Lem Woon v. Oregon

Background

Lem Woon, the accused, was charged in Portland with murder after a sworn complaint and was later prosecuted when the district attorney filed a formal written information in the state circuit court. At the time, Oregon law (the 1899 “Information Law”) allowed district attorneys to begin criminal cases by filing such an information without a grand jury indictment or any required preliminary examination. Woon was tried, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death; the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and denied rehearing.

Reasoning

The central question was whether Oregon’s practice of letting a district attorney start a criminal prosecution by filing an information violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. The United States Supreme Court reviewed earlier decisions and concluded that the due process clause does not require states to use a grand jury or to adopt the federal grand-jury procedure. Citing prior precedents that had upheld similar state procedures, the Court explained that an information filed by a district attorney was not inconsistent with due process and therefore did not make Woon’s trial unlawful. The Court affirmed the state court’s judgment.

Real world impact

The decision leaves in place Oregon’s statutory system allowing prosecutions by information rather than grand-jury indictments and confirms that convictions obtained under that system can be enforced. The Court also treated the later state constitutional amendment limiting charges by information as a local-law question that did not invalidate this prosecution. This ruling confirms that states may choose charging procedures other than a grand jury without violating the federal due process clause.