State v. Stamps

796                 December 11, 2024             No. 901

   This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion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.
              DAEMON MORGAN STAMPS,
                   Defendant-Appellant.
              Clackamas County Circuit Court
                   20CR58837; A180567

  Todd L. Van Rysselberghe, Judge.
  Submitted October 23, 2024.
  Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate
Section, and John Evans, Deputy Public Defender, Office of
Public Defense Services, filed the brief for appellant.
   Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Jordan R. Silk, Assistant Attorney
General, filed the brief for respondent.
  Before Shorr, Presiding Judge, Powers, Judge, and
Pagán, Judge.
  PAGÁN, J.
  Affirmed.
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 

 (2024)            797

        PAGÁN, J.
          Defendant waived his right to a jury and was convicted after a bench trial on three counts of first-degree sexual abuse. On appeal, defendant advances two assignments
of error, neither of which is preserved. First, he argues that
the prosecutor mischaracterized the burden of proof during
closing arguments, and that the court should have declared
a mistrial sua sponte. Second, he contends that the trial
court’s speaking verdict demonstrates that the court convicted him based on an erroneous understanding of the burden of proof. We reject both arguments and affirm.
         Prosecutorial misconduct. In his first assignment
of error, defendant contends that the prosecutor repeatedly
framed the closing argument in terms of a lack of evidence
to sustain a finding of reasonable doubt, thereby shifting
the burden of proof to defendant. We agree with the state
that, viewing the prosecutor’s statements in context, the
claimed error is not obvious or beyond dispute. See State v.
Chitwood, 

, 

 (2022) (“The first
step in a plain error analysis is to determine whether the
claimed error is ‘plain,’ which, in turn, involves examining
the following three factors: (1) whether the claimed error is
one of law; (2) whether the claimed error is obvious and not
reasonably in dispute; and (3) whether the claimed error
appears on the record.”). The trial court reasonably could
have understood those arguments to be directed at how it
should assess defendant’s theory of the case based on the
evidence presented at trial, as opposed to an argument that
defendant had any burden to produce evidence or to establish reasonable doubt. See State v. Brannan, 

, 

 (2024) (concluding that a prosecutor’s arguments were not obviously improper where a jury could have
understood them as an explanation that the evidence before
the jury did not support defendant’s theory of the case).
And, even if we were to assume that the prosecutor’s closing
arguments misstated the burden of proof, the error could
have been remedied if defendant had objected. See State v.
Miller, 

, 

, rev den, 

 (2023) (“This was a bench trial. We have no doubt
that the trial judge would have been able to disregard those
798                                           State v. Stamps

statements if defendant had objected and the court had
stricken them. It will be the rare case in which an improper
statement made by an attorney in closing argument to the
court is so prejudicial that the court is legally required to
declare a mistrial.”).
         Speaking verdict. In his second assignment, defendant argues that the trial court’s speaking verdict demonstrates that the court, influenced by the prosecutor’s erroneous closing arguments, misunderstood the state’s burden
of proof and the concept of “reasonable doubt.” Defendant
points to a part of the court’s explanation of its reasoning in
which the court stated, “To find reasonable doubt, the Court
would have to conclude it defies reason that the Defendant
would enter a room of sleeping people to quietly sexually
abuse [E]. Taking into consideration all the evidence, the
Court is not able to find reasonable doubt on the facts presented.” According to defendant, those statements show that
the court erroneously believed reasonable doubt to be a factual finding that needed to be established by the evidence in
the record, and that it required the defense to convince the
court of the existence of reasonable doubt rather than hold
the state to its burden to prove defendant’s guilt beyond a
reasonable doubt.
         Read in isolation, the court’s references to being
able to “find reasonable doubt” might be susceptible to
defendant’s view of the verdict. However, that is not how we
evaluate a court’s speaking verdict; we “do not look at individual statements in isolation, but rather consider them in
the context of the parties’ arguments and the ruling as a
whole.” State v. Spieler, 

, 

(2020). Defendant’s closing argument emphasized the state’s
burden of proof, pointed out that the state’s case rested on
one witness, E, and then told the court that it needed to
assess “everything else that goes around that to whether
or not there is doubt as to whether that is true and whether
or not that has been proven to be true beyond a reasonable
doubt.” Defendant pointed to aspects of the record that, in
his view, made E’s version of events implausible, including
that the abuse allegedly happened in a crowded place where
people were sleeping. The prosecutor’s rebuttal addressed
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 

 (2024)            799

those “possible reasonable doubts” and the lack of evidence
to support defendant’s theory of the case—arguments that,
as noted above, did not plainly misstate the state’s burden of
proof.
         The court began its speaking verdict by explaining that the state has the burden of proof and noting that
“[d]efendant denies the allegations and highlights facts
to support reasonable doubt.” The court then categorized
defendant’s theories about why doubt exists as to E’s version
of events, which culminated in the court’s conclusion that
it could not “find reasonable doubt on the facts presented.”
Given that context, the trial court’s choice of words around
reasonable doubt does not demonstrate an obvious misunderstanding of the law so as to constitute plain error; rather,
the verdict can be plausibly understood to reflect the court’s
expression of why, as a factfinder, it did not have reasonable doubt about defendant’s guilt on the record before it.
See 

 (“Although some of the trial court’s phrasing during
its speaking verdict may not have been as clear as ideal,
we disagree that what the court said reveals a fundamental
misunderstanding of the law.”).
        Affirmed.