Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
The case was troubling.
Michael Steven Hamilton was smoking marijuana and playing video games in his living room on the evening of Jan. 19, 2001. His infant daughter was nearby. She was cranky and he decided to put her to bed.
He stood up with her and, as he told investigators later, tried to open the door with his elbow. He missed and the door hit her head. She immediately stopped crying and seemed sleepy when he laid her down to change her diaper. She also groaned.
He put her to bed in her crib and went back to play video games and watch TV with a friend. The next morning he awoke at 10 a.m. and, while watching TV in the living room, heard his daughter groan.
He noticed bruises on her forehead and abdomen while he was changing her diaper, put her back in her crib and went back to the living room, where he fell asleep.
Around 2 p.m., he awoke and heard her groaning, checked her and found her not breathing. She was taken to the hospital, where she died the next day and an autopsy determined she had a cracked skull and died from terminal brain injuries.
The state medical examiner also determined that she had a healing rib that had been broken two or three weeks earlier and had an assortment of bruises on her head and her body. At trial, after testimony stating that the father smoked marijuana daily around the baby and had demonstrated a pattern of abuse toward his daughter, a jury convicted the father of murder by abuse. He was sentenced to four consecutive sentences, totaling 448 months to life in prison.
But should the jury have been allowed to consider evidence that Hamilton had smoked marijuana daily in his baby’s presence? And how about those four consecutive sentences — was that justified?
A second case also presented some complexities.
A fisherman, Thomas L. Milburn, was cited for keeping a foul-hooked fish. His fishing license was revoked for two years.
Six months later, the Oregon State Police got a tip that the man was planning to participate in a free fishing weekend at Hebo Lake. A trooper hid in the bushes with a video camera and got tape of the man fishing with his grandniece. The man was cited and a trial judge found him guilty of misdemeanor angling while suspended.
But was Milburn really violating his suspension since it was a free fishing weekend, for which no one needed a license?
Three Oregon Court of Appeals judges listened to attorneys argue these cases Wednesday, Nov. 16. But it wasn’t their regular court, so to speak.
Instead, they sat at a bench with a basketball basket hanging above. The bailiff was at a folding table on their right, the lawyers at others on their left. In the audience sat some 50 high school students and a few adults.
This was the basketball court in the new gymnasium at Sweet Home High School.
Court of Appeals Chief Judge David Brewer, Presiding Judge Rick Haselton and Judge Ellen Rosenblum heard the cases, which had been appealed to their court from trial courts. Their appearance was part of the Appeals Court’s program in which three-judge panels visit high schools to hear cases, which gives students a chance to see the justice system in action.
“This is not play-acting,” Haselton told the students after the bailiff ordered them to turn off their cell phones before the judges made their entry to the bench. “This is not ‘Judge Judy.’ This is not ‘People’s Court.’ These are serious issues im pacting people’s lives.”
Attorney Anna Joyce, representing the state (prosecution) and Robin Jones and John Susac, representing the defendants who were appealing their sentences, were all from the Court of Appeals. They gave students a brief summary of how they got into law.
“This is so exciting,” said Nancy Ellis, who teaches government and psychology at the high school. “Sweet Home students don’t get the chance to take a field trip and see the court in action. I have some kids in the group that I work with that are considering law school. I can’t help but think this would whet their appetites.”
In addition to holding court in the gym, the judges also dined in the cafeteria and then visited three classes after lunch.
During the court hearings, lawyers on each side got 20 minutes each to summarize their arguments, which were spelled out in more detail in briefs provided the court before the case was heard. Judges, as is typical at the appellate level, frequently interrupted to ask questions. The lawyer for the defendants got another five minutes at the end to summarize his or her case and rebut points made by the state.
In the murder case, the issue was whether the father had an intent to kill his daughter, based on the testimony presented in the case.
Joyce, the state’s attorney, argued that “reckless indifference” — the fact that the father regularly smoked marijuana around his daughter, that the baby had apparently sustained a variety of injuries from the treatment she received, and that testimony indicated he resented the fact that the baby cramped his lifestyle of video game-playing and marijuana use — should be relative in determining his guilt.
But Jones, the attorney for the defendant, disagreed.
“It’s not material what he did on other nights,” she said. “What’s material is what he did on that night.”
In the fishing case, the lawyers and judges mulled over the wording of various laws pertaining to the case and went deeper, trying to determine what state legislators’ intent was in writing those laws, particularly one that distinguishes between fishing without a license and fishing while one’s license is revoked.
Haselton noted that in such cases judges and lawyers will review the wording of the law(s), the legislative history — how the law came into effect, and then, if the answers are still unclear, will look at the statutory construction — the policy intent of the Legislature in passing the law.
Brewer told the students, during a question-and-answer session following the court hearing, that the law gives appeals judges freedom to interpret legislators’ intent in difficult cases.
“The rules are designed to ensure we stay within the lines,” he said. “We don’t want to do anything that’s bogus. We look for clues. A lot of times there’s not certainty what the right answer is, but we’ve got to decide the case. We’ve got to have an answer.”
Student Howard Sherwood, a senior, predicted the court would rule for the defendants in both cases.
“In the first (murder) case I sensed the judges going for the defendant,” he said. “In the second, I think the defendant was right.”
Scott Groff, another senior, said although the hearings were “really long, they brought up a lot of good arguments.
“They brought up stuff you don’t think about,” he said.
Dallin Holdin, a sophomore, said he realized he “had no idea” how courts really worked.
“This is different than what you see on TV,” he said. “This was interesting.”
Senior Heidi Wilson said she appreciated the fact that the judges talked to students and said she was interested by the broad range of issues the cases represented.
“I just liked the fact that it was real,” she said.