The Knight Law Center auditorium was transformed into a courtroom Wednesday when the Oregon Supreme Court visited to hear two criminal cases.
A silence fell over the room and an audience of mostly first-year law students stood as the bailiff commenced the hearing with a “hear ye, hear ye” and rap of a gavel, to which the six judges then entered.
The first case heard was State v. Miglavs, a case in which a concealed weapon was found on the defendant after a pat-down. The officer who requested the pat-down did not have a warrant but said she felt an immediate threat from the defendant, which would validate her search because of his apparent association with the 18th Street gang, a local gang whose members had previously been found with concealed weapons.
Attorney Garrett Richardson represented the defendant and argued that the officer’s assumptions were based on unfair presumptions about the defendant’s clothing, including baggy pants.
“These days, baggy is in,” Richardson said.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Fussner represented the state.
“Let’s assume bulky police officers … encounter a slightly inebriated law student from Lewis and Clark or Willamette,” he said, describing the hypothetical student as wearing a dance leotard, thus preventing him or her from concealing a weapon.
“Did you stay awake at night thinking about this?” Associate Justice W. Michael Gillette asked of the fictional example.
Fussner’s point was that in such an instance, a claim of an immediate threat would not be valid. He argued that the officer’s experience with the gang and the neighborhood justified her actions, and furthermore, he said, the officer’s assumption was fair based on the defendant’s attire because he was wearing a shirt that read “18th Street”.
The decision for the case was not determined at the hearing.
The next case, State v. Ventris, had a markedly serious tone to it. The case involved a set of sentencing questions that many of the law students admitted they did not understand.
Joseph Ventris had been involved in an incident in which he and two other men burglarized an apartment, and the apartment’s owner was later found murdered. Wednesday’s hearing dealt with issues that would alter the length of the sentence, and whether or not Ventris could serve some of the sentences concurrently.
In a tense question-and-answer session after the case, Karen Friend, the defendant’s mother, implied that Associate Justice Rives Kistler had a conflict of interest, and she gave Chief Justice Wallace Carson an article from The Oregonian that supported her case.
“Judges have no personal stake in the case,” Kistler said.