State v. C. E. F.

616                 December 4, 2024                No. 879

   This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion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

                In the Matter of C. E. F.,
         a Person Alleged to have Mental Illness.
                  STATE OF OREGON,
                       Respondent,
                            v.
                         C. E. F.,
                        Appellant.
              Marion County Circuit Court
                  22CC03839; A179129

  Jennifer J. Brown, Judge pro tempore.
  Submitted July 12, 2023.
    Christopher J. O’Connor and Multnomah Defenders, Inc.,
filed the brief for appellant.
   Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Joanna Hershey, Assistant Attorney
General, filed the brief for respondent.
  Before Ortega, Presiding Judge, Powers, Judge, and
Hellman, Judge.
  POWERS, J.
  Affirmed.
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 

 (2024)               617

         POWERS, J.
          In this civil commitment proceeding, appellant
seeks reversal of a judgment committing her to the Mental
Health Division of the Oregon Health Authority for a period
not to exceed 180 days and an order prohibiting her from
purchasing or possessing firearms based on the trial court’s
determination that she is a person with mental illness such
that she was a danger to others. On appeal, appellant does
not contest that she has a mental disorder; rather, in three
assignments of error, she contends that the record is insufficient to support a determination that she was a danger to
others for purposes of a civil commitment, for entering the
firearm-prohibition order, and that she was not willing or
able to participate in voluntary treatment. We affirm.
         Neither party requests de novo review, and we conclude that this is not an exceptional case that warrants such
review. See ORAP 5.40(8)(c) (providing that we will exercise
our discretion to review de novo “only in exceptional cases”);
ORAP 5.40(8)(d) (outlining a nonexclusive list of criteria
used to determine whether to exercise our discretionary
authority to review de novo). Thus, we review the evidence,
as supplemented and buttressed by permissible derivative
inferences, in the light most favorable to the trial court’s
disposition and assess whether, when so viewed, the record
is legally sufficient to permit that outcome. State v. T. W. W.,

, 

 (2018). Because the
parties are familiar with the factual and procedural background, we do not provide a recitation of those facts for this
nonprecedential memorandum opinion.
          We have reviewed the record and conclude that there
is legally sufficient evidence to support the trial court’s determinations. Appellant, who has been diagnosed with bipolar
disorder with manic features, has a long history of mental
illness that has caused her to threaten violence to others,
including threatening children with a knife and throwing a
plate of food at her son after he delivered her Thanksgiving
dinner. About a week before the civil commitment hearing
in this case, appellant got into an altercation with her son,
pushing him and hitting him with a door. That incident left
her son with bruises, scratches, and a cut on his face. About
618                                          State v. C. E. F.

24 hours before the commitment hearing, appellant made
profane and racially charged remarks to hospital staff, had
drawn a swastika on her forehead, and threatened to fight
security staff. Given all of the evidence in the record, we
reject appellant’s argument that the latest violent incident
with her son was merely an isolated incident. See, e.g., State
v. S. E., 

, 

 (2021) (concluding that the appellant’s conduct prior to hospitalization
“demonstrated a pattern of escalating physical aggressiveness” sufficient to support a danger to others commitment).
         We further reject appellant’s assertion that the
trial court erred in determining that she would not engage
in voluntary treatment. As we explained in State v. M. J. M.,

, 

 (2020), a court “is not
required to release a mentally ill person merely because the
person has expressed a willingness to engage in voluntary
treatment.” Indeed, a court may disbelieve testimony to
that effect, and given the record in this case, it was reasonable for the court to do so in this case. See 

 (explaining
that, “although appellant testified that she was willing to
engage in voluntary treatment, the trial court was entitled
to disbelieve her testimony given the other evidence in the
record”). Finally, given the evidence in the record, we summarily reject appellant’s argument that the trial court erred
in entering the firearms order.
        Affirmed.