A Hillsboro man’s sentence of life in prison without parole after his sixth conviction for public indecency — the latest for masturbating while on a MAX train in Washington County — did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, a federal appellate court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Oregon U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken’s decision that Terry E. Iversen’s sentence was not grossly disproportionate to his offense.

Iversen was prosecuted in Washington County Circuit Court and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2017 after he pleaded guilty to his sixth conviction for public indecency. He also had prior convictions for third-degree rape of a 15-year-old girl and first-degree sodomy of a 12-year-old girl.

At the time of his 2017 sentencing, he admitted to three factors that led to his sentencing enhancement: his history showed “persistent” involvement in a similar crime; prior sanctions had not deterred him from committing new crimes; and he was on supervision for a prior conviction at the time of his latest public masturbation offense.

Under Oregon state law, Iversen’s sixth public indecency conviction, together with his prior felony convictions for rape and sodomy, triggered a presumptive life without parole sentence under an Oregon sex offender recidivism statute, the appellate court found.

Iversen’s lawyers, Oregon Chief Deputy Federal Public Defender Stephen R. Sady and Assistant Federal Public Defender Tihanne K. Mar-Shall argued that people convicted of much more serious crimes, including murder, receive substantially lower sentences in Oregon.

“Life without parole for the relatively minor conduct underlying the offense of conviction — showing his penis in public — does not merit being condemned to die in prison, regardless of prior convictions,” they wrote in court briefs.

But the federal appellate court found that the state court had considered Iversen’s multiple felony convictions, acknowledged his mental health record and failure to reform, recognized that the state’s public safety interest in “incapacitating and deterring” repeat felons was a legitimate goal and picked a sentence that adhered to Oregon’s sex offender recidivism law.