concluding that ORS 163.150(l)(b)(D) allows for meaningful judicial review of jury’s decision to impose death sentence and rejecting defendant’s argument that Due Process Clause requires “excessiveness” review in death-penalty cases
How later courts described this case
- concluding that ORS 163.150(l)(b)(D) allows for meaningful judicial review of jury’s decision to impose death sentence and rejecting defendant’s argument that Due Process Clause requires “excessiveness” review in death-penalty cases
- holding that the weighing of probative value against consideration of the cumulative nature of the evi- dence occurs only if it is determined that the evidence is Nonprecedential Memo Op: 351 Or App 238 (2026) 241 cumulative
- explaining and applying Dawson in case involving penalty-phase evidence of defendant’s belief in white supremacy; evidence of defendant’s specific beliefs and related conduct admissible because probative of future dangerousness, which was at issue
- explaining that “any instruction that appeals to the jurors’ sympathies also must instruct the jurors that such sympathy must be based upon the mitigating evidence before them”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by State v. Washington, 355 Or. 612 (2014)
Defendant argues that Moen and Moore are distinguishable because they involve instructions regarding sympathy, not mercy, which defendant insists is different.
The opinion
FADELEY, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent because of the majority’s rulings that evidence of political beliefs and passing out a “political pamphlet” is admissible in evidence with respect to future dangerousness in this case. 324 Or at 417.
I do not agree that labeling a person’s social or political beliefs should be permitted in the death-penalty phase of an aggravated murder case, however aberrant or abhorrent those beliefs may be, or that evidence of passing out a political pamphlet should be so admitted. The label “neo-Nazi” is not merely cumulative of another type of labeling, i.e., “white supremacist.” Those terms may convey different, but still prejudicial, thoughts to a juror. Basing future dangerousness on political beliefs (rather than on violent conduct) is a net that, from the point of view of King George III, would have caught at least some of the founders of this country who expressed themselves against the colonial government in their time. The founders sought to leave all that behind. We should heed their lesson.
Further, I do not see that evidence of defendant’s social or political beliefs is “tied in any way to the murder” 1 of defendant’s wife’s parents. That was not a political act but was a family affair. The family, not political beliefs, is the source of the passion and anger here.
I respectfully dissent.
The wording quoted is from Dawson v. Delaware, 503 US 159, 166 , 112 S Ct 1093 , 117 L Ed 2d 309 (1992).