adjudication as a factor to increase adult sentences is unconstitutional whenever the juvenile proceedings that produce those adjudications are conducted without jury trial protections. As a secondary argument, defendant contends that, in any event, the trial court unconstitutionally applied defendant's prior juvenile adjudication as a sentencing factor in this particular case.

In response, the state argues that, presently, nothing in the United States Supreme Court's jurisprudence interpreting the Sixth Amendment can be read as expressly prohibiting the use of juvenile adjudications at sentencing. In any event, the state continues, the facts of this case fall into either one of the two expressed exceptions to Apprendi's general rule.

First, the state argues that, by acknowledging the existence of his prior juvenile adjudication in his plea petition, defendant essentially admitted that fact and placed it beyond the reach of the general rule recognized in Apprendi. Alternatively, the state contends that prior juvenile adjudications easily fit within Apprendi's prior conviction exception. Pointing to the Supreme Court's decision in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998), the state contends that Apprendi's prior conviction exception should be viewed as a broad "recidivism" exception. According to the state, the application of such an exception does not depend upon the role that juries play in the processes that eventually lead courts to label repeat offenders "recidivists." Instead, the state argues, application of the "recidivism" exception depends upon whether the prior proceedings in question were conducted with the "substantial procedural safeguards" that the Sixth Amendment requires. Because the Sixth Amendment does not require jury trials in juvenile court proceedings, see McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 91 S.Ct. 1976, 29 L.Ed.2d 647 (1971) (so stating), and because juvenile adjudications are accompanied by a number of other important constitutional safeguards, the state now asserts that using defendant's prior juvenile adjudication as a sentencing factor for his adult convictions does not offend the Sixth Amendment. Finally, the state argues that, under Apprendi, it should be allowed to prove the existence of defendant's juvenile adjudication to a jury on remand.

The state is correct in its initial observation that the Supreme Court has yet to address this specific issue. The parties' arguments, however, implicate an element of criminal sentencing that has received substantial scrutiny from the Supreme Court over the last ten years, that is, sentence enhancement and the factors that justify it. Because an understanding of that background is important to the resolution of this case, we review the relevant history as a prelude to our discussion.

In 1994, the Supreme Court placed prior convictions squarely within what was, at the time, a largely unlimited pool of information from which sentencing courts could draw in the course of fashioning criminal punishments. In Nichols v. United States, 511 U.S. 738, 747, 114 S.Ct. 1921, 128 L.Ed.2d 745 (1994), the Court stated:

"As a general proposition, a sentencing judge `may appropriately conduct an inquiry broad...