OTHER VIEWS: When should a person in Oregon be prosecuted as a drug dealer?
Published 5:30 am Saturday, November 11, 2023
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A person in Oregon is caught with hundreds of packages of heroin apparently wrapped for sale. Should that person be charged as a drug dealer? Or is it not enough if they aren’t caught making sales?
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That question was before legislators Monday as they consider if Oregon should change how it handles some drug cases.
Two legal cases that keep coming up when the Legislature talks about illegal drugs and crime — Boyd and Hubbell. Those cases framed how prosecutors can charge people for delivery of drugs in Oregon.
The Boyd decision in 1988 was about a woman who had 23 bags of heroin found on her when she was arrested in her home in Portland. She admitted that she had obtained 13 of the bags with the intent to sell them. She also said she had sold the drugs for someone else and was getting paid $50 a day for selling the drugs. Her argument was that there was not sufficient evidence to convict her of delivery of heroin because there was no evidence of delivery, either actual or attempted.
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She lost.
The Boyd decision set up an interpretation in Oregon law of what constitutes delivery of drugs in Oregon. She wasn’t caught in the act of selling. She was caught with evidence that made it appear as though she was about to sell. Oregon law was essentially that the apparent attempted transfer of a controlled substance was the same as if the actual transfer was completed.
The Boyd decision made it easier to prosecute some people for delivery of drugs, which is more serious than crimes of possession or attempted delivery.
The Oregon Supreme Court decision in Hubbell in 2021 overturned Boyd. The court found that possession of drugs with apparent intent is only enough to prove the crime of attempted delivery at best. The state would need to have more evidence than that to charge an individual as a drug dealer.
The Oregon District Attorneys Association has called for legislators to make a change to the Boyd standard.
We tilt more toward the Boyd standard, but we’d like to see the exact language of any change before making a decision. Tell your legislator what you think.