State v. Nguyen, 429 P.3d 410

Defendant and codefendant Sang were stopped after leaving Washington Square mall following a loss-prevention officer’s confrontation; Sang was observed removing a security tag from an Abercrombie & Fitch coat.
Outside the store defendant intervened aggressively and later threatened to kill the officer when she attempted to note the car’s license plate.
Police recovered the stolen brown AF coat in the backseat and, after defendant consented to a trunk search, found two Abercrombie Kids (AK) jackets plus multiple other jackets and an Express exchange receipt.
Defendant was charged with robbery (threatening the officer) and two counts of second-degree theft (the AK jackets); he was not charged for the Express items.
At trial the court admitted testimony about the Express merchandise and an exchange receipt in the trunk and allowed a detective to testify about “return fraud”; the state did not defend those evidentiary rulings on appeal.
The jury convicted on all counts; on appeal the court held the admission of the Express evidence and the detective’s return-fraud testimony was erroneous and not harmless, reversing and remanding (conviction on one theft count acquittal motion denial upheld).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of Express merchandise and exchange receipt found in trunk	Evidence was relevant to show absence of mistake and that defendant was part of broader return-fraud scheme	Admission was irrelevant, speculative, and unfairly prejudicial because items were unrelated to charged offenses	Trial court erred in admitting the Express merchandise and receipt; defendant did not open the door to that testimony
Admissibility of detective’s testimony about return fraud	Testimony explained significance of multiple like items and receipts; probative of scheme beyond charged acts	Testimony was prejudicial, speculative, and introduced impermissible prior bad-act inference	Admission of detective’s return-fraud testimony was erroneous and noncumulative; error not harmless
Harmless-error analysis for evidentiary rulings	Any error was harmless given strong evidence (threat, possession of stolen AK jackets, eyewitness ID)	Erroneous evidence substantially influenced jury by implying broader criminal enterprise and corroborating circumstantial proofs	Error was not harmless under Oregon law; reversal and remand required
Motion for judgment of acquittal on second-degree theft (one count)	N/A	Defendant argued insufficiency for one theft count	Denial of judgment of acquittal on that count was upheld (no reversible error)

State v. Tena, 362 Or. 514, 412 P.3d 175 (discussing relevance of prior-act evidence under absence-of-mistake theory)
State v. Davis, 336 Or. 19, 77 P.3d 1111 (harmless-error framework and assessing impact of erroneously admitted evidence)
State v. Davis, 279 Or. App. 223, 381 P.3d 888 (doctrine on similarity required for prior-act evidence admissibility)
State v. Wirkkala, 290 Or. App. 263, 414 P.3d 421 (assessing quality differences between erroneously admitted evidence and other record evidence)
State v. Ennis, 212 Or. App. 240, 158 P.3d 510 (discussed in context of strength of other evidence; applied federal harmless-error standard in confrontation-clause context)