A Washington man who was charged with drunken driving while on an Oregon road trip offered a highly unusual defense during trial: He only got behind the wheel to flee from an angry, gun-toting Oregonian who wanted the man off his rural property.
Michael Robert Ray Jackson, then 60, testified he had parked his van on a pullout by the side of a Grant County road, had a few beers because he’d planned to camp there for the night and then abruptly left when confronted by the armed man who lived there and had used expletives to demand that he leave. In other words, Jackson’s defense attorney argued, Jackson was faced with a nearly impossible dilemma: stay and face the wrath of the man or drive off.
Grant County Circuit Judge Robert Raschio, however, brushed aside that “choice of evils” defense by declining to instruct jurors during a December 2023 trial that it was a legitimate defense that they could consider. And jurors ended up finding Jackson guilty.
The Oregon Court of Appeals, however, overturned Jackson’s conviction this week by ruling the judge erred.