State v. Hassan

                                      324

 Argued and submitted January 26, reversed and remanded October 27, 2021


                      STATE OF OREGON,
                       Plaintiff-Respondent,
                                 v.
                  HUSSEIN IBRAHIM HASSAN,
                   aka Hussein Ibrahin Hassan,
                       aka Ibrahin Hussein,
                       Defendant-Appellant.
                  Umatilla County Circuit Court
                       18CR57567; A170145
                                 

    Defendant was found guilty of two counts of first-degree sexual abuse committed against C, a child under the age of 14. On appeal, defendant argues that
the trial court erred by instructing the jury that it could return nonunanimous
verdicts and by excluding evidence relevant to C’s possible motive to fabricate
the allegations against him. Held: On the first count, defendant was found guilty
by a nonunanimous jury, so the judgment was reversed and remanded as to that
count in light of Ramos v. Louisiana, 

, 

, 

(2020). On the second count, the jury was unanimous, so any error in instructing
the jury regarding unanimity or in receiving that verdict was harmless beyond
a reasonable doubt and was not a basis for reversal. However, because the court
erred in excluding evidence of C’s possible motive to fabricate the abuse allegations, the judgment was reversed as to that count as well.
    Reversed and remanded.



   Jon S. Lieuallen, Judge.
   Andrew D. Robinson, Deputy Public Defender, argued the
cause for appellant. Also on the brief was Ernest G. Lannet,
Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate Section, Office of Public
Defense Services.
   Christopher A. Perdue, Assistant Attorney General, argued
the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F.
Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General.
   Before Lagesen, Presiding Judge, and James, Judge, and
Kamins, Judge.
   LAGESEN, P. J.
   Reversed and remanded.
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         LAGESEN, P. J.
         Defendant was found guilty of two counts of first-degree sexual abuse committed against C, a child under the
age of 14, and the trial court merged the verdicts and entered
a single conviction for first-degree sexual abuse. The first
count alleged that defendant had touched C’s breast, and
he was found guilty by a nonunanimous jury of 10 to 2. The
state concedes that, in light of the United States Supreme
Court’s subsequent decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, 

, 

, 

 (2020), the lack of unanimity requires us to reverse and remand as to that count.
We agree. State v. Ulery, 

, 

 (2020).
         The second count of sexual abuse alleged that
defendant did “unlawfully and knowingly subject [C], a person under the age of 14 years, to sexual contact by touching
her lips or mouth, a sexual or intimate part of [C].” The jury
was unanimous as to that count, so any error in instructing
the jury regarding unanimity or in receiving that verdict
was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and is not a basis
for reversal. See State v. Flores Ramos, 

, 

 (2020) (holding that, as to unanimous guilty verdicts, “the trial court’s instruction to the jury that it could
return a nonunanimous verdict did not amount to a structural error and was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt”).
         However, with regard to that second count, defendant advances additional arguments as to why we must
nonetheless reverse and remand, including that the trial
court erred by excluding evidence relevant to C’s possible
motive to fabricate the allegations against him. We agree
with defendant that the court erred in excluding the evidence, and we further conclude that the error was not harmless. Accordingly, for the reasons explained below, we also
reverse and remand with regard to the guilty verdict on the
second count.1
        For purposes of framing the evidentiary issue before
us, we begin with a brief overview of the circumstances
leading to the charges against defendant. Defendant and C

    1
      Defendant’s remaining argument addresses an unpreserved claim of
instructional error. We need not reach that issue.
326                                                       State v. Hassan

lived in different halves of a duplex in Pilot Rock. Defendant
lived on one side, and C, who was 13, lived on the other side
with her stepmother and sister. The duplex shared a backyard. Defendant was an “amateur palm reader,” and C had
seen defendant read the palms of other people, including C’s
father and stepmother.
         A neighbor who lived next to the duplex arrived
home and encountered C in the driveway. C told the neighbor that she did not feel safe, because defendant had started
reading her palm but then touched her breast. The neighbor
asked C if she wanted to call someone and let C use her cell
phone. C tried calling her stepmother and her father but
was unable to reach them, so the neighbor drove C to her
grandmother’s house, which was five or six blocks away.
         C’s grandmother then reported the incident to police,
and an officer arrived at the grandmother’s home and interviewed C. C reported to the officer that, while in their shared
backyard of the duplex, defendant wanted to see her painted
nails, then gave her a palm reading, and then proceeded
to kiss her on the lips and to touch her breast. She was
later interviewed by a forensic evaluator at a child abuse
intervention center and again reported that defendant had
kissed her and touched her breast after taking her hand to
read her palm.
         Defendant was interviewed at the police station,
and he repeatedly denied having kissed C or touched her
breast. Defendant was then transported from Pilot Rock to
jail in Pendleton and, on the way, engaged in additional discussion with an officer about his contact with C. Some of the
statements he made at that point could be interpreted as
incriminating but were far from unambiguous admissions
of wrongdoing, in part because of a language barrier and
in part because of the way in which the interrogation was
conducted.2

     2
       For instance, defendant had the following exchange with the investigating
officer:
          “OFFICER BADAL: Just be honest about it though. You know you want
     to just say the truth. It makes you look better by being honest.
          “THE DEFENDANT: I didn’t kiss her sexually.
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         At trial, the state began its case-in-chief by calling
C. She testified that, in the backyard of the duplex in Pilot
Rock, defendant “was looking at my nail polish, and then
he flipped my hand over and started reading my palm, and
then he kissed me on the right side of my mouth, not necessarily my lips, but and then he grabbed my right breast.”
C further testified that the incident prompted her to move
from Pilot Rock back to Pendleton where she had lived for
“pretty much [her] whole life,” because “we didn’t feel safe
at home anymore.” She explained that, at the time of trial,
she was living in Pendleton with her father, stepmother, and
sister, but that she was continuing to attend school in Pilot
Rock, where she had been for one year.
         The state next called the neighbor to whom C
reported the contact, and then the forensic evaluator who
conducted the abuse assessment. During cross-examination
of the forensic evaluator, defendant asked, “Now when
you talked to the child, you learned that she was not living with mom because of what?” The prosecutor objected to
that line of inquiry on the basis of relevance, and defendant
responded, “Goes to bias.”
         The trial court then allowed defendant to pursue the
line of questioning outside the presence of the jury, in order
to determine whether to sustain the objection. Defendant
asked the evaluator, “The child had told you that the reason
that she was not living with mom [in Pendleton] was because
of all—there were allegations of a theft, correct?” After the

       “OFFICER BADAL: Okay then how did you kiss her? Was it like a goodbye or hello like we do in Middle Eastern?
       “THE DEFENDANT: As a—
       “OFFICER BADAL: At least okay was a goodbye kiss. Why couldn’t you
   just tell the truth—tell the truth about that?
       “THE DEFENDANT: I put my—my hand on her—in her (indiscernible).
       “OFFICER BADAL: Okay you put her—your hand on her shoulder and
   then you kissed her right here?
       “THE DEFENDANT: As you go back and I go into the bathroom to clean
   my nose.
       “OFFICER BADAL: Okay so was it this side or this side?
       “THE DEFENDANT: I didn’t do it, believe it.
       “OFFICER BADAL: You just said that you did though.
       “THE DEFENDANT: I didn’t do it.”
328                                                         State v. Hassan

evaluator responded affirmatively, defendant explained his
theory of relevance:
        “So then the—what that goes to is if she got—had gotten in trouble because of a theft, and was being moved to a
    different location, one way for a child to get out of trouble is
    to make a claim of sexual abuse and then she gets the attention of all the authorities, and the theft becomes much, much
    smaller.”
(Emphasis added.) That is, defendant argued that it was
relevant to his theory that C had fabricated the abuse allegations in order to get out of trouble with her parents—a
theory that defendant intended to pursue by later calling C
as part of his defense case.3
         The court then sought clarification from the forensic evaluator about the circumstances of the phone incident,
and the evaluator testified:
        “During the rapport building process as an interviewer
    I often ask about family, friends and things like that, and
    [C] had told me that she was not currently living with
    her mom because she had stolen—stolen something, and
    clearly it—it upset her, which I did not want to happen, so
    I quickly tried to transition out of that into the narrative
    recall part of the interview, so I didn’t ask her any further
    questions.”
           After hearing that testimony, and after the prosecutor reiterated her relevance objection,4 the court asked
defendant to explain again how the evidence was relevant.
Defendant repeated his argument that “it’s relevant because
… if she was involved in stealing something, and if a child
gets in trouble for doing something, one of the ways for them

    3
      Defendant explained that statements from the evaluator would allow him
to impeach C in the event that she denied the cell phone incident during her testimony. Although the trial court observed that defendant could simply choose not
to dismiss the evaluator and recall her if necessary, the state does not advance
any argument that admission of the extrinsic evidence would have been improper
at that stage of the case, before C had testified on the issue.
    4
      The prosecutor explained that her relevance objection had three components: (1) “there’s no foundation … that the theft occurred” and, in any event,
it was “months before this event,” (2) there was no basis for “the idea that she’s
making this a claim of sexual assault to cover up a stolen item,” and (3) because
the evaluator did not know the details of the phone incident, it could mislead the
jury into “believing more is true than it’s not.”
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to get out of trouble is to claim sexual abuse, and then they
become a victim, and they get much more attention”—in
other words, a theory that a child might deflect negative
attention by falsely claiming to have been abused.
        At that point, the court indicated that it was
inclined to allow defendant to inquire about disharmony in
the home, which would allow defendant to argue that C was
looking to redirect attention away from herself:
       “I’m going to allow at least to inquire that there was
   more or less this—there was other I guess disharmony
   within the home, and I guess the issue here is the child
   could potentially be looking to—to redirect the attention
   away from herself onto something else. I’m not saying that
   happened, but I’m saying that—that can be an argument
   if there’s facts to support that. I think it—it can go to that.
   So do you have a—with that being said, would you like this
   witness to be able to say that, or if not, we’ll at least take
   the presentation of the evidence, or if you prefer it sounds
   like [defense counsel], we’ll call your—your first witness
   back.”
         The prosecutor, however, continued to object on
the ground that “just because two events are co-occurring
doesn’t mean that they’re connected.” The prosecutor
acknowledged that the disharmony and ensuing change of
C’s living circumstances from Pendleton to Pilot Rock had
occurred about a month before the abuse allegations, but
the prosecutor argued that taking and misusing the phone
was merely an internal family matter and that there was
no basis for further inferring a connection between the family disharmony and later abuse allegations against defendant.
         The court explained that defendant had laid “some
foundation” for his theory that C wanted “to make the focus
on something else other than herself and what had happened 30 days ago,” which was an event that had “caused
her to have to change, or caused a change in her living situation. She went from one parent or one place to another.”
However, because neither the prosecutor nor the evaluator could provide details on the phone incident or C’s move
from one household to another, the court had unanswered
questions about what “the facts or circumstances were
330                                            State v. Hassan

surrounding and time frame, and what actually happened.”
So, at that point, C’s mother was called to the stand for an
offer of proof.
         During that offer of proof, in response to questioning by defendant, C’s mother testified that C and her brother
“had taken a phone from our house and they were getting
on social media, and keeping it from us,” and that C was
communicating with boys on the phone, which she had been
forbidden to do. C’s mother testified that C
   “was grounded for a month and she decided that she didn’t
   want to listen to our punishment, and didn’t want to do
   the work that I told her to do, and so we decided as a family that it was better for her to move in with her dad and
   step mom, and con—continue building a relationship with
   them, because she didn’t want to listen to me.”
According to C’s mother, who had also remarried, the decision was made by both parents and stepparents and that C
“went along with it” and had not objected.
         When examined by the prosecutor, C’s mother testified that C appeared upset when she was caught with the
cell phone but that, after the grounding was over, she did
not appear to be upset at all. In mother’s view, the incident
with the cell phone was no longer an issue after C changed
homes: There was no further punishment by father, she continued to have contact with mother, and mother believed her
to be “very happy actually” and that it “actually worked out
very well.”
          Defendant then called C to the stand as part of an
offer of proof. C testified that she was grounded after taking
the cell phone and, when asked whether she was upset about
that, responded, “Yeah I guess.” C was asked whether “your
custody changed or have there been different rules that
you’re going by,” to which she answered, “No. My dad’s more
strict than my mom. That’s the only other thing. That’s the
only thing.”
        After that offer of proof, the trial court sustained
the prosecutor’s relevance objection and concluded that it
was “not going to allow the question or those answers.” The
court explained:
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   “I don’t think there’s sufficient relevance, relevance to
   that. She’s not under any further restrictions, punishment
   at the time of the incident. While it may be 30 days, it’d
   come and gone. There was no further restrictions. There
   may have been lots of choppy stuff earlier some but [it had]
   all been worked out and smoothed out. She’s under no further restrictions. I guess it doesn’t appear [to] me there was
   anything to avoid at that time, and therefore no reason to
   make up, fabricate a story, anything of that nature, so.
      “…
       “… It was misappropriating the use of a family phone
   for things that were forbidden … and so there was some
   punishment for that. Ended up in a moving and then it
   stopped and he took a different course of conduct how he
   was going to deal with it. I think it was as said a fresh
   start, so there was nothing to avoid going forward, so anything else? So no—no more questions or information on
   that ….”
The child-abuse evaluator then retook the witness stand,
and the trial proceeded without any further discussion
about the cell phone incident or C’s subsequent change of
residence.
         During closing argument, the prosecutor directed
the jury’s attention to C’s testimony, urging them to look
at “the manner in which the witness has testified. You look
at the nature or the quality of the witness’s testimony. You
look at evidence that contradicts the testimony of a witness,
and you look at evidence concerning the bias, motives, or
interests of the witness.” The prosecutor started with the
last one, arguing that C had nothing to gain from a false
allegation:
      “Let’s start with that last one. I think it’s fair to ask
   what—what does [C] gain from—if—if this were not true,
   what does she gain? Nothing. She gains nothing. What—
   what happened as a result of her disclosure? She told you.
   She had to move from her home because she didn’t feel safe
   there, and then she had to testify in front of all of you, and
   you saw how easy a process that was for her, so not only did
   she have to testify for you because of questions that I ask,
   but then she got cross examined by the defense attorney,
   which was not pleasant for her, so what—what bias, motive,
332                                                           State v. Hassan

    or interest was there? None except for her to be able to tell you
    all what the defendant did to her.”
(Emphasis added.) The jury ultimately convicted defendant
on both counts, unanimously with regard to Count 2, the
charge based on kissing C on the lips or mouth.
         On appeal, defendant assigns error to the trial
court’s exclusion of evidence regarding the circumstances
surrounding C’s taking of the phone and resulting move.
Defendant argues, as he did below, that the evidence “could
have given her a motive to fabricate the sexual abuse allegations in order to divert attention from her own malfeasance,”
and that the evidence met the low relevancy threshold for
evidence related to credibility. The state responds that,
after listening to the offer of proof, “the trial court correctly
concluded that the cellphone incident had little effect on the
victim by the time of the [charged] incident.”
         Under OEC 402, the general rule is that “[a]ll relevant evidence is admissible.” Relevant evidence is “evidence
having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that
is of consequence to the determination of the action more
probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” OEC 401. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly
stated, “relevance is a very low threshold for the admission
of evidence.” State v. Naudain, 

, 

(2021) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
         It is a well-established principle of evidence law in
Oregon that “ ‘it is always permissible to show the interest or bias of an adverse witness’ because a witness’s bias
or interest is relevant to his or her credibility.” 

 at 150
(quoting State v. Hubbard, 

, 

(1984)). That principle encompasses a witness’s motive to
fabricate testimony or allegations against a criminal defendant.5 See State v. Valle, 

, 

(2013) (applying that rule in the context of “information that
    5
      As we explained in Harper v. Washburn, 

, 249 n 1, 

 (2020), “[e]vidence that undermines a witness’s credibility comes in many
forms, some more subtle than others,” and “[s]uch evidence may also blur the
line between substantive evidence and impeachment evidence.” That is especially
true where the evidence is directed not only at a witness’s initial report of a crime
but also the trial testimony that is consistent with that initial report.
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was relevant to whether [the complainant] had a motive to
fabricate her allegations against defendant”). It also has
a constitutional dimension, as we explained in Valle: “[A]
defendant in a criminal case … has the right, under both
the state and federal constitutions, to confront witnesses,
a right that includes the right to question a witness about
circumstances from which a jury could reasonably infer that
the witness has a motive to testify in a certain manner.” 

at 810 (citing, among other sources, the Sixth Amendment
to the United States Constitution and Article I, section 11,
of the Oregon Constitution).
         “To meet the test of relevance, bias or interest evidence ‘need only have a mere tendency to show the bias or
interest of the witness.’ ” Naudain, 

 (quoting
Hubbard, 

). Although relevance “requires
a rational relationship between the evidence offered and
the substantive issues properly provable in the case,” that
“rational relationship can be based on an inference, so long
as the inference is a logical connection.” Id. at 150 (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted). The inference need
not be the most probable; rather, “[e]vidence is relevant so
long as the inference desired by the proponent is reasonable,
even if the evidence also could support a contradictory inference.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted);
see Valle, 

 (holding that “it is error for a
trial court to exclude evidence from which a jury could reasonably infer that the witness has a motive to testify in a
certain manner”). We review a trial court’s relevance determination for legal error. Naudain, 

.
         Although defendant has consistently used the term
“bias” to describe the theory by which the evidence of the cell
phone incident was relevant to credibility, what he is actually
describing appears to be closer to “interest”—that is, a personal interest on the part of C in making allegations and testifying in a certain way. See generally State v. Barfield, 

, 

 (1986) (“A witness is biased if
the witness has a friendly or hostile feeling toward a party;
a witness is interested if the witness has a stake in the outcome of the case.”). Regardless of terminology, we understand
defendant in substance to argue that a reasonable juror could
infer from the evidence surrounding the cell phone incident
334                                                         State v. Hassan

that C had a motive to fabricate allegations of abuse and testify falsely in accordance with those allegations.
         The line between a reasonable inference and speculation is difficult to draw with precision, and we do not
attempt to do so here. It is enough to say that “a factfinder’s
common knowledge can supply the bridge to a factfinder’s
reasonable inference,” State v. Hedgpeth, 

,

 (2019), and that the line between speculation
and reasonable inference is drawn by the laws of logic; that
does not mean that a reasonable inference must follow necessarily or in the form of a logical syllogism, but rather that
it include principles of deduction or inference, 

         In this case, a reasonable juror could infer that the
events involving the cell phone and subsequent move to Pilot
Rock were sufficiently upsetting and life-altering for a young
teenager that they supplied C with a motive to fabricate allegations of abuse at the Pilot Rock duplex. There is evidence in
the record that C had spent almost all of her life in Pendleton;
that she had been living there with her mother until the cell
phone incident; and that the taking of the cell phone—and
C’s unwillingness to accept the punishment—were serious
enough that she was required to move out of her home; and
that, at the time of the abuse evaluation, C was still upset
enough about those circumstances that the evaluator did
not want to ask any further questions about the topic.6 And,
in fact, the allegations against defendant were stated as
the reason that she then moved back to Pendleton (because
her family no longer felt safe in Pilot Rock). Coupled with
a juror’s common knowledge that a child might sometimes
lie to escape accountability or an uncomfortable situation, a
reasonable juror could be persuaded on this record that the
circumstances gave C such a motive in this case, even if that
is not the most likely explanation for C’s allegations.
        The trial court’s view—that C’s move to her stepmother’s house in Pilot Rock provided a fresh start, and
hence there was no reason to fabricate abuse allegations—is

     6
       Neither party has raised any issues regarding foundational evidence of relevance of C’s motive to fabricate coming in through the forensic evaluator’s testimony. We consider the evidence of C’s contemporaneous statements to the evaluator to be part of the foundational evidence of relevance before the trial court.
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unquestionably a reasonable view of the evidence in this
record. However, it is not the only permissible view of that
evidence. A juror would not be compelled to credit C’s mother’s testimony about how happy C was after the move. A
juror could instead discount C’s mother’s testimony and
draw a contrary inference from the circumstances—that the
move from one house to another was not a fresh start but
a very upsetting experience, one that was still fresh at the
time of the abuse evaluation. Again, “the inference need not
be the only one that could be drawn, or even the most probable.” Valle, 

. “At the admissibility stage,
the only question is whether a jury could find that the witness has a motive to testify in a certain manner. Whether
the witness actually has a motive and, if so, whether the
motive has influenced the witness’s testimony, are separate
and subsequent questions for the jury.” 

 Accordingly, as in
Valle, we conclude that the trial court erred in excluding the
evidence on the basis of relevance.
          We further conclude that the error was not harmless. This case involved a credibility contest in which there
was no physical evidence of abuse and no eyewitnesses who
testified other than C. The evidence regarding the phone
incident and subsequent move would have been defendant’s
only evidence of C’s motive to fabricate the allegations, and
he was denied the opportunity to advance that theory and to
meet the prosecutor’s closing argument that C had no bias,
motive, or interest in falsely accusing defendant of abuse.
See 

 (holding that the exclusion of evidence relevant
to a motive to fabricate allegations was “harmful because
the jury was not fully informed of matters relevant to an
assessment of [the accuser’s] credibility, which was essential to the state’s case”; throughout the case, the prosecutor
emphasized that [the accuser] did not have a motive to fabricate; and the “exclusion of defendant’s proffered impeachment evidence deprived defendant of an opportunity to meet
that argument and deprived the jury of an opportunity to
consider all of the information relevant to [the accuser’s]
credibility”). Accordingly, we reverse and remand the conviction on Count 2 as well.
        Reversed and remanded.