Oregon v. Belden
Annotate this CaseAt issue in this criminal case was Oregon’s constitutional guarantee that an accused will have the right “to meet the witnesses face to face.” The witness at issue in this case was alleged victim, C. The state had served C with a subpoena to appear at 8:15 a.m. on the first day of defendant’s trial, but she did not appear. Later that morning, the State asked the trial court to conclude that C was “unavailable” for purposes of the exception to Article I, section 11, and, on that basis, to allow the state to rely on hearsay statements in lieu of C’s live testimony at trial. The trial court granted the state’s motion after conducting a hearing that lasted through the morning, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The hearing record reflected, however, that despite the fact that defendant and the state’s own witnesses identified additional measures that were available for producing C as a witness, the State offered no evidence that it had attempted any of those measures after C failed to appear and no evidence or explanation that pursuing those measures would have been unreasonable. Under the circumstances, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded the State failed to show that it had “exhausted all reasonably available means of producing the witness.” Although the Supreme Court recognized that the trial court record below developed without the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Oregon v. Harris, 404 P3d 926 (2017), the State’s failure to make the showing that the Supreme Court required meant that the State failed to prove that C was “unavailable” for purposes of overcoming defendant’s Article I, section 11, confrontation right.
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