State v. Golden

A trial court error is "plain" if "(1) the error is one of law, (2) the error is obvious, not reasonably in dispute, and (3) the error appears on the face of the record, so that we need not go outside the record to identify the error or choose between competing inferences, and the facts constituting the error are irrefutable." State v. Zolotoff, 275 Or App 384, 397, 365 P3d 131 (2015).

Defendant appealed the trial court's entry of a second amended judgment on an earlier sentence.  Defendant assigned error to the second amended judgment because it interpreted a 30-month sentence as running consecutive to his other sentences without the judgment expressly stating that the sentences run consecutively.  Defendant argued that the judgment "impermissibly increased the sentence that the trial court had previously imposed by ordering the sentence on Count 2 to run consecutively to the sentence of Count 1," rather than running concurrently.  The State argued that the trial court did not err by entering the second judgment and urged the Court to not reverse on a plain-error basis. A trial court error is "plain" if "(1) the error is one of law, (2) the error is obvious, not reasonably in dispute, and (3) the error appears on the face of the record, so that we need not go outside the record to identify the error or choose between competing inferences, and the facts constituting the error are irrefutable." State v. Zolotoff, 275 Or App 384, 397, 365 P3d 131 (2015).  The Court held that the trial court plainly erred by imposing an erroneous sentence that required Defendant to serve an additional 30 months in prison when compared with the original sentence. Reversed and remanded with instructions to reinstate the first amended judgment entered on November 17, 2015.