State v. Tinoco-Camarena

• Decision Date: 12 May 2021
• Docket Number: A165374
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Jaime Alfredo TINOCO-CAMARENA, Defendant-Appellant.

311 Or.App. 295

489 P.3d 572

STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.Jaime Alfredo TINOCO-CAMARENA, Defendant-Appellant.

A165374

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Argued and submitted December 10, 2019.

May 12, 2021

Marc D. Brown, Deputy Defender, argued the cause for appellant. Also on the briefs was Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate Section, Office of Public Defense Services.

Timothy A. Sylwester, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.

Rhett G. Fraser filed the brief amicus curiae for Oregon Justice Resource Center.

Before DeVore, Presiding Judge, and DeHoog, Judge, and Mooney, Judge.

DeVORE, P. J.,

Defendant, who was 17 years old at the time of the crimes, appeals from convictions on one count of aggravated murder, ORS 163.095(2)(d) (2013),¹ and one count of the unlawful use of a weapon, ORS 166.220(1)(a). Under Measure 11, he was tried as an adult. The jury determined that defendant should be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. ORS 163.150 (2013).²

On appeal, defendant raises four assignments of error. We write to address defendant's second assignment, in which he challenges the admission of specific other-acts evidence describing his rape of a different victim. We agree with defendant that the admission of the challenged other-acts evidence was dependent upon impermissible character-based reasoning in violation of OEC 404(3). Accordingly, we reverse and remand defendant's conviction.

We reject without discussion defendant's first assignment of error, in which he asserts that the trial court abused its discretion when it denied defense counsel's request that defendant be re-evaluated for fitness to proceed.

Because we reverse and remand, we do not reach the merits of defendant's third and fourth assignments of error, in which he asserts that a jury instruction and his sentence of life without the possibility of parole violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution based on the principles expressed in Montgomery v. Louisiana , 577 U.S. 190, 136 S. Ct. 718, 193 L. Ed. 2d 599 (2016) and Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S. Ct. 2455, 183 L. Ed. 2d 407 (2012).³ As it happens, recent statutory amendments exclude the possibility of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles with "sentences imposed on or after January 1, 2020." See Or. Laws 2019, ch. 634, §§ 5, 24, 32. Therefore, if defendant were convicted after retrial, he would not be subject to the possibility of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. The issues posed by defendant's third and fourth assignments will not arise again on remand.

We review a trial court's determination of whether other acts evidence is relevant for a nonpropensity purpose under OEC 404(3) for errors of law. State v. Baughman , 361 Or. 386, 406, 393 P.3d 1132 (2017).

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on August 19, 2014, a man called 9-1-1 to report that a woman, N, had been stabbed. The caller, a resident at an apartment complex in Portland called the Commons at Timber Creek ("Timber Creek"), testified that, as he and his wife came down the stairs of their apartment building and walked toward the parking lot, he heard a scream. He looked to his right, and he saw N running toward them, saying, "He stabbed me, he stabbed me." N told the couple that she did not know her attacker but that he was wearing camo pants and a black hoodie. N died moments later. Following an autopsy, a state medical examiner found that N had no defensive wounds and that she died from a single stab wound to her heart.

N had worked at Timber Creek as a leasing consultant. As part of her duties on August 19, she had been driving a golf cart around the complex to deliver lease renewal letters. Along with each letter, N had been delivering a balloon tied to a package of popcorn for each applicable resident. As she made the deliveries, N marked each apartment on a map stored in the golf cart. Based on N's notations on the map and the time when the apartment residents heard N screaming, detectives determined that the attack likely occurred in a specific stairwell breezeway at Timber Creek.

During the investigation by the Washington County Sheriff's Office, several witnesses reported seeing a suspicious young male dressed in some form of a black hoodie and camo pants in the vicinity of Timber Creek around the time of the attack. Combining the reports and timelines of each sighting, detectives deduced the path that the suspect took into and out of Timber Creek. The detectives, working with one of the witnesses, released a sketch of the suspect around September 15, 2014.

A few days later, Detective Roth from the Eugene Police Department contacted Officer George of the Washington County Sheriff's Office, who was leading the investigation of N's murder. The Eugene detective believed that the person in the sketch resembled defendant. On September 13, 2014, defendant had assaulted and raped a woman, H, admitted it, and was in custody in Eugene. Officer George discovered that defendant lived in an apartment building directly across the road from Timber Creek. About five days later, Officer George drove to Eugene and interviewed defendant. Although defendant denied involvement with N's murder during that initial interview, defendant remained the lead suspect.

The day following that interview, Officer George visited defendant's apartment where he lived with his parents. In defendant's bedroom, Officer George found a black hoodie and camo pants matching the witnesses’ descriptions.

Defendant pleaded guilty to the assault, rape, and kidnapping of H, and, on March 23, 2015, was sentenced. After sentencing, Detective Roth visited defendant. Defendant admitted to stabbing N. Roth called George to let him know that defendant was willing to talk about N's murder. George drove to Eugene and joined Roth's interrogation of defendant that same day.

Over the course of those interviews, defendant admitted to stabbing N, but he said that he "didn't mean to do it." Yet, when asked why he attacked N, defendant said that he left his apartment with a knife that day because he "needed to see what [killing someone] felt like." He said that, once he crossed the street from his apartment and arrived at Timber Creek, he saw N park the golf cart and carry a balloon and small package up to a second-floor unit. As N went up the stairs, defendant ducked down behind the golf cart. He then ran toward the stairs as N came back down, took a deep breath, and stabbed her. Defendant said that he chose N because she looked like "easy prey." When asked whether he was trying to rape N as he had raped H, defendant responded, "Oh, I was thinking about doing the same.

I was going to do the same." Defendant said that he did not rape N, because she "screamed real loud" as he stabbed her, so he ran away.

On March 31, 2015, a grand jury charged defendant by indictment with one count of aggravated murder and one count of the unlawful use of a weapon. Defendant pleaded not guilty.

Once before trial and again during trial, defendant objected to the admission of particular testimony and exhibits describing the circumstances of defendant's assault, rape, and kidnapping of H in Eugene.⁴ Defendant argued that extensive testimony by H regarding the attack and her trauma, photos of H's injuries, and testimony from Roth would be impermissible character evidence and more prejudicial than probative. The trial court denied defendant's pretrial motion and his objection during the trial. The court admitted the evidence for the noncharacter purpose of showing that defendant's motive and intent were to rape N when he attacked her.

At the conclusion of the initial phase of the trial, the jury unanimously found defendant guilty of aggravated murder and the unlawful use of a weapon against another. In the penalty phase, the jury had two choices: life without the possibility of parole or life with the possibility of parole after 30 years. ORS 163.150(2)(a) ; ORS 163.105 (2014).⁵ The jury determined that there were not sufficient mitigating circumstances to warrant a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years. The trial court merged the weapon verdict into the aggravated murder verdict and sentenced defendant to a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, as provided in ORS 163.150(2)(a).

We begin our analysis with the evidentiary rules on which the parties’ arguments are based. Evidence is relevant if it has "any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." OEC 401 ; State v. Skillicorn , 367 Or. 464, 475, 479 P.3d 254 (2021). Generally, if evidence is relevant, it is admissible unless it is prohibited by law or another provision in the Oregon Evidence Code. OEC 402.

One such limitation is OEC 404. In relevant part, OEC 404(3) provides that "[e]vidence of other crimes, wrongs or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show that the person acted in conformity therewith." However, OEC 404(3) allows admission of evidence that might otherwise be construed as character evidence if it is "admissible for other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident."

Another limitation is provided in OEC 403. It provides, "Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay or needless presentation of cumulative evidence." OEC 403.

On appeal, defendant renews his argument that particular evidence of defendant's attack on another victim, H—specifically, photographs of her injuries, her...