Title: State v. Ayles

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

FILED: August 12, 2010
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Petitioner on Review,
v.
ERIN ALBERT AYLES,
Respondent on Review.
(CC 051228; CA A132029; SC S056577)
En Banc
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted May 13, 2009.
Janet A. Metcalf,
Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief for
petitioner on review.  With her on the brief were John R. Kroger, Attorney General,
and Rolf C. Moan, Acting Solicitor General.
David Ferry, Deputy
Public Defender, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on
review.  With him on the brief was Peter Gartlan, Chief Defender, Office of
Public Defense Services.
GILLETTE, J.
The decision of the
Court of Appeals is affirmed.  The judgment of the circuit court is reversed,
and the case is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
Durham, J., concurred and filed an opinion.
Kistler, J., dissented and filed an opinion, in which Balmer and Linder, JJ., joined.
*Appeal from the Clatsop County Circuit Court, Henry R. Dickerson, Jr., Senior Judge. 220 Or App
606, 188 P3d 378 (2008).
GILLETTE, J.
In this criminal case, a police
officer unlawfully detained defendant, a passenger in a car that the officer
lawfully had stopped for a traffic violation, and then sought and obtained
defendant's consent to search his person.  The case requires us to consider
whether defendant established a minimal factual link between the illegal
detention and his consent to a search of his person during that illegal
detention.  If he did establish the required link, then the burden shifted to
the state to demonstrate that contraband seized during that search was not
obtained as a result of an exploitation of the illegal detention.  The case
presents a further question:  Must evidence found and incriminating statements
made after defendant was arrested and advised of his rights under Miranda v.
Arizona, 384 US 436, 86 S Ct 1602, 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966), be suppressed
because they also were the product of the preceding illegal detention?  We hold
that defendant has shown the required minimal factual connection between the illegal
detention and his consent.  We also hold that the later administration of Miranda
warnings did not sufficiently attenuate the taint of the illegal detention to
permit this court to conclude that the defendant's subsequent incriminating
statements, and the evidence found as a result of those statements, were not
the product of the prior illegality.  We therefore affirm the decision of the
Court of Appeals, State v. Ayles, 220 Or App 606, 188 P3d 378 (2008), to
that effect.
The following facts are undisputed. 
On June 7, 2005, at 9:47 a.m., state police trooper Hunt observed a car driving
67 miles per hour in 55 miles-per-hour zone on Highway 26.  He also noticed
that the car did not have a front license plate.  Hunt stopped the car for the
two violations.  The stop occurred some 15 miles east of Seaside, Oregon, and
about two miles from the nearest gas station-convenience store.  The area was
wooded and there were no residences nearby.  Hunt approached the driver and
noticed that she appeared to be under the influence of methamphetamine. 
Defendant was sitting in the front passenger seat.  Three other people were
sitting in the back seat of the car.  
Hunt explained to the driver why he
had stopped the car.  When Hunt then asked the driver if there was any
methamphetamine in the car, defendant interrupted, asking the trooper how to
rectify the license plate situation so that they could avoid being stopped
again.  Hunt answered defendant's question.  Although defendant had not done
anything to cause Hunt to believe that defendant had committed a crime, Hunt
found it suspicious that defendant had spoken up while Hunt was questioning the
driver about methamphetamine.  Hunt's suspicions also were aroused by
defendant's demeanor, which Hunt described as "over friendly."
Hunt asked defendant for his
identification.  Defendant handed Hunt a Department of Veterans' Affairs
identification card.  Hunt took it and put it in his patrol car.  He then had
the driver get out of the car and told her that he suspected that she was under
the influence of methamphetamine.  He patted her down, did not find weapons or
contraband, and told her to sit on the rear bumper of her car.  He returned to
the patrol car and ran a computer check on defendant and the driver.  That
check did not reveal anything of interest.  Nonetheless, Hunt continued to
retain defendant's identification.  
Hunt returned to the car and asked
defendant to step out.  Defendant did so.  Hunt asked defendant if he had any
weapons, and defendant replied that he did not.  Hunt then asked defendant for
consent to pat him down, which defendant gave.  Hunt had defendant interlace
his fingers and put them to the back of his neck, and then Hunt put one hand on
defendant's hands in preparation for the patdown.  From his vantage point at
that moment, Hunt could see down into defendant's right breast pocket, where he
observed an unlabeled prescription pill bottle that contained something wrapped
in plastic.  From Hunt's training and experience, he believed that the pill
bottle contained illegal drugs.  He took the bottle out of defendant's pocket
and asked defendant, "Is that the meth?"  Defendant admitted that it
was.  Hunt arrested defendant, handcuffed him, advised defendant of his Miranda
rights, searched him more thoroughly, and placed him in the back seat of
the patrol car.  
Hunt then conducted field sobriety
tests on the driver and arrested her for driving under the influence of
intoxicants.  He asked the three remaining passengers to step out of the car. 
As they were getting out, one of the passengers told Hunt that there was a blue
backpack in the car that belonged to defendant.  Hunt then went back to the
patrol car and asked defendant to step out again.  He asked defendant if the
backpack was his, and defendant admitted that it was.  Hunt then asked
defendant if there was any additional methamphetamine in the backpack;
defendant replied that there was and described in detail what Hunt would find
in the backpack.  Hunt searched the backpack and found the methamphetamine as
defendant described, as well as other drug paraphernalia.  
Defendant was charged with possession
and manufacture/delivery of methamphetamine.  Before trial, he moved to
suppress all of his statements and the evidence obtained after Hunt took his
identification.  He argued that he was seized in violation of Article I,
section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, when Hunt took and retained his
identification, because Hunt had no reasonable suspicion at that time that
defendant either had committed a crime or posed a threat to Hunt's safety.  The
trial court denied the motion.  The court ruled that defendant was not
illegally seized when Hunt took defendant's identification.  In light of that
ruling, the trial court concluded that defendant's consent to search his person
was voluntary, his subsequent arrest was lawful, and the statements that he
made after receiving Miranda warnings also were voluntary.(1) 
The trial court then conducted a stipulated facts trial and convicted defendant
of the possession offense. 
Defendant appealed his conviction to
the Court of Appeals, assigning error to the trial court's denial of his motion
to suppress.  In the Court of Appeals, the state conceded that the taking and
retaining of defendant's identification amounted to an unlawful seizure under
Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.  The Court of Appeals
accepted that concession as well founded and held that the trial court erred in
ruling to the contrary.  Ayles, 220 Or App at 611.  
The court then turned to the state's
arguments that defendant's consent to search was not the result of an
exploitation of the unlawful seizure, and that the giving of Miranda warnings
attenuated the taint of the preceding unlawful police conduct.  Id. The
court quoted a statement from this court's opinion in State v. Hall, 339
Or 7, 115 P3d 908 (2005), explaining that a defendant who seeks suppression of
evidence obtained from a consensual search on the ground that the search was
the product of illegal police conduct bears an initial burden to show a "'minimal
factual nexus between the unlawful police conduct and the defendant's consent.'" 
Ayles, 220 Or App at 611-12 (quoting Hall, 339 Or at 34-35). 
Under Hall, if the defendant has met that burden, then the burden shifts
to the state to prove "that the defendant's consent was independent of, or
only tenuously related to, the unlawful police conduct."  Hall, 339
Or at 35.  The state argued that defendant had failed to make the initial
showing required of him in this case.  The Court of Appeals rejected that
argument, holding that there was a minimal factual nexus between the illegal
taking and retaining of defendant's identification and the ultimate discovery
of contraband.  The court then went on to hold that the state had failed to
"demonstrate[ ] the existence of any intervening circumstances or other
factors that might mitigate the effect of the illegal detention of
defendant."  Ayles, 220 Or App at 613.  Finally, the
Court of Appeals concluded that the evidence found in defendant's backpack
after he had been handcuffed, arrested, and advised of his rights under Miranda
also should have been suppressed because, in this case, the Miranda
warnings were not a sufficient intervening circumstance to purge the taint of
the previous illegal police conduct.  Id. at 616.  Accordingly,
the Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of the trial court.  
The state seeks review of that
decision.  The state contends that the Court of Appeals erroneously concluded
that there was a minimal factual nexus between defendant's consent to search
and the prior illegal police conduct simply because the illegal police conduct
preceded the giving of consent and the making of statements.  The state asserts
that defendant was detained not just as a legal matter, by the taking and
retaining of his identification, but also as a factual matter, by the lawful
stop, in a remote location, of the car in which he was riding.  According to
the state, the factual considerations trump the legal ones:  Because, as a
practical matter, defendant could not have left the scene, Hunt's request for
consent to search defendant was causally unrelated to the unlawful police
conduct.  
Before we begin our analysis of the
legal issues presented in this case, we pause to observe how limited the state,
as petitioner here, has chosen to make them.  First, the state has not asked
this court to reconsider Hall.  Second, the state does not argue that
the Court of Appeals was wrong to conclude that the state had not met its
burden to show that the consent would have occurred independent of the
illegality or that the connection between the unlawful stop and the consent was
attenuated.  Rather, as the state has presented the case to this court, the
only issues are whether (1) defendant met his initial burden to show a minimal
factual nexus between the unlawful police conduct and his consent to search,
and whether (2) the giving of Miranda warnings was a sufficient
intervening circumstance, standing alone, to mitigate the taint of the
preceding unlawful police conduct on defendant's later statements about the
evidence in the backpack.  We turn to those issues.  
As the state has acknowledged,
defendant was seized in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution,
when Hunt took and retained defendant's identification without reasonable
suspicion of criminal activity.  Defendant consented to the search of his
person during that illegal seizure.(2) 
That consent was voluntary, i.e., there is no evidence in the record
that defendant's free will was overcome by the illegal police conduct.  See Hall,
339 Or at 20-21 (suggesting distinction between two ways in which violation of
defendant's rights under Article I, section 9, may affect validity of
defendant's consent to search -- situations in which police conduct renders
defendant's consent involuntary, and situations where consent is voluntary,
that is, the illegal police conduct does not rise to level of overcoming
defendant's free will, but nevertheless affects defendant's decision to
consent).  That is, even when consent is voluntary as a matter of
"free will," evidence obtained as a result of the ensuing search is
not admissible unless the state also can "prove that the consent was independent
of, or only tenuously related to, any preceding violation of the defendant's
rights under Article I, section 9."  Hall, 339 Or at 27. 
As noted above, in Hall, the
court described a paradigm for analyzing the effect of an illegal detention on
the admissibility of evidence obtained from a subsequent "consensual"
search:  
"After a defendant shows a minimal factual nexus
between unlawful police conduct and the defendant's consent, then the state has
the burden to prove that the defendant's consent was independent of, or only
tenuously related to, the unlawful police conduct.  Deciding whether the state
has satisfied that burden requires a fact-specific inquiry into the totality of
the circumstances to determine the nature of the causal connection between the
unlawful police conduct and the defendant's consent.  * * * Although
determining the existence of such a causal connection requires examination of
the specific facts at issue in a particular case, we view several
considerations to be relevant to that determination, including (1) the temporal
proximity between the unlawful police conduct and the defendant's consent, (2)
the existence of any intervening circumstances, and (3) the presence of any
circumstances -- such as, for example, a police officer informing the defendant
of the right to refuse consent -- that mitigated the effect of the unlawful
police conduct."
Id. at 34-35.  And, as noted above, this case requires
us only to examine what is required for the defendant to establish the "minimal
factual nexus" that is mentioned in the first sentence of the foregoing
paragraph.(3)
The state argues that, in this case,
defendant has not proved that there was any factual nexus, even a
minimal one, "between the illegal stop -- the taking and retaining of
defendant's identification -- and the trooper's request for consent to pat down
defendant," because (1) defendant was a passenger in a car that was
lawfully stopped in a remote location when the officer asked defendant for that
consent, and (2) according to the state, there was evidence in the record that
Hunt would have asked defendant for consent to search him even if Hunt had not
asked defendant for identification.  And, the state argues, "if the only
preceding illegality -- the taking and retaining of defendant's identification
-- was not causally related to the trooper's request for defendant's consent to
a patdown, then there was no taint to purge."  As the state stresses, "'[b]ut
for' causation may require only a 'minimal factual nexus,' Hall, 339 Or
at 25, but it is not devoid of all meaning and it is not the equivalent of post
hoc ergo propter hoc[.]"  
There are two problems with the
state's argument.  First, it misunderstands the Hall analysis.  Second,
it misunderstands the undisputed facts of the encounter.  With respect to the
first point, Hall requires the defendant to establish a "minimal
factual nexus between unlawful police conduct and the defendant's consent,"
not the police officer's request for consent.  That is, the focus of the
factual nexus determination is not on whether Hunt's decision to ask
defendant for consent was caused by his taking of defendant's identification;
rather, it is on whether defendant would have consented to the search that
uncovered the evidence if the officer had not unlawfully seized him.  The second
problem with the state's theory lies in its assertion that the only factual
nexus that defendant has shown is that the unlawful police conduct preceded
his consent.  As noted, however, the illegal seizure did not simply precede
the consent -- it was ongoing at the time defendant gave his consent to
the search; therefore, the two events were not just in close "temporal
proximity," Hall, 339 Or at 35, but were occurring simultaneously. 

When we apply the law, properly
understood, to the facts of the case, we conclude that defendant met his burden
to establish a minimal factual nexus between the illegal police conduct and his
consent to search.  During defendant's unlawful seizure, defendant was not free
to leave.  The unlawful police conduct thus made defendant available to Hunt for
questioning.  Although the state asserts that, as a practical matter, defendant
would have remained at the scene regardless of the illegal seizure (because his
driver had been lawfully stopped and the location of the stop was somewhat
remote), the state has pointed to no evidence in the record that defendant
would not have left had he not been illegally detained.  Indeed, the state's only
argument on that point is that the nearest convenience store was about two
miles away and the stop of the driver occurred 15 miles east of Seaside.  Those
facts alone do not establish that it would have been impossible, or even
extremely difficult, for defendant to leave the scene.  But our point is an
even more fundamental one:  Whether or not defendant would have asserted his
personal liberty and left the scene once his identification was returned to
him, we cannot conclude that the illegal seizure of defendant, while it was
ongoing, had no factual nexus to defendant's decision to consent.  A defendant
gains nothing from having a constitutional right not to be seized if the police
can seize him and -- by definition -- use the circumstance of that seizure as a
guarantee of an opportunity to ask him to further surrender his liberty.  There
was a minimal factual nexus between defendant's illegal seizure and his
decision to consent.
This court's recent decision in State
v. Thompkin, 341 Or 368, 143 P3d 530 (2006), provides strong support for
that conclusion.  In Thompkin, a police officer requested and retained
the defendant's identification during a lawful stop of the car in which defendant
was a passenger.  At that time, the officer did not have either a reasonable
suspicion of criminal activity on the defendant's part or a concern for the
officer's own safety.  While the defendant was seized, an officer asked the
defendant if she had any drugs or weapons on her person.  In response, the
defendant handed the officer a crack pipe.  The officer then asked the
defendant if she would consent to a search of her person.  Defendant responded
by getting out of the car and complying with the request to search.  The
ensuing search revealed a rock of crack cocaine.
This court held that the defendant
had been unlawfully seized for purposes of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon
Constitution, when the officer took and retained her identification without
either reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or of a threat to his safety. 
Thompkin, 341 Or at 379.  It then turned to the question whether
suppression of the evidence obtained during that illegal seizure was required. 
The court began by setting out the Hall analysis to be used in
situations such as these, then emphasized that,
"[o]nce a defendant demonstrates a minimal factual
nexus between prior, unlawful police conduct and the evidence sought to be
suppressed, deciding whether the state has carried its burden requires a
fact-specific inquiry into the totality of the circumstances."  
Id. at 380.  The court acknowledged that, in Hall and
the cases that Hall relied on, the defendants consented to be searched
during an unlawful seizure, whereas in Thompkin, the defendant directly surrendered
incriminating evidence in response to police questioning during an unlawful
seizure -- but the court held that those slight factual differences were of no
constitutional moment.  Thus, the court held, because of the close temporal
proximity between the illegal seizure of the defendant and her surrender of the
crack pipe, as well as the absence of any intervening circumstances attenuating
the effects of the unlawful police conduct, "the state failed to prove
that [the] defendant's decision to surrender incriminating evidence, even if
voluntary, was not the product of the preceding violation of her rights under
Article I, section 9."  Id. at 381.  It followed, the court held, that
the evidence obtained during the unlawful seizure had to be suppressed.  Id.

The state points out that the court
in Thompkin did not expressly find that the defendant there had
established a "minimal factual nexus" between the unlawful police
conduct and her surrender of incriminating evidence in response to police
questioning; rather, the court appeared to have assumed such a connection
without considering the matter.  And, the state suggests, had the court
properly considered the question, it would have concluded that, as here, there
was no causal connection between the unlawful seizure and the defendant's
subsequent incriminating action.  
We disagree.  It is true that, in certain
of this court's cases, including Thompkin and even Hall itself, the
court has not expressly found the existence of a minimal factual connection
between illegal police conduct and a defendant's decision to consent.  Rather,
the court in those cases appears to have assumed without discussion that the
defendant had met that initial burden by establishing that the defendant had
consented to a search during an illegal seizure.  The court merely stated
the requirement of a minimal factual nexus and then proceeded immediately to an
examination of whether the state had met its burden to prove that the
connection was too tenuous to require suppression.  
On the other hand, the state has
cited no case, and our research discloses none, in which a court has found the absence
of a minimal factual nexus between an unlawful seizure that is ongoing and a
defendant's decision to consent to an officer's request to search.  We think
that the reason both that the court sometimes assumes without discussion that a
defendant has shown the required nexus when consent occurs during an ongoing seizure
and that no case exists holding that there is no minimum connection in such circumstances
is that the existence of a minimal factual nexus is obvious in cases in which the
defendant consents to a search (or takes other incriminating action) during
an illegal seizure.  That conclusion is reflected in this court's recent
decision in State v. Rodgers/Kirkeby, 347 Or 610, 227 P3d 695 (2010). 
In that case, without any discussion or explanation, this court expressly
concluded that the defendants in that case "ha[d] shown the required
nexus" by showing that they consented to be searched during a period of
unlawful detention.  Id. at 629-30.
To summarize, then, we agree with the
state that the "minimal factual nexus" standard is a true standard,
not a resort to the logical fallacy, "post hoc ergo propter hoc." 
However, a defendant establishes a more substantial connection than merely one
thing occurring after another when that defendant establishes that he or she consented
to a search during an unlawful detention.  In such a circumstance, the
fact that the defendant is not legally free to leave because of the illegal
police activity cannot be discounted in motivating the defendant's consent and,
therefore, such illegal police conduct normally will be at least minimally
connected to the defendant's decision to consent.(4)
 We hold that this is such a "normal" case -- i.e., defendant in
this case met his initial burden, thereby shifting the burden to the state to
prove that the evidence obtained did not derive from exploitation of the
unlawful police conduct.  As noted, the posture of this case makes that
remaining inquiry a narrow one.  The state has not argued that it did or could
meet its burden to prove that defendant's consent to search was independent of,
or only tenuously related to, Hunt's unlawful seizure of defendant in violation
of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.  Therefore, as the Court
of Appeals correctly concluded, the trial court should have suppressed the
evidence found in the ensuing search -- viz., the prescription pill
bottle containing methamphetamine.
We turn to the second part of the
state's argument -- that, after defendant was given Miranda warnings,
the incriminating statements that he made, and the evidence eventually found in
his backpack, were admissible notwithstanding the prior illegality.  The state
asserts:
"In the state's view, the giving of Miranda warnings
always suffices to break the chain between a prior illegality and post-Miranda
admissions or statements.  Even if that is not true, at a minimum the giving of
the warnings is an extremely strong indicator that post-Miranda
statements were not obtained through exploitation of the prior
illegality."
The state also argues that, in holding that the Miranda
warnings did not attenuate the taint of the preceding illegality, the Court of
Appeals improperly minimized the effect of those warnings in this case.  In
fact, according to the state, the Court of Appeals went so far as to suggest
that the giving of Miranda warnings itself has a coercive effect that
negates the voluntariness of the subsequent statements, when the court stated that
the warnings 
"'could perpetuate the person's perception that his or
her liberty continued to be restrained as the officer pursued a criminal
investigation by seeking consent to a search.'"
Ayles, 220 Or App at 614 (quoting State v. La France, 219 Or App 548, 557, 184 P3d 1169 (2008)).  On the contrary, the
state notes, this court stated in Thompkin that Miranda warnings
could, in fact, be an intervening circumstance adequate to break the causal chain
between the defendant's statements and the prior illegality.  See Thompkin,
341 Or 380 (so stating).  The state then concludes that where (as it
characterizes the situation), "the prior illegality amounted only to
taking and retaining defendant's identification[,] * * * the [later] giving of Miranda
warnings, followed by defendant's admission that more methamphetamine was in
his backpack, served to dissipate the taint of the illegal proceeding."  
We agree with the state that the
Court of Appeals' statement creates an incorrect impression:  The giving of the
warnings, which is intended to assure voluntariness, cannot be used in the way
that the Court of Appeals used it to prove a contrary theory.  To be sure, it
is clear from context that the Court of Appeals was not talking specifically about
coercion or the voluntariness of post-Miranda statements at all. 
Rather, the court merely made the observation that, in the "totality of
the circumstances" surrounding a defendant's consent to search during an
ongoing unlawful seizure, the Miranda warnings themselves could have an
effect on a defendant's feeling that his liberty was being restrained and,
therefore, on his consequent decision to consent.  We think, however, that the
court's statement is too prone to misinterpretation, and therefore should not
be used in this way again.
We return to the central issue.  As
with defendant's consent to search, defendant concedes that the statements that
he made in response to Hunt's questions after Hunt administered the Miranda warnings
were voluntary -- that is, they were not actually coerced by police conduct
that overcame his free will.  Nonetheless, like the evidence found after
defendant's consent to search, those statements, and the methamphetamine and
related paraphernalia found as a result of those statements, are inadmissible
unless the state can demonstrate that the statements and evidence did not
derive from the preceding illegal seizure of defendant's person.(5) 
Again, Hall provides the paradigm for our analysis of whether the state
has met that burden.  For convenience, we repeat that paradigm here:  
"Deciding whether the state has satisfied that burden
requires a fact-specific inquiry into the totality of the circumstances to
determine the nature of the causal connection between the unlawful police
conduct and the defendant's consent.  * * * Although determining the existence
of such a causal connection requires examination of the specific facts at issue
in a particular case, we view several considerations to be relevant to that
determination, including (1) the temporal proximity between the unlawful police
conduct and the defendant's consent, (2) the existence of any intervening
circumstances, and (3) the presence of any circumstances -- such as, for
example, a police officer informing the defendant of the right to refuse
consent -- that mitigated the effect of the unlawful police conduct."
339 Or at 35.  As noted, the state argues that the giving of Miranda
warnings was an "intervening circumstance" sufficient to
attenuate any taint from Hunt's unlawful conduct in taking and retaining
defendant's identification.  
Hall requires us to conduct a
"fact-specific inquiry into the totality of the circumstances to determine
the nature of the causal connection between the unlawful police conduct"
and the statements and evidence that defendant asks be suppressed.  In this
case, that totality of the circumstances includes the facts that Hunt gave defendant
the Miranda warnings after Hunt arrested defendant for possessing the
prescription pill bottle containing methamphetamine.  That arrest was unlawful
because it was based on evidence found in an unlawful search of defendant's
person.  Moreover, after defendant's arrest, and at the time that Hunt asked defendant
about the backpack, defendant was handcuffed and in custody in the back of a
patrol car.  Hunt's questions pertained to defendant's possession of additional
quantities of the same drug that he had already been arrested for possessing,
and, at the time of the questioning, Hunt was holding the backpack that
contained those drugs.   Those facts all suggest that the initial unlawful
police conduct -- the unconstitutional seizure of defendant's person --
affected defendant's actions from his initial consent to be searched through the
time that he responded to Hunt's questions about the backpack.  That is, the
"temporal proximity" factor plainly weighs in defendant's favor.  
The question then is whether, notwithstanding
those ongoing effects of the prior illegality, the state has met its burden to
show that the Miranda warnings alone (the state has pointed to nothing
else) were sufficient to ensure that the unlawful police conduct did not
affect, or had only a tenuous connection to, defendant's responses to Hunt's
questions or the later discovery of the methamphetamine in the backpack.  This
court considered a very similar question in State v. Olson, 287 Or 157,
598 P2d 670 (1979).  In that case, the police had probable cause to arrest
defendant for burglary.  They went to his house late in the evening and knocked
and announced their presence.  After receiving no response, the officers opened
the defendant's door, entered his house, and found the defendant in bed with
his girlfriend.  They then searched the house without a warrant and, finding
some items taken in the burglary, arrested the defendant and advised him of his
Miranda rights.  The defendant subsequently confessed.  In deciding that
the defendant's statements must be suppressed, the court stated,  
"The burden is also upon the state to prove that
despite the illegal entry, arrest and search, the incriminating statements and
ultimate confession were acts of defendant's free will and that the primary
taint of illegality was thus purged.  It can be contended that the receiving of
the Miranda warning by defendant was such an intervening circumstance
indicating voluntariness.  In Brown v. Illinois, 422 US 590, 602, 95 S
Ct 2254, 45 L Ed 2d 416 (1975), as here, incriminating statements were made
almost immediately upon defendant's arrest followed shortly by a more detailed
statement of the crime.  There the Court suppressed the statements, which it
found to be the product of an invalid arrest and search, even though given
after a Miranda warning.  Such a warning is evidence which may be
considered in deciding whether a statement or a confession was unaffected by an
illegal arrest and search.  That decision is dependent upon all the
circumstances, and we believe that in the present case the warning is inadequate
to relieve the obvious taint resulting from breaking in, arresting defendant,
and searching the premises."  
Olson, 287 Or at 166.  
We think that here, as in Olson,
the Miranda warning is "inadequate to relieve the obvious
taint" of the unlawful police conduct.  Given that defendant's illegal
seizure led to an illegal search of defendant's person that revealed
defendant's possession of a controlled substance and that that discovery, in
turn, led to defendant's arrest (which triggered the giving of the Miranda warnings),
it is impossible to conclude that the Miranda warnings alone were adequate
to break the causal chain between the illegal police conduct and the subsequent
incriminating statements and discovery of evidence.  The Court of Appeals
correctly held that the trial court should have suppressed defendant's
statements in response to Hunt's questions along with the evidence found in
defendant's backpack.  
The decision of the Court of Appeals
is affirmed.  The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.  
DURHAM, J., concurring.
I join the majority's answer to the
narrow issues that it decides in this case.  However, I do not join much of the
reasoning that the majority uses to arrive at its answer, and I write
separately to explain the basis for this concurrence.
This case concerns the admissibility
of two categories of evidence:  (1) evidence obtained from a consent search of
defendant's person, and (2) statements that defendant made to the police after
they advised defendant of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US
436, 86 S Ct 1602, 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966), as well as other drug-related
evidence obtained from defendant's backpack as a consequence of those
statements to the police.  The majority concludes that unlawful police conduct
-- an unconstitutional seizure of defendant -- tainted the consent search of
defendant's person and that the later delivery of Miranda warnings was
inadequate to sever the causal link between the unlawful seizure and the
incriminating statements and drug evidence found in defendant's backpack.  Those
admissibility determinations, according to the majority, each find their root
in the conduct of the police officer in requesting defendant's consent to
search his person during the unlawful seizure.
Applying State v. Hall, 339 Or
7, 115 P3d 908 (2005), and its progeny, the majority decides that the trial
court should have suppressed all evidence that came to light during the events
that followed the seizure.  The majority stresses, however, that the key issue
that it decides concerning the initial consent search is a narrow one
concerning causation, and that no issue exists here about whether Hall
was correctly decided.  The majority states:
"Before we begin our analysis of the legal
issues presented in this case, we pause to observe how limited the state, as
petitioner here, has chosen to make them.  First, the state has not asked this
court to reconsider Hall.  Second, the state does not argue that the
Court of Appeals was wrong to conclude that the state had not met its
burden to show that the consent would have occurred independent of the
illegality or that the connection between the unlawful stop and the consent was
attenuated.  Rather, as the state has presented the case to this court, the
only issues are whether (1) defendant met his initial burden to show a minimal
factual nexus between the unlawful police conduct and his consent to search,
and whether (2) the giving of Miranda warnings was a sufficient
intervening circumstance, standing alone, to mitigate the taint of the
preceding unlawful police conduct on defendant's later statements about the
evidence in the backpack.  We turn to those issues."
State v. Ayles, 348 Or ___, ___, ___ P3d ___ (Aug 12,
2010) (slip op at 6-7) (emphasis in original).
In response to the majority's narrow
statement of the issue here, the dissent seeks to distinguish the factual
circumstances in Hall from those presented here, all in an effort to
demonstrate that the causal link between the unlawful stop and defendant's
voluntary consent to a search of his person was weak or nonexistent.  In
arguing that point, the dissent acknowledges that this case presents only a
question of the factual nexus between the police illegality and the consent
search, and does not raise a challenge to the correctness of Hall:
"This case does not require us to decide
whether Hall was correctly decided, and the state has not asked to
reexamine that decision.  Rather, the state argues, and I would hold, that any
causal connection in this case between the retention of defendant's
identification and defendant's decision to consent is so much weaker than it
was Hall that we should give effect to defendant's voluntary consent to
the patdown search."
Ayles, 348 Or at
___ (Kistler, J., dissenting) (slip op at 7) (footnote omitted).
I dissented in Hall,
arguing that the majority there had distorted the relevant legal analysis when
the police, after committing an illegality, obtain incriminating evidence
against a defendant.  Hall, 339 Or at 37 (Durham, J., concurring in part
and dissenting in part).  I contended that new mode of analysis adopted in Hall
was not supported by any existing precedent, state or federal, and that the
reasoning in Hall would lead to the needless suppression of evidence
obtained by the police with the specific, voluntary consent of the owner or
possessor of the evidence.  More recently, I dissented from the court's
extension of the Hall paradigm to the arena of the traffic stop.  State
v. Rodgers/Kirkeby, 347 Or 610, 631, 227 P3d 695 (2010) (Durham, J.,
dissenting).
This case specifically concerns the
application of the part of the Hall analysis that obliged defendant to
demonstrate that a factual link exists between his unlawful detention by the
police officer and, later, the officer's request for consent to conduct a
patdown search of defendant's person.  The state raises no claim that the Hall
court erred in creating that requirement.  Given the temporal and physical
circumstances of the stop and the officer's request, the majority has the
better of the argument on that point.  Therefore, I join the majority's conclusion
that defendant met his initial burden, as described in Hall.
Further, I join the majority's second
conclusion, which follows from its first, that a Miranda warning alone
was not sufficient to nullify the causal link between the initial police illegality
and the statements and drug-related evidence that defendant seeks to suppress. 
I do not join in the majority's recital at length of the rationale in the Hall
line of cases that has nothing to do with the disposition of this case.
The court, in the future, may face
other arguments that question the logic of Hall and its progeny in ways
that this case does not.  This court has said:
"[W]e remain willing to reconsider a previous ruling
under the Oregon Constitution whenever a party presents to us a principled
argument suggesting that, in an earlier decision, this court wrongly considered
or wrongly decided the issue in question.  We will give particular attention to
arguments that either present new information as to the meaning of the
constitutional provision at issue or that demonstrate some failure on the part
of this court at the time of the earlier decision to follow its usual paradigm
for considering and construing the meaning of the provision in question."
Stranahan v. Fred Meyer, Inc., 331 Or 38, 54, 11 P3d
228 (2000).  Counsel for any party who chooses to challenge the correctness of
the decision in Hall in a future case is well-advised to bear in mind
the guidance that this court provided in Stranahan for that endeavor.
For the reasons stated above, I
concur in the majority's decision.
KISTLER, J., dissenting.
An officer lawfully stopped a car in
which defendant was a passenger.  The majority holds that the officer
unconstitutionally seized defendant when the officer retained defendant's
identification card and that all the evidence that followed was a product of
that seizure and must be suppressed.  Although I agree that the officer stopped
defendant without reasonable suspicion, the rest of the majority's reasoning
sweeps too broadly.  As an initial matter, defendant would not have left the
scene of the stop, even if the officer had not retained his identification.  In
that circumstance, defendant's later, voluntary consent to a patdown search was
sufficient to break the causal chain.  Beyond that, the officer lawfully
discovered evidence during a search incident to the arrest of the driver and
defendant chose to answer the officer's questions about that evidence after
having been advised of his Miranda rights.  Those events occurred
independently of the retention of defendant's license and were not the product
of that act.  This case differs in those respects from State v. Hall,
339 Or 7, 115 P3d 908 (2005), and the majority errs in treating this case as if
Hall governed it.  I respectfully dissent.
The question whether a voluntary
consent that follows an unconstitutional stop is a product of that stop is a
fact-intensive one, and it is worth recounting the facts in this case before
turning to the legal issues that they raise.  One morning, a police officer
lawfully stopped a car in which defendant was a passenger.  The car was missing
a license plate and exceeding the speed limit.  The stop occurred at a remote
location in the Coast Range along Highway 26.(1) 
There were five people in the car (including the driver) and only a single
officer.  On approaching the car, the officer noticed that the driver of the
car appeared to be under the influence of methamphetamine.  As the officer
explained:
"[The driver's] body was contorting and twisting.  She
couldn't sit still.  She was running her fingers through her hair at a very
high and unusual rate of speed.  I saw her jaw muscles * * * and her face
muscles were spasming and relaxing.  I asked her for her driver's license.  She
was making just some random statements that I really didn't hear and
understand.  She made a couple of comments that were basically irrelevant to
anything."
The driver found her license and gave it to the officer. 
After giving the officer her license, the driver continued to rummage through
her wallet, even though the officer had asked only for her license.
Given the driver's behavior, the
officer asked her if she had any methamphetamine in the car.  At that point,
defendant, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, spoke up and said,
"Sir, what do we have to do to rectify this so that we stop getting
stopped.  So that we don't get stopped anymore."  The timing of
defendant's question and the overly polite way in which he asked it raised the
officer's suspicions.  The officer asked defendant for identification, and
defendant gave him a veteran's identification card.  The officer took both the
driver's license and defendant's identification card and put them in his car. 
He then asked the driver to step out of the car, spoke to her briefly, and
returned to his car where he "ran a computer check on both the defendant
and [the driver]."  That check did not reveal any outstanding warrants for
either person.
The officer went back to the car
where defendant was sitting.(2) 
He asked defendant "if he would mind stepping out of the car and talking
to [him] for a minute."  Defendant said "[s]ure" and stepped
out.  At that point, the officer asked defendant to step to the back of the
car, where the driver was seated, so that he could keep an eye on defendant,
the driver, and the three other passengers who were still in the back seat of
the car.  As defendant walked to the back of the car, the officer noticed that
defendant walked with an exaggerated limp, but he did not see any obvious signs
that defendant was under the influence of any substance.
Once they reached the back of the
car, the officer explained to defendant that, when he talks to someone outside
of a car, he "like[s] * * * to pat them down for weapons" and then he
asked defendant "for consent to pat him down."  Defendant replied,
"'Yeah.'"  As the officer explained, "[h]e told me that I could
pat him down."  As the officer started to pat defendant down, he could see
from his vantage point into defendant's shirt pocket.  Inside the pocket, he
"saw a prescription pill bottle with no label on it[,] and [he] could see
inside the pill bottle was plastic wrapping and [he] immediately suspected it
was drugs."  He took the bottle out of defendant's pocket and asked,
"Is that the meth[,]" and defendant said, "Yeah, I guess it must
be."  The officer placed defendant under arrest and advised him of his Miranda
rights.
At that point, the officer turned his
attention back to the driver, whom he "ran * * * through a field sobriety
test and subsequently arrested her for driving under the influence of methamphetamine." 
After the officer arrested the driver, he searched the car for "additional
means of intoxication."  During that search, the three passengers in the
back seat got out of the car.  One of them told the officer that there was a
backpack in the car, which the passenger identified as defendant's.  The
officer asked defendant if there were methamphetamine in the backpack. 
Defendant said that there was and described the contents of the backpack in
detail.  The officer then looked in the backpack and found more
methamphetamine.
Before trial, defendant moved to
suppress all the evidence found during the stop.  Specifically, defendant moved
to suppress:  (1) the methamphetamine found in the pill bottle during the pat
down search; (2) defendant's statements to the officer regarding the backpack;
and (3) the contents of the backpack.  The trial court denied that motion, and
the Court of Appeals reversed the resulting judgment of conviction. 
Before turning to the issue that this
case presents, it is important to note what is not at issue.  Defendant does
not contend that the officer lacked probable cause to stop the car for a
traffic infraction, nor does he dispute that the officer acquired reasonable
suspicion that the driver was under the influence of methamphetamine once he
approached the car and spoke with her.  Defendant has not challenged the
voluntariness of his consent to the patdown search.  He has not questioned the
officer's testimony that the prescription bottle in defendant's shirt pocket
was in plain view when the officer began to pat him down, and he has not argued
that the officer acted unconstitutionally when he removed the prescription
bottle from his shirt pocket and asked him about its contents.  Relatedly,
defendant does not argue that the officer lacked probable cause to arrest the
driver for driving under the influence of methamphetamine, once she performed
field sobriety tests, and he has not challenged the officer's authority to
search the car for additional evidence of intoxication, as a search incident to
the driver's lawful arrest.  Defendant's argument accordingly reduces to the
proposition that every lawful act that followed the retention of his
identification must fall because it was a product of that single, initial
illegality.
The state, for its part, does not
dispute that the officer's retention of defendant's identification card
prevented him from leaving and thus stopped defendant without reasonable
suspicion.  The state argues, however, that there is no causal connection between
that illegality and defendant's voluntary consent to the patdown search because
defendant would not have left the scene, even if the officer had not retained
his identification.  It follows, the state contends, that defendant's voluntary
consent to the patdown search was not the product of the prior illegality. 
Alternatively, the state argues that, even if the consent were the product of
the retention of defendant's identification, the Miranda warnings that
defendant subsequently received were, in the totality of the circumstances,
sufficient to break the causal chain, rendering defendant's post-Miranda statements
and the contents of the backpack admissible.
In my view, both of the state's
arguments are well taken.  Under this court's decisions, when the officer
retained defendant's identification card, he prevented him from leaving and
accordingly stopped him without reasonable suspicion.  See, e.g.,
State v. Thompkin, 341 Or 368, 379, 143 P3d 530 (2006) (so reasoning). 
Defendant, however, also was prevented from leaving the scene of the stop for
an independent and completely lawful reason.  The officer lawfully had stopped
the car in which defendant was riding and, on stopping the car, reasonably
suspected that the driver was under the influence of methamphetamine.  The stop
occurred in a remote wooded location, three miles from the nearest home, and
the trial court reasonably could have found that defendant would not have left
the scene of the lawful stop of the car even if the officer had not retained
his identification.(3) 
In this case, as long as the driver's car was lawfully detained, so was
defendant.
As a matter of causation, two
independent causes prevented defendant from leaving.  One was lawful; the other
was not.  Under those circumstances, any causal connection between the
retention of defendant's identification card and his voluntary consent to the
patdown search was so faint that defendant's voluntary consent was sufficient
to break the causal chain.  To be sure, this court held in Hall that the
defendant's voluntary consent that followed an unlawful stop did not break the
causal chain.  339 Or at 36.  In that case, however, the unlawful seizure was
the only reason that the defendant in Hall remained at the scene.  In
this case, by contrast, the lawful retention of the car and its driver
prevented defendant (the passenger) from leaving, without regard to whether the
officer retained the defendant's identification or gave it back.
Not every causal connection, however
faint, will be sufficient to disable a defendant's voluntary consent from
breaking the causal chain, and the causal connection in this case is, if
existent at all, far weaker than the causal connection in Hall.  This
case does not require us to decide whether Hall was correctly decided,
and the state has not asked us to reexamine that decision.  Rather, the state
argues, and I would hold, that any causal connection in this case between the
retention of defendant's identification and defendant's decision to consent is
so much weaker than it was in Hall that we should give effect to
defendant's voluntary consent to the patdown search.(4)
As noted, defendant does not
challenge the voluntariness of his consent to the patdown search, nor has he
argued that the officer did not lawfully see, in plain view, what the officer
reasonably suspected was contraband once he started to conduct the patdown
search.  Because everything that followed defendant's voluntary consent to the
patdown search was constitutionally obtained and because, in these
circumstances, defendant's voluntary consent was not the product of the
unlawful retention of his identification, I would hold, on that ground alone,
that all the evidence that the officer discovered was admissible.
The majority reaches a different
conclusion.  It holds that, under Hall, a minimum factual nexus will
exist between an illegality and a defendant's consent as long as the consent
occurs while the unlawful stop is ongoing.  The majority's holding is at odds
with the reasoning in Hall.  The question under Hall is not
whether there is a temporal connection between the illegality and the
defendant's decision to consent.  Rather, the question is whether there is a
causal connection.  The majority's decision either assumes incorrectly that all
events that occur contemporaneously are causally connected, or it dispenses
with the requirement that the illegality must be the cause of the decision to
consent.  Either way you cut it, the majority errs.
The majority, for its part, invokes
the decision in Hall and two cases that follow it as support for
its holding.  The analysis in Hall, however, undercuts the majority's
rationale, and the two cases that follow Hall add nothing to the
analysis.  The question in Hall was whether evidence discovered as a
result of the defendant's voluntary consent to a search "derived from a
preceding violation of the defendant's rights under [Article I, section 9, of
the Oregon Constitution]."  339 Or at 21.  The question that the court
posed in Hall was at base a causal one.  See id. at 24
("[T]he critical inquiry is whether the state obtained the evidence sought
to be suppressed as a result of a violation of the defendant's rights
under Article I, section 9.") (emphasis added).  Consistently with that
focus, the court described the minimum factual nexus that defendants must
establish as a causal connection between the illegality and the defendant's
decision to consent.  See id. at 25 ("[A] minimum factual
nexus * * * is, at minimum, * * * a 'but for' relationship[.]").  The
standard that the majority announces in this case -- that the illegality and
the decision to consent need share only a temporal link -- is inconsistent with
the court's recognition in Hall that the connection must be causal.
To be sure, it often will be the case
that consent obtained during an illegal stop also will be causally connected to
the stop.  But that is not always so, as this case illustrates.  Any causal
link in this case was so faint that defendant's voluntary consent was
sufficient to break the causal chain.  Not only is the majority's reasoning at
odds with the analysis in Hall, but this case differs factually from Hall
in that the illegal detention in that case was the only reason that the
defendant in Hall remained at the scene.  No independent lawful reason
prevented the defendant in Hall from leaving, and this court presumed
without further discussion that there was a sufficient causal connection
between the illegality and the consent to shift the burden to the state to
prove independent source, inevitable discovery, attenuation, or the like.  339
Or at 36.(5)
The two other cases that the majority
cites add nothing to the analysis.  One case, State v. Rodgers/Kirkeby,
347 Or 610, 227 P3d 695 (2010), is factually similar to Hall.  In
that case, the illegal detention was the only reason that each defendant
remained at the scene.  Because no independent, lawful reason prevented either
defendant from leaving, that case did not present the causation question that
this case does.
The other case, State v. Thompkin,
341 Or 368, 143 P3d 530 (2006), is factually closer.  In Thompkin, the
defendant was a passenger in a lawfully stopped car.  The police stopped the
passenger (the defendant) when they retained her identification without
reasonable suspicion.  Id. at 377-79.  Although the trial court's
findings are not particularly clear, its findings can be read to suggest that
the defendant in Thompkin would have remained at the scene of the lawful
stop without regard to whether the police unlawfully retained her
identification.(6) 
In that respect, Thompkin is factually closer to this case.
Despite that possible similarity, Thompkin
provides no precedential support for the majority's decision because the state
never argued and this court never considered in Thompkin whether the
possible presence of an independent, lawful reason for remaining at the scene
meant that there was no minimum factual nexus between the unlawful retention of
the defendant's identification and her voluntary decision to disclose evidence
to the police.  See 341 Or at 380-81.  Indeed, the decision in Thomkin
omits any discussion of whether the defendant had established a minimum
factual nexus that shifted the burden to the state.  See id.  The
opinion is silent on that point, and we should not treat Thompkin's
silence as if it were binding precedent.  See Coast Range Conifers v. Board
of Forestry, 339 Or 136, 148-49, 117 P3d 990 (2005) (reaching that
conclusion regarding an issue that an earlier decision could have but did not
address).  
As the majority ultimately
recognizes, this court has assumed without discussion, both in Hall and
also in Rodgers/Kirkeby and Thompkin, that a minimum factual
nexus existed, and those cases thus provide little or no analytical help in
determining what a defendant must show to establish that nexus.  The majority
attempts to supply the analytical deficiency in those decisions with the
following explanation:
"We think that the reason both that the court sometimes
assumes without discussion that a defendant has shown the required nexus when
consent occurs during an ongoing seizure and that no case exists holding that
there is no minimum connection in such circumstances is that the existence of a
minimal factual nexus is obvious in cases in which the defendant consents to a
search (or takes other incriminating action) during an illegal seizure."
348 Or at ___ (emphasis in original) (slip op at 13).  In my
view, the majority's explanation still leaves something to be desired.  However
obvious the causal connection may be in some cases, it is not obvious in every
case.  The majority errs in sweeping away all factual distinctions with an
uncritical assertion that a minimum factual nexus will always exist when
consent occurs during an illegal detention; in so doing, it incorrectly
substitutes a temporal connection for a causal one.
One final point requires discussion. 
The majority says, in a footnote, that the state has not argued the first issue
that this opinion discusses.  The state, however, argued in its brief to the
Court of Appeals that, under Hall, a defendant must show "'at
minimum, the existence of a "but for" relationship'" between the
evidence sought to be suppressed and the police illegality to establish a
factual nexus.  Respondent's Brief at 8 (quoting Hall, 339 Or at 25.) 
The state contended that the evidence in this case was not sufficient to
establish even that minimal causal connection.  It followed, the state
reasoned, that "[t]here is no reason to suppose * * * that taking and
retaining defendant's ID had any effect on his decision to consent to the
patdown[.]"  Id. at 9-10
In this court, the state raised the
same issue.  It contended that, because the traffic stop was lawful and
ongoing, any connection between the retention of defendant's identification and
the officer's request for consent to the patdown search was not sufficient to
establish even "but for" causation.(7) 
In my view, the state's arguments in both the Court of Appeals and this court
properly raised the question whether the causal connection between the
retention of defendant's identification and his consent to the patdown search
was so weak that defendant's voluntary consent broke the causal chain.  As
explained above, on that issue, I would hold that, because the detention in
this case resulted equally from a lawful and an unlawful cause, the illegality
did not have a sufficient effect on defendant's voluntary decision to consent
to the patdown search to prevent that decision from breaking the causal chain,
even under Hall. 
A second, more limited basis for
reversing the Court of Appeals decision exists.  Even if one assumes that
defendant's consent to the patdown search was not sufficient to break the
causal chain, four later events, viewed collectively, were.  First, the officer
lawfully arrested the driver for driving under the influence of methamphetamine.
Second, the officer lawfully searched the car for more evidence of intoxicants
incident to his lawful arrest of the driver.  See State v. Caraher, 293
Or 741, 759, 653 P2d 942 (1982) (authorizing a search incident to arrest when
"it is relevant to the crime for which defendant is being arrested and so
long as it is reasonable in light of all the facts").(8) 
Third, during that search, one of the passengers got out the car, told the
officer that there was a backpack in the car, and identified it as defendant's.(9) 
Fourth, the officer asked defendant whether there was methamphetamine in the
backpack, and defendant, having previously received Miranda warnings,
chose to answer the officer's questions.
Even if defendant's voluntary consent
to the patdown did not break the causal chain, his receipt of the Miranda warnings
did.  Admittedly, giving a defendant Miranda warnings does not always
break the causal connection between an Article I, section 9, violation, and a
defendant's subsequent statements.  See Hall, 339 Or at 35
(identifying several considerations, in addition to Miranda warnings, to
account for in assessing a causal connection); see Brown v. Illinois,
422 US 590, 603, 95 S Ct 2254, 45 L Ed 2d 416 (1975) ("Miranda
warnings, alone and per se, cannot always make the act
sufficiently a product of freewill to break, for Fourth amendment purposes, the
causal connection[.]").  Rather, determining whether those warnings were
sufficient to break "a causal connection requires examination of the specific
facts at issue in a particular case."  Hall, 339 Or at 35.  That
is, the question whether the warnings purged the taint requires consideration
of the nature and the extent of the taint.
Here, any taint was minimal.  The
only illegality that defendant has identified was the fact that the officer's
retention of defendant's identification card prevented defendant from leaving
and thus stopped him without reasonable suspicion.  As explained above,
however, defendant could not leave for an independent, completely lawful
reason.  In those circumstances, the effect of retaining his identification
card was minimal, if not nonexistent.  The subsequent, independent discovery of
defendant's backpack and the Miranda warnings that defendant
received were sufficient to attenuate any taint deriving from the officer's
retention of his identification.  If defendant's voluntary statements were not
the product of the officer's retention of defendant's identification, then the
subsequent search of his backpack was lawful, based solely on those statements,
either under the automobile exception or as a search incident to defendant's
arrest.
Relying on State v. Olson, 287
Or 157, 598 P2d 670 (1979), the majority reaches a different conclusion. 
However, this is not a case in which the officers broke into the defendant's
house without justification and roused the defendant and his companion from
their bed, as they did in Olson.  Cf. id. at 159.   Nor
is this a case in which the defendant, on entering his home, found an officer
unlawfully inside his home pointing a gun at him and saying, "Don't move,
you are under arrest."  Cf. Brown, 422 US at 592.  In that
case, neither the officers' entry into the defendant's house nor their arrest
of him at gun point was constitutionally justified.  Id. at 596.  In
those cases, this court and the United States Supreme Court respectively held
that the mere fact that the officer gave the defendants Miranda warnings
before the defendants made incriminating statements was not sufficient to purge
the taint of the officers' unconstitutional entries into the defendants'
homes.  Olson, 287 Or at 166; see also Brown, 422 US at 603.  In
light of the nature and severity of the Fourth Amendment and Article I, section
9, violations in those cases, something more than Miranda warnings was
required.  Olson, 287 Or at 166; Brown, 422 US at 604-05. 
In this case, by contrast, the nature
and severity of the violation was minimal.  The officer retained defendant's
identification and prevented him from leaving in a situation where defendant
had no ability to go anywhere until the officer concluded his lawful stop of
the car.  The degree of attenuation necessary to purge the taint varies with
the extent of the taint, and where, as here, any taint is minimal, the required
degree of attenuation is correspondingly reduced.  The point has nothing to do
with deterrence.  Rather, under a rights-based suppression analysis, the degree
of attenuation necessary to purge the taint (and thus restore the defendant to
the position he or she would have been in had no constitutional violation
occurred) varies with the extent, nature, and severity of any illegality.(10) 
Any other rationale would give a constitutional violation that had only minimal
effect far greater reach than either the constitution requires or good sense
warrants.  Because I would uphold the trial court's judgment in this case, I
respectfully dissent.
Balmer and Linder, JJ., join in this
opinion.
1. The
trial court noted, however, that, if the taking and retaining of defendant's
identification were considered an illegal detention, then suppression would
have been required because, the trial court found, 
"[d]efendant's identification was held during the stop
where a reasonable person would not feel free to leave.  The consent for search
was in close proximity to obtaining defendant's identification and asking him
to exit. The state did not produce any evidence regarding inevitable discovery,
independent discovery or a tenuous factual link that would still allow the
search."  
2. This,
therefore, is not a case in which the unlawful police conduct merely "preceded"
defendant's giving of consent.  The record is clear that the unlawful detention
here was ongoing -- Hunt continued to retain defendant's identification -- when
defendant gave his consent to the search.
3. It
is important to emphasize again that we need not determine whether the state
has met its burden to show that there is no causal connection between
the preceding illegality and defendant's consent that would require suppression
of the evidence found as a result of the ensuing search.  That is so because
the state did not argue below, and does not argue in this court, that, if
defendant had not established the requisite minimal nexus, the state did or
could meet its burden to prove that defendant's consent (and the consequent
discovery of the prescription pill bottle containing methamphetamine) was
independent of, or only tenuously related to, the unlawful police conduct.   As
noted, the trial court observed that "[t]he state did not produce any
evidence regarding inevitable discovery, independent discovery or a tenuous
factual link that would still allow the search."  The state has never
challenged that observation.  
The dissent does not acknowledge this
posture of the case.  The dissent states:
"As a matter of causation, two independent
causes prevented defendant from leaving.  One was lawful; the other was not. 
Under those circumstances, any causal connection between the retention of
defendant's identification card and his voluntary consent to the patdown search
was so faint that defendant's voluntary consent was sufficient to break the
causal chain."  
348 Or at ___ (Kistler, J., dissenting) (slip
op at 6-7).  The dissent then goes on to explain why, in its view, the
state had met its burden to prove attenuation with respect to the consent to
the patdown search.  The problem with the foregoing, of course, is that it
purports to explain why the state should prevail here, when the state did not
argue the dissent's theory either to this court or to the Court of Appeals. 
The state is the petitioner here.  It must live with what it has raised and
argued -- a small enough requirement, but one from which the dissent is not
entitled to relieve it.
4. We
say "normally," because this is not a per se rule.  Among many
other scenarios, it is always possible that the state will be able to produce,
for example, an admission by defendant to some other person to the effect that
he would have remained at the scene or consented in any event.
5. As
we held in the first part of this opinion, defendant met his initial burden to
establish a minimal factual nexus between the illegal police conduct and his
decision to consent to the first patdown of his person.  The burden then
shifted to the state to prove that all of defendant's subsequent statements,
including his later consent to the search of his backpack, and the evidence
discovered as a result of those statements, including the drugs and
paraphernalia found in the backpack, did not derive from exploitation of the illegal
seizure of his person.  As noted, the state did not argue that it had met its
burden with respect to the evidence found in the search of defendant's person. 
However, the state does argue that defendant's consent to the search of his
backpack was so attenuated from the initial illegal police conduct that the
evidence found therein should not be suppressed.  
1. The
officer testified that the closest home "would probably be three miles
away[.]"  Later, the officer explained that there was one house on Saddle
Mountain Road about a quarter to a half mile up that road from where it
"leaves [Highway] 26."  There was no testimony regarding how far
Saddle Mountain Road was from the scene of the stop and thus nothing to call
into question the officer's earlier testimony that the nearest home was three
miles away.  As defense counsel put the issue to the officer, "So as far
as people in the car * * * would be able to observe by driving through that
area, they're three miles from anything in one direction out there * * * [and
they're] -- I don't know -- six or seven miles I think in the other direction." 
The officer answered, "Approximately.  Yes, sir." 
2. It
is not clear when the officer returned the license to the driver and the
identification card to defendant.  The state, however, does not dispute that
the officer did not return the identification card before he began speaking
with defendant.
3. The
majority notes in passing that the facts "do not establish that it would
have been impossible, or even extremely difficult, for defendant to leave the
scene." 348 Or at ___ (slip op at 11).  The majority uses the wrong
standard of review.  Whether defendant could or would have left the scene if
the officer had not retained his identification is a factual issue for the
trial court, which ruled in the state's favor.
4. In
that connection, it is worth noting that the United States Supreme Court and
almost every state supreme court that has considered the issue have held that
stopping a car seizes both the driver and the passengers.  See Brendlin v.
California, 551 US 249, 257, 259 n 5, 127 S Ct 2400, 168 L Ed 2d 132 (2007)
(so holding and noting the holdings of the state supreme courts).  Reasonable
suspicion to stop the car justifies the stop of both the driver and the
passengers.  See Arizona v. Johnson, ___ US ___, 129 S Ct 781,
172 L Ed 2d 694 (2009) (same) (citing Brendlin, 551 US at 255, 263). 
Under those decisions, the officer's retention of defendant's identification in
this case would not have constituted an unlawful stop.  Rather, it simply would
have been a permissible inquiry during the lawful stop of the car, the driver,
and all four passengers.  As a practical matter, this case is no different. 
The stop of this car stopped defendant as well and, in the circumstances
of this case, the officer's retention of defendant's identification contributed
nothing additional to the restraint effectively placed on defendant's freedom
to leave as a result of the lawful stop of the car in which defendant was a
passenger.
5. It
is worth noting that the procedural paradigm that the court announced in Hall
is difficult to square with the reasoning in both Hall and other
cases.  The court explained in Hall, 339 Or at 25, and reaffirmed
in State v. Crandall, 340 Or 645, 652, 136 P3d 30 (2006), that
the fact that an illegality is the "but for" cause of a defendant's
voluntary consent does not render the resulting evidence inadmissible. 
However, in describing how the Hall paradigm works, the court stated
that proof of a "but for" causal connection will be sufficient to
establish a minimum factual nexus and thus to presume that the consent was the
product of the illegality, unless the state offers some evidence other than the
defendant's voluntary consent to prove independent source, inevitable
discovery, attenuation, or the like.  Hall, 339 Or at 25.  In my
view, there is a substantial question whether proof of "but for"
causation is by itself sufficient to disable the effect of a defendant's
voluntary consent.  In this case, it is especially troubling that the majority
finds that something less than "but for" causation suffices to
establish a minimum factual nexus.
6. The
court noted in Thompkin that the trial court had found that
"'there's no evidence that [the defendant] would have gotten out of the
car or left the scene, that she didn't feel free to leave because [the officer
retained her identification].'"  341 Or at 373-74 (quoting the trial
court's findings). 
7. In
this court, the state focused on the absence of a "but for" causal
connection between the retention of defendant's identification and the officer's
request for consent, but it did so presumably because that was what the Court
of Appeals had held was the correct focus in determining the existence of a
minimal causal connection under Hall.  See State v. Ayles, 220 Or
App 606, 612, 188 P3d 378 (2008). 
8. This
court recognized in State v. Owens, 302 Or 196, 729 P2d 524 (1986),
that, under Article I, section 9, a search incident to arrest permits officers
to look in the trunk of the defendant's car for evidence of the crime for which
they had arrested him.  See id. at 203-04 (quoting, with approval, an
earlier case for that proposition).
9. Under
Article I, section 9, an officer may look for evidence of the crime for which
he or she arrested a person to the extent that the evidence "reasonably
could be concealed on the arrestee's person or in the belongings in [the
arrestee's] immediate possession at the time of the arrest."  Owens,
302 Or at 200.  In this case, the state has not argued that the driver was in
possession of defendant's backpack at the time of her arrest.  Accordingly,
although the officer lawfully discovered defendant's backpack as part of a
search incident to the driver's arrest, he could not, incident to the driver's
arrest, go further and search the contents of defendant's backpack. 
10. This
court has rejected, in a footnote and in dicta, any reliance on the
purpose and flagrancy of the constitutional violation to the extent that it
bears on deterrence.  Hall, 339 Or at 35 n 21.  That reasoning is
consistent with the rights-based suppression analysis that this court has
adopted.  To the extent, however, that the dictum in Hall goes
further and suggests that the nature of the violation is irrelevant to the
degree of attenuation necessary to purge the taint flowing from that violation,
the suggestion lacks persuasive value.  Not only is the suggestion dictum
and thus not binding, but the assumption that underlies it -- that all
constitutional violations have the same effect -- is erroneous.