STATE OF OREGON, Petitioner on Review, v. YEVGENIY PAVLOVICH SAVINSKIY, Respondent on Review.
(CC 121059) (CA A154791) (SC S065257)
In the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon
May 23, 2019
364 Or. 802 | 441 P.3d 557
While defendant was incarcerated awaiting trial on pending charges, he solicited an informant to harm the prosecutor and two witnesses associated with those pending charges. The police secretly recorded defendant‘s conversations with the informant without alerting defendant‘s lawyer on the pending charges. When defendant was later tried on both the original charges and new conspiracy charges, he moved to suppress the conversations as obtained in violation of his
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed as to defendant‘s convictions for conspiracy to commit murder (Counts 17-19) and otherwise affirmed. The judgment of the trial court is reversed and remanded as to defendant‘s convictions for crimes charged in the original indictment but is otherwise affirmed.
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Doug M. Petrina, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the briefs for the petitioner on review. Also on the briefs were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.
Eric R. Johansen, Deputy Public Defender, Office of Public Defense Services, Salem, argued the cause and filed the
Before Walters, Chief Justice, and Balmer, Nakamoto, Flynn, Duncan, Nelson and Garrett, Justices.**
FLYNN, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed as to defendant‘s convictions for conspiracy to commit murder (Counts 17-19) and otherwise affirmed. The judgment of the trial court is reversed and remanded as to defendant‘s convictions for crimes charged in the original indictment but is otherwise affirmed.
Duncan, J., dissented and filed an opinion, in which Walters, C. J., and Nelson, J., joined.
While defendant was incarcerated and awaiting trial on pending criminal charges, law enforcement officers learned that defendant had solicited another inmate to harm the prosecutor and murder two of the anticipated witnesses for the prosecution. Without notifying the lawyer who was representing defendant on the pending charges, the officers arranged for the other inmate to secretly record defendant in a conversation about his new criminal activity, and the state later charged defendant with multiple new offenses arising out of that new criminal activity. The Court of Appeals held that the recorded questioning violated defendant‘s
I. BACKGROUND
At the time of the recorded conversation, defendant was represented by counsel on multiple pending charges arising out of an earlier incident in which he engaged in a shootout with police at an Astoria motel, followed by an extended, high-speed car chase. When defendant‘s fellow inmate reported that defendant had offered him money and weapons to assault the prosecutor and to murder two of the state‘s witnesses, law enforcement officers used the information to obtain sealed, ex parte court orders that authorized them to record the conversations between defendant and the informant. During those recorded conversations, defendant discussed his plans for the new criminal activity, but he also discussed the pending case.
Before trial, defendant moved to suppress the evidence that the state obtained through the recorded conversations, arguing that the questioning violated his
The new and original charges were tried together, and the state relied on defendant‘s statements about the new criminal activity as evidence that he was guilty of all of the charged offenses. The jury convicted defendant of the charges arising out of the original criminal activity as well as the conspiracy charges arising out of the new criminal activity.2
On appeal, defendant assigned error to the trial court‘s ruling on the motion to suppress, renewing his argument that the state obtained his statements about the new criminal activity in violation of his
II. ANALYSIS
On review, the state does not dispute that “it was reasonably foreseeable that questioning about defendant‘s new conspiracy crimes would incriminate him for the originally charged crimes.”5 Given that concession, defendant understandably argues that Prieto-Rubio supports the Court of Appeals’ conclusions that the state violated defendant‘s right to counsel and that the resulting evidence must be suppressed.
However, the question we ultimately must answer is whether
When construing a provision of the original Oregon Constitution, which includes the
A. The Text and Evolving Construction of the Article I, section 11, Right to Counsel
Both Davis and Prieto-Rubio extensively considered the historical circumstances surrounding the adoption of
“In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have the right to public trial by an impartial jury in the county in which the offen[s]e shall have been committed; to be heard by himself and counsel; to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him, and to have a copy thereof; to meet the witnesses face to face, and to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.”
When the defendant was later prosecuted for the offenses against Davidson, he sought to suppress evidence from the interrogation as obtained in violation of his right to counsel under
As Sparklin explains:
“It is the fairness of the ‘criminal prosecution’ which counsel‘s presence helps to ensure. For this reason the [A]rticle I, section 11 right to an attorney is specific to the criminal
however, we have recognized that a limited version of the right “can attach before indictment when a driver is arrested for DUII.” State v. Swan, 363 Or 121, 123, 420 P3d 9 (2018) (citing State v. Spencer, 305 Or 59, 74, 750 P2d 147 (1988)).
episode in which the accused is charged. The prohibitions placed on the state‘s contact with a represented defendant do not extend to the investigation of factually unrelated criminal episodes.”
Id. at 95 (footnote omitted). This court proposed asking whether the activity under investigation was part of “the criminal episode in which the accused is charged” as the test for whether interrogation about an uncharged offense fits within the protection of the defendant‘s
Although the court‘s statement about interrogation regarding the Mansell offenses—which were not at issue on appeal—was unnecessary to the court‘s decision, the statement was not just gratuitous. Rather, the juxtaposition serves to clarify the court‘s holding regarding the scope of the protection that
Sparklin was this court‘s first attempt to identify the location of the line between questions about uncharged offenses to which the protection of
The defendant in Prieto-Rubio had been charged with first-degree sexual abuse of a child, A, and he had retained counsel. Id. at 19. Without notifying that attorney, a detective questioned the defendant about allegations that he had abused two other children—K and L—several months before the alleged abuse of A. Id. As we emphasized, however, the detective recognized that the circumstances of the three crimes were so similar that “it was ‘impossible’ to have a conversation with defendant ‘and not have some overlap’ between the charged and uncharged offenses[.]” Id. at 37-38. And, indeed, the questions produced incriminating
Both parties in Prieto-Rubio argued that the existing Sparklin test supported their positions, so this court undertook “to clarify” Sparklin‘s rule for determining the extent to which a defendant‘s right to counsel shields the defendant from questions about uncharged conduct. Id. at 23, 33-34. Although one of the amici in Prieto-Rubio invited this court to “abandon Sparklin and adopt in its stead” a rule that would shield a defendant from all police questioning if the defendant is represented on pending charges, this court adhered to Sparklin‘s conclusion that the constitutional guarantee does not extend that blanket protection. Id. at 34 n 4. This court in Prieto-Rubio also rejected as too broad the defendant‘s proposal that protection under
B. Prieto-Rubio does not resolve whether Article I, section 11, shielded defendant from questioning about his new criminal activity.
As the state recognizes, Prieto-Rubio‘s test is phrased broadly enough that it can reach questioning about the kind of new criminal activity in which defendant was engaging. However, there are important factual distinctions between the uncharged criminal activity that the officers sought to investigate in Prieto-Rubio and the uncharged criminal activity that officers sought to investigate here. Prieto-Rubio addressed the scope of the right to counsel in the context of uncharged crimes that shared significant overlap of facts and circumstances with the charged crime and that were completed before the time that the state indicted the defendant for the abuse of his third victim. As this court explained, “whether charged and uncharged offenses are
Here, by contrast, any duplication between the facts and circumstances of defendant‘s new criminal activity and the facts and circumstances of his charged crimes is minimal: the new criminal activity occurred in a different setting, involved different conduct, and involved victims who were targeted for a very different reason. Moreover, and more significantly, unlike the uncharged crimes in Prieto-Rubio, defendant‘s uncharged criminal activity began after he was charged with the original offenses, and the uncharged criminal activity involved his ongoing effort to harm the prosecutor and witnesses against him to obstruct the pending prosecution. We conclude that those factual distinctions are constitutionally significant.
C. The principles that govern the scope of Article I, section 11, do not apply to defendant‘s new criminal activity.
The scope of the
The defendant in Cobb had burglarized his neighbor‘s house and, in the process, murdered the neighbor‘s wife and daughter, although they were initially reported only to be missing. After the defendant was charged with robbery and appointed counsel to represent him on that charge, police questioned the defendant about the missing wife and daughter without notifying his attorney and ultimately obtained his confession to the murders. Cobb, 532 US at 165-66. Because the defendant in Cobb had not been charged with murder, and because the murders would not be considered the “same offense” for double jeopardy purposes, the Supreme Court majority held that the defendant‘s confession to the murders was admissible in his trial for those crimes. Id. at 174.
Prieto-Rubio makes clear that the result would have been different under
The first concern that the Cobb dissent raised is that, because a “single instance of conduct” can involve numerous separate criminal offenses, the majority‘s rule would permit law enforcement officials to question a defendant “about his or her conduct on the single relevant occasion without notifying counsel unless the prosecutor has charged every possible crime arising out of that same brief course of conduct.” Id. at 183. The dissent described that “random” approach to
We noted that the Cobb majority‘s rule had been subject to similar criticism by other authors as well. Prieto-Rubio, 359 Or at 31 n 2. For example, we cited Andrew Hanawalt, Investigation of Represented Defendants After Texas v. Cobb, 81 Tex L Rev 895, 896 (2003), which expressed concern that the Cobb majority rule invites “strategic misbehavior” by government agents who “will now be tempted to interrogate represented defendants without their lawyers about the very acts that constitute elements of already charged crimes,” and Michael J. Howe, Tomorrow‘s Massiah: Towards A “Prosecution Specific” Understanding of the
The category of preexisting and completed uncharged offenses, which we addressed in Prieto-Rubio, also presents a potential for strategic manipulation. And we highlighted that concern in defining the scope of the defendant‘s
That risk of strategic initial charging is not presented when a defendant who has already been charged decides to engage in new criminal activity. Although there remains an opportunity for the state to delay charging new criminal activity in order to investigate the new activity without the obstacle of counsel, it is not the kind of strategic manipulation about which we expressed concern in Prieto-Rubio. Rather, that strategy is a possibility in every criminal investigation, and it does not implicate
This court‘s discussion of Cobb highlights another reason that
Yet even the scope that the Cobb dissenters would have adopted for the
In Moulton, the Court had drawn a
When the same circumstances presented themselves in Indiana, the Indiana Court of Appeals concluded that the defendant‘s right to counsel on pending charges did not shield him from police questioning about his plan to murder a witness against him in a pending prosecution. Leonard v. State, 86 NE3d 406, 413 (Ind Ct App 2017), transfer den, 95 NE3d 1293 (Ind 2018). The defendant in Leonard was in jail and awaiting trial on charges arising out of a fatal explosion in the house at which he had lived. As in the case before us, police in Leonard learned from another inmate that the defendant wanted to harm a person who might testify against him in the pending prosecution. Without notice to the defendant‘s attorney, an officer posed as a “hitman” and enticed the defendant to discuss his plans to murder the witness. The Indiana court concluded that the defendant‘s right to counsel on the pending charges did not shield him from questioning about his new criminal activity. Id.
In other words, neither the dissent in Cobb nor any other state has extended the scope of a defendant‘s constitutional right to counsel on charged offenses as far as the dissent would extend that right. We are sympathetic to the perspective of the Leonard court that “[t]he right to counsel is a shield against what may well be the coercive influences of the State” and that the “rule‘s salutary function cannot be distorted to immunize one represented by an attorney against investigative techniques that capture a new crime in progress.” 86 NE3d at 413 (internal citation omitted). We pointed to a similar concern in Prieto-Rubio when we emphasized that New York‘s one-time blanket prohibition on questioning a represented defendant, which this court rejected,
As Sparklin emphasized and Prieto-Rubio reiterated, “the purpose of the
We, thus, conclude that the
D. Application of the Rule to this Case
The Court of Appeals followed the test that we articulated in Prieto-Rubio to conclude that the police violated defendant‘s
The Court of Appeals also reversed and remanded some of defendant‘s convictions on the original charges, because the trial court allowed the state to use defendant‘s uncounseled statements about the new crimes to prosecute him for those original offenses. The premise of the court‘s ruling was that the statements were obtained in violation of defendant‘s right to counsel and, thus, must
Although defendant‘s right to counsel on the original, pending charges did not prevent the state from questioning him about his new criminal activity, we agree with the Court of Appeals that the trial court erred in allowing the state to use defendant‘s statements to prosecute him for the original charges. As we have explained, the fundamental purpose of the
III. CONCLUSION
Accordingly, the decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed as to defendant‘s convictions for conspiracy to commit murder (Counts 17-19) and otherwise affirmed. The
DUNCAN, J., dissenting.
The proper result in this case flows directly from a defendant‘s constitutional right to counsel and this court‘s prior decisions concerning the scope of that right.
In this case, there is no dispute that, when defendant was represented by counsel on pending charges, a state agent questioned him without first notifying his counsel. There is also no dispute that it was reasonably foreseeable that the questioning would lead to incriminating evidence concerning the pending charges. Indeed, the state expressly concedes the questioning “violated the Prieto-Rubio rule, because it was reasonably foreseeable that questioning about defendant‘s new * * * crimes would incriminate him for the originally charged crimes.” Under this court‘s precedents, the questioning violated defendant‘s
As the majority recounts, defendant was initially charged with crimes relating to a shootout and a car chase, and counsel was appointed to represent defendant on those charges. While defendant was in jail, the police—acting through an informant—questioned him. The questioning concerned defendant‘s offer to pay the informant to assault the prosecutor and murder witnesses in defendant‘s pending case. 364 Or at 804-05. Thus, the questioning was relevant to whether defendant was attempting to obstruct the prosecution of the charged crimes. That, in turn, was relevant to whether defendant committed the charged crimes. See, e.g., State v. Barone, 329 Or 210, 238, 986 P2d 5 (1999) (holding that a letter that could be construed as an attempt to tamper with a witness was relevant to the defendant‘s consciousness of guilt). The police knew that defendant‘s answers to the questions could incriminate him on the charged crimes. And, in fact, that is how the state used defendant‘s answers. After the police questioned defendant, the state obtained an amended indictment against defendant to include new charges relating to his efforts to interfere with the prosecution of the initial charges. All the charges were tried together, and the state used the evidence it obtained as a result of the questioning to prove both the initial charges and the subsequent charges.1
As the police and prosecutor recognized, the initially charged crimes and the subsequently charged crimes were related, because evidence that defendant was involved
In Sparklin, the defendant was arrested for forgery in Eugene after using a credit card belonging to another person, Mansell. The defendant was arraigned and counsel was appointed to represent him on the forgery. Thereafter, two Portland detectives interrogated the defendant, without notifying his counsel. The detectives had information implicating the defendant in an incident in which Mansell had been assaulted and his automobile and credit cards stolen. They questioned the defendant about the assault of Mansell, as well as an unrelated robbery and murder of another man, Davidson. 296 Or at 87.
On review, this court concluded that the questioning about the Mansell assault violated the defendant‘s
Thus, in Sparklin this court concluded that
Importantly, the prohibition on questioning is intended to protect the attorney-client relationship. As this court explained in Sparklin, “To permit officers to question a represented suspect in the absence of counsel encourages them to undermine the suspect‘s decision to rely upon counsel. Such interrogation subverts the attorney-client relationship.” Id. at 93 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted). Noting that, “[i]n the smallest civil matter an attorney and his or her investigator are restricted in their contact with a represented party,” this court concluded that “[w]e can certainly require no less of prosecutors or police in criminal matters.” Id.
In Prieto-Rubio, this court addressed the scope of the
On review, this court reversed. It set forth what it identified as “the correct rule” for determining whether police questioning about uncharged crimes violates a defendant‘s
Applying that test, this court held that the challenged questioning violated the defendant‘s
The majority attempts to distinguish this case from Prieto-Rubio based on what it describes as “important factual distinctions” between the uncharged conduct in this case and the uncharged conduct in Prieto-Rubio. 364 Or at 812. The majority seems to posit that, because the uncharged crimes in Prieto-Rubio were factually similar to the charged crimes, questions about the uncharged crimes violated the defendant‘s rights, but because the uncharged crimes in this case were not factually similar to the charged crimes, questions about the uncharged crimes did not violate defendant‘s rights. The majority states:
“The facts and circumstances of the charged crime in Prieto-Rubio duplicated to a significant extent the earlier, uncharged crimes because, as this court emphasized, all the crimes were committed in the defendant‘s home, all involved similar types of physical conduct, and all involved child-victims who were members of the defendant‘s family.
“Here, by contrast, any duplication between the facts and circumstances of defendant‘s new criminal activity and the facts of his charged crimes is minimal: the new criminal activity occurred in a different setting, involved different conduct, and involved victims who were targeted for a very different reason.”
Id. at 813. But those factual differences are irrelevant to whether the defendant has an interest in having counsel present. A defendant has an interest—which is protected by
And, contrary to the majority‘s other factual distinction, it does not matter whether the uncharged crimes are new. Prieto-Rubio would not have come out differently if the crimes against K and L had occurred after the crimes against A or even after the defendant had been charged with the crimes against A, because what mattered was whether the questioning about the crimes against K and L was reasonably likely to elicit information that would incriminate the defendant on the charged offense, which did not depend on the relative timing of the crimes.2 Prieto-Rubio, 359 Or at 37.
The questioning in this case was impermissible under Sparklin and Prieto-Rubio. It violated defendant‘s
The majority carves out an exception to that right, based on factual differences that, as explained above, are irrelevant. The majority does so simply because it does not like the effect of the right to counsel in this particular case. It states that defendant‘s right to counsel “should not be understood to erect barriers to the police inquiry into defendant‘s new criminal activity.” 364 Or at 816.
The majority‘s concern with the state‘s ability to investigate and prosecute crimes is understandable; the investigation and prosecution of crimes are essential government functions. But there are limits—constitutional limits—on how the state can perform those functions. Violations of the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to remain silent, the right to counsel, and the right to a jury might be effective investigative and prosecutorial tools, but they are not permissible ones. The constitution guarantees individuals rights and those rights can—and were intended to—restrict the scope of government actions, including actions taken to investigate and prosecute crimes.
Of course, that is not to say that the state cannot investigate and prosecute defendant in this case or a
The majority mentions the harm of a blanket prohibition of all questioning of a defendant who has counsel on pending charges. 364 Or at 817-18. But no one is advocating for a blanket prohibition in this case. This court rejected such a prohibition in Sparklin, the defendant did not argue for one in Prieto-Rubio, and defendant is not arguing for one here. Instead, he is arguing for application of the Prieto-Rubio rule.
That rule creates an objective test for determining whether questioning violates a defendant‘s
The
Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
