A White City man convicted of driving his truck into a crowd in downtown Medford during a 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration lost an appeal of his case last week.

Christopher Ryan Biggs, 41, was unable to convince the Oregon Court of Appeals that a Jackson County Circuit Court judge made errors that led to a jury convicting him of reckless endangerment in 2022, according to the court’s 10-page opinion issued Wednesday. Biggs had submitted his appeal in September 2022.

Biggs’ attorney, Jamie Hazlett, did not return a request for comment. The Oregon Department of Justice, which argued the case on behalf of the state, said through its spokesperson, Roy Kaufmann, that “The DOJ is pleased that the court upheld the conviction.”

Biggs initially pleaded not guilty to two counts of reckless endangerment and one count each of unlawful use of a weapon, first-degree bias crime and menacing stemming from his actions on June 1, 2020.

On that day, people in downtown Medford were protesting the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, who was murdered by a city police officer, Derek Michael Chauvin, on May 25, 2020, when the officer knelt on Floyd’s neck. Chauvin was convicted in 2022.

Witnesses told Medford police they saw Biggs drive a large black Ram pickup truck “at a high rate of speed” into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators in an incident captured on video, according to previous news reports.

Police say the truck struck at least one pedestrian marching in the street and broke the skin on a demonstrator’s hand, news reports said.

A Medford police officer allegedly witnessed Biggs shouting “You f—ing queers” at demonstrators along West Sixth Street minutes before the altercation, according to news reports.

Biggs told police at the time that he was only in the area to find his daughter, who told police she’d called her parents for help because protesters had “swarmed” her vehicle, according to news reports.

Biggs also claimed that protesters were hitting his truck and trying to get inside. Police, however, said they found no video evidence of anyone trying to get inside his truck, news reports said.

Biggs’ attorneys argued at trial that their client was acting in self-defense. 

A jury, in part, disagreed, convicting Biggs on one count of recklessly endangering another person while acquitting him of all other charges. 

Biggs was sentenced to two years of bench probation, a 90-day suspension of his driver’s license and 30 days in the Jackson County Jail, according to court records. Biggs’ bench probation is expected to end in August, records said.

In his appeal, Biggs offered three ways he believed Judge Pro Tem Paul Moser erred in his rulings. 

Biggs challenged Moser’s ruling that prosecutors properly authenticated witness videos of Biggs driving his truck that were used as evidence at trial. 

Biggs argued it was improper for the state have other witnesses, and not those who captured the videos, testify to the jury as a way to authenticate the recordings.

But the appeals court ruled a jury could find the videos were authentic based on the rules of evidence, including that the recordings were preserved, accurate and had not been changed, added to or deleted.

Biggs also challenged a photo Medford police took of his truck after he drove through the protest. Biggs argued the photo should have been excluded from trial evidence because, he claimed, the state did not properly disclose that exhibit to him in discovery.

The state argued, however, that it had disclosed the photo.

The appeals court ruled that for evidence to be excluded, a judge would have to find that a defendant “suffered actual prejudice” and that “no other sanction, short of exclusion, would remedy that prejudice.”

“We agree with the court that it is unlikely that the photograph would have surprised (Biggs) and thereby prejudiced him,” the appeals court said.

Further, Biggs challenged Moser’s failure to give an additional jury instruction at his request.

The proposed instruction would have told jurors to infer that photos taken of Biggs’ truck “would have been favorable to the defense if they had been available to present as evidence.”

Biggs also wrote in his instructions to jurors that another Medford police officer, whom he said the state did not make available to testify, “would have had relevant and important testimony in this matter.” He asked jurors to infer that the officer’s testimony “would have been favorable to the (d)efense if he had been available.”

But the appeals court ruled that Bigg’s proposed jury instructions “constitutes an impermissible comment on the evidence.”

Now that the appeals court has ruled, Biggs can file a Petition for Review at the Oregon Supreme Court.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from the Oregon Department of Justice.