Occupy Portland Wins Right To Jury Trial In Orgeon Supreme Court
If prosecutors and police charge a criminal offense, they cannot reduce the charges to avoid constitutional rights to an attorney and trial by jury
Fifty people arrested during Occupy Portland protests two years ago are entitled to jury trials even though prosecutors downgraded the misdemeanor charges to violations with no threat of a jail sentence, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The ruling in State v. Benoit is one of two decisions issued Thursday by the state’s highest court that found prosecutors can’t unilaterally change a criminal prosecution to a noncriminal one and use that to deprive defendants of such constitutional protections as a jury trial and the right to an attorney.
“There is no textual, historical, or logical support for the proposition that … what began as a criminal proceeding with defendant's arrest, booking, and incarceration for a crime can, in the absence of her consent, be transformed without further constitutional consequence into a noncriminal proceeding,” Justice David Brewer wrote for the unanimous court.