State v. Flores ( 2024 )

770 July 10, 2024 No. 490
This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion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.
MIGUEL KICKING BUCK FLORES,
Defendant-Appellant.
Columbia County Circuit Court
21CR31911, 19CR59977; A178645 (Control), A178646
Michael T. Clarke, Judge.
Argued and submitted May 31, 2024.
Emily P. Seltzer, Deputy Publ5ic Defender, argued the
cause for appellant. Also on the briefs was Ernest G. Lannet,
Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate Section, Oregon Public
Defense Commission.
E. Nani Apo, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause
for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum,
Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.
Before Joyce, Presiding Judge, Lagesen, Chief Judge, and
Armstrong, Senior Judge.
JOYCE, P. J.
Affirmed.
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 333 Or App 770 (2024) 771
JOYCE, J.
In this consolidated appeal, defendant appeals from
a judgment of conviction for coercion and a judgment revok-
ing his probation based on that conviction. On appeal, he
challenges the denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal
on the coercion charge. He also argues that the trial court
committed plain error by failing to properly instruct the
jury on the culpable mental state for coercion. Consequently,
he contends that the judgment revoking his probation must
also be reversed. Because the record contains evidence that
defendant knowingly compelled his partner to engage in
conduct from which she had the legal right to abstain by
instilling in her the fear that, if she abstained from the con-
duct, defendant would cause her physical injury, the trial
court correctly denied the motion for judgment of acquittal.
See ORS 163.275(1)(a) (defining coercion). Moreover, viewing
the jury instructions as a whole, it is not obvious and beyond
reasonable dispute that the trial court was required to pro-
vide further jury instructions. We therefore affirm.
Motion for judgment of acquittal: In reviewing the
denial of a motion for a judgment of acquittal, we view “the
facts and all reasonable inferences that may be drawn there-
from in the light most favorable to the state,” to determine
whether “a rational trier of fact could have found the essen-
tial elements of the crime provided beyond a reasonable
doubt.” State v. Powe, 314 Or App 726, 728-29, 497 P3d 793
(2021). The charges against defendant arose from an inci-
dent involving his partner. Defendant had a history of anger
and physical violence towards the victim. In the time leading
up to the offense, defendant had assaulted the victim and
took her cell phone because he did not want her to contact
anyone or to leave their shared apartment. On the day of
the offense, while the victim had gone to retrieve something
from her car, defendant shoved her and told her to “get the
fuck back in the house.” After defendant closed the door, a
neighbor could hear screaming and called 9-1-1. Inside the
house, defendant was “really mad” and told the victim that
she was not going anywhere. When police arrived, defendant
told the victim to go to the front window and tell police that
she was okay. She did so. However, as she testified at trial,
772 State v. Flores
that was not true; she was not okay. After she said she was
okay, officers told the victim to come outside, but defendant
stood between her and the door and told her that she could
not go outside. He again told her to tell the police that she
was fine and directed her movements around the apartment.
Eventually defendant opened the door and officers arrested
him for coercion.
At the close of the state’s case, defendant moved for
a judgment of acquittal, arguing that the state had failed
to present evidence from which a rational trier of fact could
conclude that defendant had engaged in coercion. On appeal,
he contends that the state’s evidence failed to demonstrate
that he compelled the victim to falsely tell the police that
she was okay (1) by instilling in her a fear of physical injury
and (2) with knowledge that he was compelling her by
instilling a fear of physical injury. We have reviewed the evi-
dence and conclude that the state presented evidence from
which a rational trier of fact could make those findings.
Consequently, accepting for present purposes defendant’s
view of the necessary findings, we conclude that the trial
court correctly denied the motion for judgment of acquittal.
Culpable mental state jury instruction: Defendant
also argues that the trial court committed plain error by
failing to instruct the jury that it had to find that defendant
knew, when he compelled the victim to tell the police she
was okay, that he did so by instilling in her a fear of physi-
cal injury. We conclude that the court did not plainly err in
instructing the jury.
The trial court instructed the jury that, to find
defendant guilty of coercion, it must find that defendant
“did unlawfully and knowingly compel or induce [the vic-
tim] to engage in conduct from which [the victim] had a
legal right to abstain; to wit, lying to the police by means of
instilling in [the victim] a fear that if [the victim] refrained
from the conduct compelled or induced, defendant would
unlawfully cause physical injury to [the victim].”
The court further instructed the jury on the term
“knowingly”:
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 333 Or App 770 (2024) 773
“When used in the phrase * * * knowingly compelled [the
victim] to engage in conduct from which [the victim] had a
legal right to abstain; to wit, lying to police, knowingly or
with knowledge means that the person acts with an aware-
ness that * * * his conduct is of that particular nature.”
In defendant’s view, the trial court plainly erred by
failing to expressly instruct the jury that it had to find that
defendant knew that he was compelling the victim to lie by
instilling in her a fear of physical injury in particular. That
is, in his view, in its second instruction set out above, the
court should have included that defendant had to act with
an awareness that his conduct compelled the victim “by
means of instilling a fear that, if [the victim] refrained from
the conduct compelled or induced, defendant would unlaw-
fully cause physical injury to [the victim].” Framed slightly
differently, defendant maintains that the trial court plainly
erred by failing to both instruct that defendant knowingly
compelled the victim to lie and that he knowingly instilled
in her a fear of physical injury if she did not lie to the police.
Accepting, for present purposes, defendant’s prem-
ise that the jury had to find both that (1) defendant knew
that his conduct compelled the victim to tell the police she
was okay and (2) he knew that it made her do that by instill-
ing a fear of physical injury, we nevertheless conclude that
any instructional error was not plain. Defendant’s argu-
ment treats those two issues of knowledge as if they address
separate elements, and his view is that the jury would not
have understood that it had to find knowledge that the com-
pulsion was by means of instilling a fear of physical injury
without an instruction expressly stating that.
However, in our view, the two knowledge issues are
intertwined, not separable into discrete issues on which the
court plainly had to instruct the jury separately. The par-
ties agree that defendant had to compel the victim and that
his conduct had to compel her by means of instilling a fear of
physical injury. In that circumstance, and given the facts of
this case, defendant’s knowledge that his conduct was com-
pelling the victim to do something at least arguably encom-
passes knowledge of how the compulsion was working—that
it was compelling her by instilling a fear of physical injury.
774 State v. Flores
In other words, under these circumstances, by being aware
of the particular nature of his conduct in compelling the vic-
tim to act, defendant would also have known that the way
the compelling conduct worked was by instilling a fear of
physical injury.
Given that, it is reasonably in dispute whether the
jury would have understood the instructions given to allow
it to find defendant guilty without finding that he knew
that, when he compelled the victim to lie to the police, he
did so by means of instilling in her a fear of physical injury.
As set out above, the court instructed the jury that defen-
dant had to “knowingly compel or induce” the victim to lie
to the police “by means of instilling” in her a fear that, if she
did not, “defendant would unlawfully cause physical injury”
to her. In these circumstances, the fact that defendant had
to knowingly compel or induce the victim at least arguably
carries with it a requirement that defendant know how the
compulsion worked—by instilling a fear of physical injury.
It is true that the court’s additional instruction,
explaining the meaning of “knowingly or with knowledge”
“[w]hen used in the phrase * * * knowingly compelled [the
victim] to engage in conduct from which [the victim] had
a legal right to abstain,” would be clearer if it included the
additional phrase “by means of instilling in [the victim] a
fear that if [the victim] refrained from the conduct com-
pelled or induced, defendant would unlawfully cause phys-
ical injury to [the victim].” But, because the two knowledge
issues are intertwined, and because the court’s general
instruction correctly stated that defendant’s conduct had to
be done knowingly, the court’s failure to include the rest of
the phrase in the second instruction is not obviously incor-
rect or confusing such that giving it was plain error. See
State v. Vanornum, 354 Or 614, 629, 317 P3d 889 (2013) (for
a claimed error to be “plain,” it must be obvious and not rea-
sonably in dispute).
Affirmed.