State v. Stevens

No. 863             November 27, 2024                499

   This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion
    pursuant to ORAP 10.30 and may not be cited
         except as provided in ORAP 10.30(1).

          IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                  STATE OF OREGON

                  STATE OF OREGON,
                   Plaintiff-Respondent,
                             v.
                 JASON LEE STEVENS,
                   Defendant-Appellant.
              Deschutes County Circuit Court
                   21CR39033; A181590

  Raymond D. Crutchley, Judge.
  Submitted October 30, 2024.
  Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate
Section, and James Brewer, Deputy Public Defender, Oregon
Public Defense Commission, filed the brief for appellant.
   Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin
Gutman, Solicitor General, and Peenesh Shah, Assistant
Attorney General, filed the brief for respondent.
  Before Tookey, Presiding Judge, Kamins, Judge, and
DeVore, Senior Judge.
  PER CURIAM
  Affirmed.
500                                                        State v. Stevens

            PER CURIAM
         Defendant challenges his conviction for seconddegree criminal trespass, ORS 164.245,1 asserting that the
trial court erred when it excluded testimony pertaining
to defendant’s defense to that charge. Reviewing the trial
court’s evidentiary ruling for errors of law, State v. Hixson,

, 

 (2020), we affirm.
          Defendant was “trespassed off” the victim’s property; he was charged with criminal trespass after returning
a few weeks later. In his defense, defendant asserted “that
he entered [the victim]’s property because he intended to
exercise his constitutional right to petition the government
by serving a public-records request on [the victim], who was
the chairman of a special road district and stored records
at his home.” Defendant sought to introduce testimony from
the Deschutes County Sheriff regarding information that
the Sheriff had “obtained … from the [S]ecretary of [S]tate
that … [the] normal process for record requests would be to
contact the registered agent at the registered address.” The
state moved to exclude that testimony, and the trial court
granted that motion, ruling that the Sheriff’s testimony was
inadmissible hearsay.
        Hearsay evidence—i.e., “a statement, other than
one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or
hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter
asserted”—is generally not admissible for trial. OEC 801;
OEC 802.
          Here, defendant contends that the Sheriff’s testimony was not hearsay, because it was offered for a purpose
other than the truth of the matter asserted; specifically, that
the testimony was offered to show “how members of the public were told to request documents from [a government body]
… regardless of whether the publicly available information
was accurate.” However, there is no evidence that defendant
himself was aware of the Secretary of State’s advice about
how to request records at the time of the incident; thus, the

   1
       ORS 164.245(1) provides:
   “A person commits the crime of criminal trespass in the second degree if the
   person enters or remains unlawfully in a motor vehicle or in or upon premises.”
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 

 (2024)           501

record does not support the relevance of the evidence for
that purported non-hearsay purpose.
         Further, to the extent that the evidence was offered
for the purpose of corroborating defendant’s defense by
demonstrating the proper way to request documents from
a government body, that would be a hearsay purpose, and
the trial court did not err in excluding the evidence on that
basis.
         Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court properly excluded the Sheriff’s testimony.
        Affirmed.