The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that an attorney representing a Multnomah County man whom jurors saw shackled outside of a courtroom during his criminal trial should have sought a mistrial, expanding defendants’ right to not be seen with restraints before conviction.
In a 68-pagedecisionlast week with one justice dissenting, the court found that Quandray J. Nelson had provided enough evidence to establish that his attorney in a criminal trial for sex abuse offenses related to domestic violence did not offer adequate counsel. Nelson originally sued Brad Cain, the former superintendent of the Ontario-based Snake River Correctional Institute, which was represented by the Oregon Department of Justice.
The decision partially reverses rulings from the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Malheur County Circuit Court, which previously denied Nelson’s requests for post-conviction relief on the grounds that his defense attorneys failed to provide adequate counsel.
Many courts across the country have held that restraining a defendant in front of a jury violates their Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by creating a presumption of guilt in the wake of a landmark2005 U.S. Supreme Court case, but there was no precedent in Oregon for such a case in the surrounding area of a courtroom. In Nelson’s case, he was wearing handcuffs and ankle restraints while local authorities transported him from a cell to a hallway.
“We recognize that, at the time of petitioner’s trial, no Oregon appellate decision had held that jurors viewing a defendant wearing shackles outside the courtroom impairs the defendant’s right to an impartial jury or otherwise implicates the same concerns that in-court observations raise,” wrote Justice Roger J. DeHoog in the majority opinion.
“Nonetheless, in light of the shackling case law available to counsel at the time of petitioner’s trial, as well as the principles underlying that case law, we conclude that competent counsel would have both viewed the circumstances in this case as providing colorable grounds for a mistrial motion and acted to protect petitioner’s right to be tried before an impartial jury,” he added.
The decision does not name the attorney at the time of Nelson’s trial, but it points to a declaration they gave attorneys defending the state. In it, the attorney said that: “I am certain that I made inquiries of the deputy sheriffs involved and brought the matter to the court’s attention. While that may not have been on the record it surely occurred. If the court declined to take action the court must have been satisfied that there was no violation of [petitioner’s] rights.”
Neither an attorney for Nelson nor a spokesperson for the Justice Department immediately responded to a request for comment on Monday.
Amber Campbell, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Corrections, said that the agency and its staff are the correct party to be named in such a lawsuit but that they “typically do not have any direct involvement in the underlying controversy or claims raised in a post-conviction case.”
Multnomah County authorities first tried Nelson in 2007 for a domestic violence incident in which he punched a partner in the face, had sex with her against her will and took her vehicle, according to the ruling. Although he was found guilty of multiple criminal charges, the Oregon Court of Appeals in 2012 reversed the judgement after finding erroneous instructions to the jury. In 2013, authorities charged him for the same incident again for first-degree rape and sexual abuse, resulting in a conviction that he has continued to challenge since.
During his second trial, when jurors were dismissed for the weekend, a group of four or five jurors were walking down the stairs towards a courthouse exit, the ruling says. Two sheriff’s deputies were leading Nelson out of a courthouse holding cell into a hallway to be transported back to the jail at the time, and at least three jurors saw him as he was escorted into the hallway.
Nelson reported the matter to his defense counsel but “no discussion of the matter took place or was memorialized on the record,” according to the ruling. A jury then went on to find him guilty and convict him.
“To exercise reasonable professional skill and judgment, defense counsel must investigate the facts and familiarize themselves with the applicable law sufficiently to permit them to make informed decisions on behalf of the defendant,” DeHoog wrote in the decision.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen K. Bushong wrote that there are “plausible inferences” that could weigh in favor of the lower court’s decision in Nelson’s case.
“There was no evidence of what the jurors saw from their viewpoint; whether any jurors had recognized the person being escorted in shackles as the defendant in the case they were deliberating; what trial counsel discussed off the record with the deputies, the trial court, and the prosecuting attorney; and what trial counsel concluded from his investigation,” he wrote in the decision.
The case now continues in Malheur County Circuit Court for further proceedings in light of the new decision.
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