Perez v. Cain
Annotate this CasePetitioner Ernie Perez pled guilty in 2005 to two aggravated murders that he had committed at the age of fourteen. In 2016, he filed a petition for post-conviction relief raising constitutional claims premised on the Oregon Supreme Court’s interpretation of ORS 419C.349, a statute governing when a juvenile defendant could be waived into adult court, in Oregon v. J. C. N.-V., 380 P3d 248 (2016). The post-conviction court concluded that petitioner’s claims were barred by the claim preclusion rule in ORS 138.550(3) because petitioner could reasonably have raised those claims in an earlier petition that he had filed in 2008. For similar reasons, the post-conviction court held that the claims were barred by the statute of limitations set out in ORS 138.510(3). The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Oregon Supreme Court granted certiorari review to address petitioner's argument that his claims could not reasonably have been raised prior to J. C. N.-V., thereby allowing him to escape the statute of limitations in ORS 138.510(3). The Supreme Court determined petitioner’s claims were indeed barred by ORS 138.550(3) because he failed to show that he could not reasonably have raised those claims at the time of his 2008 petition. The Court therefore affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the post-conviction court.
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