State v. Simmons
| Decision Date | 27 July 2016 |
| Docket Number | A151636 |
| Citation | 279 Or.App. 756,379 P.3d 580 |
| Parties | State of Oregon, Plaintiff–Respondent, v. William Frank Simmons, Defendant–Appellant. |
| Court | Oregon Court of Appeals |
Erica Herb, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant. With her on the brief was Peter Gartlan, Chief Defender, Office of Public Defense Services.
Rolf C. Moan, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Anna M. Joyce, Solicitor General.
En Banc
Before Hadlock, Chief Judge, and Armstrong, Ortega, Sercombe, Duncan, Egan, DeVore, Tookey, Garrett, Flynn, DeHoog, Shorr, and Edmonds, Judges.
EDMONDS
, S.J.
Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for the lesser included offense of first-degree manslaughter, ORS 163.118(1)(a)
, after a jury trial.1 On appeal, he assigns as error the denial of his motions for a judgment of acquittal. We affirm.
Defendant was indicted in 2010. The 15–year–old victim disappeared during the evening of November 6, 1996, in rural Jackson County, after being last seen on that date with defendant at his trailer where he lived at the time. The remains of the victim's body were found in April 2008, in a field approximately 80 feet from the trailer. Defendant was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
Defendant argues on appeal that the trial court erred in denying his motions because, in his view, the evidence was legally insufficient to submit the question of whether he caused the death of the victim to the jury. In response to defendant's argument, the state first argues that defendant failed to preserve his claim of error on appeal, as ORAP 5.45(1)
requires. In the state's view, defendant's motions for a judgment of acquittal in the trial court were too general in content to satisfy the requirement of that rule. The test under the rule is whether defendant provided to the trial court an explanation that was specific enough to ensure that the court could have identified the claim of error that defendant now identifies on appeal. State v. Wyatt , 331 Or. 335, 343, 15 P.3d 22 (2000).
After the state closed its case-in-chief, defendant moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing as follows:
After defendant presented his case to the jury, he renewed his motion for a judgment of acquittal:
The only contested element of the charge at trial was the allegation that defendant had caused the death of the victim. In that context, defendant's motions put the trial court and the state on notice that he was contesting the legal sufficiency of the evidence regarding the issue of causation. Defense counsel's statements regarding “insufficient” and the lack of “adequate” evidence could have had no other meaning to the trial court. It follows that defendant's claim of error on appeal is adequately preserved under the rule.
State v. King , 307 Or. 332, 339, 768 P.2d 391 (1989)
(internal citations omitted).
Under the above rule, a trial court, when faced with a motion for a judgment of acquittal, must consider two categories of facts. The first category concerns facts that are in dispute. The above rule requires that the disputed facts be viewed in the light most favorable to the state for purposes of deciding the motion, and it entitles the state to any favorable, reasonable inferences that can be drawn from the facts viewed in that light. The second category concerns undisputed facts. In deciding a motion for a judgment of acquittal, a trial court must also consider all reasonable inferences of guilt and innocence arising from the undisputed facts. The final step of the analysis in deciding the motion is to inquire whether “any” rational juror could find a defendant guilty of the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt based on the consideration of facts and reasonable inferences arising from both categories of evidence.
Applying the above rule, we turn first to the undisputed facts and the disputed facts as viewed in the light most favorable to the state. On the evening of November 6, 1996, the victim's family attended church services. The church was close enough to the family's residence that the victim would walk to church when the weather permitted. The victim left her residence around 6:15 p.m. with the announced attention of meeting a girlfriend at the church. After the services ended, the victim's mother waited for the victim in the church lobby. When the victim did not appear, the mother went to the family residence believing that the victim had walked home from church. When she arrived at her residence, the victim was not there. Shortly after 9:00 p.m., the mother called the church and asked that the church grounds be searched. When the victim was not found, law enforcement officials were notified of her disappearance around 11:00 p.m.
Defendant and his parents also lived within walking distance of the church. Defendant lived in a separate trailer on the premises from where his parents lived. The ensuing investigation ascertained that the victim never went to the church that night. Instead, she walked to defendant's trailer between 6:45 and 7:00 p.m. The victim had made prior arrangements to meet her boyfriend at defendant's trailer. However, the boyfriend decided not to go to defendant's trailer to avoid trouble with his stepfather, without informing the victim. As a result, defendant was alone with the victim on the evening of November 6, 1996, in the hours preceding her disappearance.
Defendant's mother arrived home at approximately 7:30 p.m. The victim may have stuck her head out of defendant's trailer to say “hi.” Also, a friend of defendant's stopped by and talked with defendant and the victim outside the trailer for approximately 15 minutes while the victim was at the trailer. According to defendant, he and the victim watched part of a movie together, and the victim left his trailer thereafter, intending to walk to the church before the services were over to meet her mother. The resulting investigation of the victim's disappearance showed that defendant was the last person known to the police to have seen the victim alive, and consequently, he was interviewed extensively by investigators during the years that followed. Also, extensive and multiple searches of the premises where defendant's trailer was located occurred in the time following her disappearance, including searches by dog teams.
In 2008, the victim's remains were discovered in a field of three-foot-high grass approximately 80 feet from defendant's trailer, the place where she was last observed by others to be alive. The remains were not buried, but were found in a depression in the surface of the field. The field bordered the property on which defendant had lived in 1996. At the time and thereafter, the owner of the field customarily avoided the field because he did not get along with defendant's family and because he did not maintain it. According to investigators, the position of the victim's clothing found on her remains indicated that she had been dragged by her feet to the location where her remains were found. At the time of her disappearance, the victim weighed 120 pounds and could have been dragged to that location by a single person. At the time of the victim's disappearance, defendant had no driver's license or access to a car, which could have permitted him to move her body to another location. According to expert testimony, the remains had been decomposing for a significant period of time at the location where they were found, and the remains had been at that location for at least five years before they were discovered in 2008.
The remains of the victim's head and neck were found wrapped in a...
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...be incriminating insofar as a denial that later proves to be untrue can be used to show consciousness of guilt. See State v. Simmons , 279 Or. App. 756, 767, 379 P.3d 580, rev. den. , 360 Or. 697, 388 P.3d 710 (2016) (reasoning that "a rational juror could infer that defendant's statements ......
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...in the light most favorable to the state, as well as inferences of innocence that flow from the undisputed evidence." State v. Simmons , 279 Or.App. 756, 764, 379 P.3d 580, rev. den. , 360 Or. 697, 388 P.3d 710 (2016) ; see also State v. Krummacher , 269 Or. 125, 134, 523 P.2d 1009 (1974) (......
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...light most favorable to the state, any rational factfinder could have found the elements beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Simmons , 279 Or. App. 756, 758-59, 379 P.3d 580, rev den , 360 Or. 697, 388 P.3d 710 (2016). When the dispute centers on the meaning of a statute, however, the issue......
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