Case Title: State v. Castilleja

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: oregon

Court: Oregon Supreme Court

Date: 2008-12-18T00:00:00Z

Document:
FILED: December 18, 2008
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
STATE
OF OREGON,
Petitioner on Review,
v.
AMBER SERENITY CASTILLEJA,
Respondent on Review.
STATE OF OREGON,
Petitioner on Review,
v.
MICHAEL SANTOS CASTILLEJA,
Respondent on Review.
(CC CR030092, CR030093; CA A127255
(Control),
A127256; SC S055472)
En Banc
On respondent
on review Michael Santos Castilleja's petition for reconsideration filed
October 2, 2008; considered and under advisement November 19, 2008.*
Leland R.
Berger, Portland, filed the petition for respondent on review Michael Santos
Castilleja.
No
appearance on behalf of petitioner on review State of Oregon or respondent on
review Amber Serenity Castilleja.
GILLETTE,
J.
The petition
for reconsideration is allowed.  Former opinion is adhered to.
*345 Or 255, 192 P3d 1283 (2008).
GILLETTE, J.
In State v. Castilleja, 345 Or
255, 192 P3d 1283 (2008), this court held that the Court of Appeals erred in
affirming a trial court ruling that suppressed evidence of drug activity of
defendants Michael and Amber Castilleja, who are husband and wife.  The trial
court had entered its order suppressing evidence on the ground that a police
officer's affidavit that led to issuance of a search warrant for defendants' home
did not supply probable cause to support the search.  In particular, as
relevant here, this court held that the Court of Appeals erred in deferring to
the trial court's decision to discount statements made to police officers by Loewen,
who is Amber Castilleja's mother and Michael Castilleja's mother-in-law, during
an initial, warrantless search of defendants' home.  This court held that
Loewen's statements to the police should not have been discounted and, when
those statements were given their due weight, it was clear that probable cause
supported the warrant.  Id. at 270-71.
Petitioner Michael Castilleja ("Michael")
seeks reconsideration of this court's decision.  He asserts that, in the trial
court hearing on the defendants' motion to suppress, both defendants asked the
trial court to find that an initial, warrantless entry by the police into their
house was unlawful and, therefore, that all the evidence obtained as a
result of that entry into their house should be suppressed.  The trial court
agreed that the initial entry by the police into the house was unlawful, and
the state did not challenge that ruling.  Then, because information that the
police obtained in that initial search was used in a police officer's affidavit
to support a subsequent search warrant, both defendants asked the trial court
to excise the improperly obtained information from the affidavit and determine
if the affidavit still provided probable cause to justify issuing the warrant.
The trial court agreed to excise from
the affidavit all information concerning what the officers saw when they first searched
the house.  Among other things, however, defendants also asked the trial court
to excise all the statements that Loewen made to the officers after she went inside
the house with them.  Defendants argued that the officers' conversation with
Loewen would not have taken place but for the unlawful entry.  Specifically,
defendants argued that, when Loewen was showing the officers around the house,
she was commenting on what she knew about the defendants' drug-related conduct,
such as the fact that both defendants had had permits for possession of medical
marijuana (although she believed that Michael's permit had lapsed), that
defendants possessed marijuana in excess of their permit limits, and that
defendants had two pounds of marijuana in plastic bags in a closet.  That
conversation, defendants argued, would not have happened if not for the
unlawful entry.  The trial court rejected that argument, stating that nothing
suggested that the conversation that Loewen had had with the officers inside
the house was anything more than a continuation of the conversation that she
had already begun outside the house.  Accordingly, the trial court declined to
excise Loewen's statements to the police officers from the affidavit.
However, when the trial court
reviewed the parts of the affidavit remaining after the excisions to determine
if the affidavit provided probable cause to support the warrant, the trial
court discounted Loewen's statements in their entirety, because Loewen was
wrong about the validity of Michael's medical marijuana permit and because the
court believed that Loewen was not neutral in her motives in giving the police
information.  Having discounted Loewen's statements for those reasons, the
trial court concluded that the affidavit did not provide probable cause to
issue the warrant.  It therefore suppressed the evidence seized as result of
the warrant.
The state appealed that ruling to the
Court of Appeals.  Michael(1)
cross-appealed, arguing that the trial court erred when it failed to excise
from the search warrant affidavit the statements Loewen made to the officers
inside the house.  The Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling of the trial court
suppressing the evidence seized as a result of the warrant, State v.
Castilleja, 215 Or App 235, 168 P3d 1177 (2007), and therefore did not need
to and did not address Michael's cross-appeal.  Id. at 253-54.
We allowed the state's petition for
review of the Court of Appeals' decision.  Michael filed a merits brief
answering the state's arguments on review, in which he stated, in a footnote,
that he did not intend to abandon his argument made on cross-appeal in the
Court of Appeals.
As noted, this court reversed the
decision of the Court of Appeals.  We concluded that the Court of Appeals erred
in deferring to the trial court's determinations regarding the truth of the
information in the affidavit and that, when that information, including
Loewen's statements, was properly considered, the affidavit more than amply
provided probable cause justifying the search warrant.  State v. Castilleja,
345 Or at 270-71.
Defendant now seeks reconsideration,
contending that this court's decision revived his argument that the trial court
erred in failing to excise Loewen's statements from the affidavit, because
those statements were derived from the illegal entry into the Castilleja home. 
Because this court did not address that argument in its opinion, he asks that
we do so now.  We agree with defendant that our former opinion overlooked the
point that he raises.  We therefore allow reconsideration to address it.
Turning to the merits of his
argument, Michael asserts that all evidence derived from an illegal search must
be suppressed.  He argues that, in this case, that includes information that
the police obtained from Loewen about his drug activities, because the police
officers were exploiting the illegal entry into his home when they obtained Loewen's
statements.  He therefore argues that it was incumbent on the state to prove
either that Loewen's statements inevitably would have been obtained through
lawful means, that the police obtained the evidence independently of the
earlier violation of his rights, or that the earlier violations of his rights
had such a tenuous connection to the disputed evidence that the unlawful police
conduct cannot properly be viewed as the source of that evidence.  See State v. Johnson, 335 Or 511, 520-21, 73 P3d 282 (2003) (explaining that
approach); State v. Hall, 339 Or 7, 24-25, 115 P3d 908 (2005) (same).  
Here, the initial illegality is
undisputed.  During much of their conversation with Loewen, the police were
unlawfully in defendants' home.  However, it does not appear on this record
that where Loewen was had anything to do with either the fact of or the content
of Loewen's statements to the police:  Whether the police had been invited into
the house or not, Loewen was going to say what she said.  At least, that was
the trial court's view of the evidence.  The evidence permits that inference,
and this court ordinarily accepts such findings as binding.  See Ball
v. Gladden, 250 Or 485, 487, 443 P2d 621 (1968) (explaining that practice). 
We see nothing to justify our departing from that practice here.  Michael's
argument thus is not well taken, and our former opinion should be adhered to.
The petition for reconsideration is allowed. 
Former opinion is adhered to.
1. Amber
Castilleja, who was represented by different counsel, did not cross-appeal.