State v. Dugan

Defendant appeals the trial court’s judgment convicting him of two counts of sexual abuse in the first degree, ORS 163.427. On appeal, defendant raises three sentencing-related assignments of error. In his first assignment, he asserts that the trial court erred by failing to merge the guilty verdicts on the two counts. As explained below, we conclude that merger was required under ORS 161.067(3), which provides for merger of guilty verdicts for crimes that are committed in a single criminal episode, violate only one statutory provision, involve only one victim, and are not separated by a…