Title: State v. Brown
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S057594
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: May 27, 2010

FILED: May 27, 2010
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Petitioner
on Review,
v.
SHEENA BROWN,
Respondent
on Review.
(C060902CR;
CA A133625; SC S057594)
En Banc
On review from the
Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted
February 19, 2010, De Le Salle North Catholic High School, Portland, Oregon.
Robert M. Atkinson,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause for petitioner on
review.  With him on the briefs were John R. Kroger, Attorney General, and
Jerome Lidz, Solicitor General.
David Ferry, Deputy
Public Defender, Office of Public Defense Services, Salem, argued the cause for
respondent on review.  With him on the brief was Peter Gartlan, Chief Defender.
DE MUNIZ, C. J.
The decision of the
Court of Appeals is reversed.  The order of the circuit court is reversed, and
the matter is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. 
*Appeal from
Washington County Circuit Court, Marco Hernandez, Judge. 228 Or App 197, 206
P3d 1180 (2009).
 DE MUNIZ, C. J.
Defendant was charged with 22 counts
of identity theft.  The evidence against her derived entirely from the
warrantless search of two bags that defendant had denied owning and had left in
a hotel room rented by another person.  Defendant moved to suppress the
evidence against her on the ground that it had been obtained through a  search
that violated Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution and the Fourth Amendment
to the United States Constitution.  The trial court concluded that the search
of the bag violated Article I, section 9, and suppressed the evidence.  The
Court of Appeals affirmed.  State v. Brown, 228 Or App 197, 206 P3d 1180
(2009).  We allowed the state's petition for review and now reverse.
The facts relevant to our review are
undisputed.  A man and a woman had checked into a hotel.  The hotel room was
rented under the man's name, Taunice Beal; however, the woman paid for the room
with a credit card in the name of Katrina Ivanov.  The clerk suspected some
form of identity theft or credit card fraud and summoned the police to the
hotel.
Police went to the room, which was
occupied by four people, one of whom was defendant.  On the floor in plain view
was a methamphetamine pipe with residue.  Officer Pfaff asked whether anyone in
the room was either Beal or Ivanov; the four people in the room denied being
Beal or Ivanov.  Officer Pfaff also asked if anyone present had rented the
room; they all stated that they had not.  When asked for identification, defendant
claimed that she did not have any identification with her and gave the officer
a false name, Stephanie Hageman.
The hotel manager arrived and, on learning
that no authorized guests were in the room, instructed everyone to leave.  No
one protested or objected to being required to leave.  Officer Pfaff asked the
people in the room if they had any personal property there.  One person claimed
a cell phone and shoes; another claimed a purse and sandals.  Defendant claimed
only a pair of sandals.  While Officer Pfaff was retrieving defendant's sandals,
she noticed a black bag and asked defendant if the bag was hers.  Defendant
denied that it was.  The officer asked again, noting that defendant's sandals
were next to the bag; however, defendant again denied owning the bag.  The
officer also pointed out a second black bag in the room, and asked if it
belonged to defendant.  Defendant twice denied owning that bag.  There was also
a third bag in the room -- a duffel bag -- which no one claimed.  Officer Pfaff
asked everyone in the room if they had retrieved all of their personal
possessions from the room, because the room would be locked.  No one claimed
anything else in the room.  After everyone had left the room, the hotel manager
locked the room door, rekeying the lock so that the occupants of the room would
have to come to the hotel desk before they could enter the room.  The officers
then left.  
Later that afternoon, Beal returned
to the hotel with a companion, and the hotel contacted the police.  Officer
Pfaff responded to the call and met with Beal.  Beal stated that he had rented
the room, and that a woman he knew as Sheena had paid for it with a credit
card.  The officer asked Beal if anything in the room belonged to him, and Beal
identified the duffel bag.  Officer Pfaff asked Beal for permission to search
the room, and Beal responded, "'[y]ou can search whatever you want.'" 
The officer first searched the duffel bag, then began searching the first black
bag.  The officer found a wallet that contained a photo of defendant, a credit
card in the name of Katrina Ivanov, and some notebook paper containing
handwritten identity information for other people (e.g., names, dates of
birth, driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers, etc.).  At
approximately the same time that Officer Pfaff discovered the identity
information, Beal told her that both black bags were owned by Sheena, and
Beal's companion added that Sheena's last name was Brown.  Concluding that the
bag contained evidence of identity theft, the officer closed the bag, seized
the other black bag, and left the hotel room.  Later, at the police station,
the officer further searched both bags, discovering additional evidence of identity
theft.(1)
Before trial, defendant moved to
suppress the evidence discovered during the search of the bags, arguing that
the warrantless search of the bags violated defendant's privacy right under
Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution and the Fourth Amendment of
the United States Constitution.  In response, the state asserted that defendant
had abandoned any possessory or privacy interest in the bags when she denied
owning them and left them in the room.  The trial court granted defendant's
motion to suppress.  In a letter explaining its ruling, the trial court
stated:  "I am not convinced[,] based on the totality of circumstances in
this case[,] that the defendant demonstrated an intent to permanently
relinquish possession of the items at issue or the privacy interests that
accompanied the right to possess them."  
The state appealed the suppression
order to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed.  That court concluded that the
issue was "whether, when defendant stated that the bags did not belong to
her and left the hotel room without them, she manifested the intent permanently
to relinquish her possessory or privacy interests."  Brown, 228 Or
App at 203-04.  The court held that, "although defendant denied owning the
bags, her conduct in leaving her bags apparently secure in the hotel room did
not amount to giving up her privacy interest in that property."  Id.
at 204.  The court reasoned that defendant was leaving the bags in a secure
hotel room rented by someone she knew, which "was consistent with an
intent to maintain a privacy interest in the bags."  Id.  The court
also noted that nothing would have suggested to defendant that her denial of an
interest in the bags would cause them to be searched.  Id.  We allowed the
state's petition for review to consider whether the trial court and the Court
of Appeals correctly concluded that the search of the bags violated Article I,
section 9.  
We begin by reviewing the nature of
the right guaranteed by Article I, section 9, which provides, in part:
"No law shall violate the right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable search, or seizure * * *."
The government conducts a "search" for purposes of
Article I, section 9, when it invades a protected privacy interest.  See State
v. Crandall, 340 Or 645, 649, 136 P3d 30 (2006) (so stating); State v. Meredith, 337 Or 299, 303-04, 96 P3d 342 (2004) (same); State v. Wacker,
317 Or 419, 426, 856 P2d 1029 (1993) (same).  A protected privacy interest
"is not the privacy that one reasonably expects but the privacy to
which one has a right."  State v. Campbell, 306 Or 157, 164,
759 P2d 1040 (1988) (emphasis in original; citation omitted).  Accordingly, a
defendant's subjective expectation of privacy does not necessarily determine
whether a privacy interest has been violated.  See State v. Howard/Dawson,
342 Or 635, 643, 157 P3d 1189 (2007) (rejecting defendants' argument that they
did not expect their garbage to be searched by police after sanitation company
had picked it up).  
It is true that Article I, section 9,
protects "the general privacy interests of 'the people' rather than * * *
the privacy interests of particular individuals."  State v. Tanner,
304 Or 312, 320, 745 P2d 757 (1987) (footnote omitted).(2)
 However, it is not enough that police may have violated Article I, section 9,
in some abstract sense.  As Tanner explains, courts will suppress
evidence only when a defendant's rights under Article I, section 9, have
been violated.  "[T]he search * * * must violate the defendant's section 9
rights before evidence obtained thereby will be suppressed; a defendant's section
9 rights are not violated merely by admitting evidence obtained in violation of
section 9."  Id. at 315-16.
Here, when the officers first arrived
at the hotel room, it is clear that defendant had a constitutionally protected
privacy interest in both bags.  She owned the bags, she was in possession of
the bags, and both she and the bags were in a private room that she had paid
for (admittedly under a false identity).  The question is whether defendant's
subsequent actions caused her to lose those constitutionally protected privacy
interests.
This court's decision in State v. Cook, 332 Or 601, 34 P3d 156 (2001), is instructive.  In Cook, police
officers, arriving at a parking lot to investigate possible thefts from
vehicles, spotted the defendant standing next to a garbage dumpster sorting
clothing into a duffel bag.  One officer asked the defendant to step away from
the duffel bag, and defendant complied.  The officer asked the defendant whether
the clothing or the bag belonged to him.  The defendant said that they did not,
but that he had found them and was sorting through them for things to use.  The
officers subsequently searched the duffel bag and discovered drugs, as well as
evidence that the bag did belong to the defendant.
On review, the state agreed that the
defendant had a possessory and privacy interest in the duffel bag and its
contents, but it argued that the defendant had relinquished that interest by
denying ownership and walking away from the articles.  Id. at 605-06. 
After reviewing this court's prior case law, the court identified three legal
principles applicable to the analysis: 
"First, the determination whether a defendant has
relinquished a constitutionally protected interest in an article of property
involves both factual and legal questions, which this court reviews in the same
manner that it reviews other search or seizure questions * * *.
"Second, because Article I, section 9,
protects both possessory and privacy interests in effects, property law
concepts of ownership and possession are relevant, though not always
conclusive, in the factual and legal determination whether a defendant
relinquished all constitutionally protected interests in an article of
property.
"Finally, for constitutional purposes, the
question to be resolved in the present case is whether the defendant's
statements and conduct demonstrated that he relinquished all constitutionally
protected interests in the articles of property * * *."
332 Or at 607-08 (citation omitted).  Applying those
principles, the court concluded that the evidence should have been suppressed. 
Id. at 609.  Although the defendant had denied owning the duffel bag,
defendant had expressly claimed a possessory interest in it.  The defendant's
act of stepping away from the bag did not relinquish that possessory interest,
because the defendant merely complied with the officer's direction to do so.  Id.
at 608-09.  
"Leaving the items on the ground in compliance with the
officer's request to 'step out' is not conduct demonstrating an intent
permanently to relinquish possession of the items or the privacy interests that
accompanied the right to possess them.  Under those circumstances, the officers
could not have reasonably concluded that defendant intended to relinquish his
possessory and privacy interests in the clothing and the bag."  
Id. at 609.
As was true in Cook, the
question before us is "whether the defendant's statements and conduct
demonstrated that [she] relinquished all constitutionally protected interests
in the articles of property[.]"  Id. at 608.  Both the trial court
and the Court of Appeals concluded that defendant must be shown to have
intended to relinquish permanently all constitutionally protected
interests.  See Brown, 228 Or App at 203-04 (considering whether
defendant "manifested the intent permanently to relinquish her possessory
or privacy interests").  
In our view, the Court of Appeals'
emphasis on "permanent relinquishment" is problematic.  There are any
number of circumstances in which a person relinquishes privacy interests
without doing so permanently.  An individual who consents to a search of an
item, for example, relinquishes all constitutionally protected privacy
interests in the item.  Under most circumstances, however, it would be
difficult to suggest that the individual has permanently relinquished those
privacy interests, subjecting the item to search at will for the indefinite
future.  Additionally, a person who places an item in plain view has
relinquished any constitutionally protected privacy interest in the item.  That
person, however, may renew the privacy interest simply by removing the item
from plain view.  Similarly, a person who loses an item relinquishes some of
the person's constitutionally protected interest in the property, but only to
the extent necessary to search it for identification, and only so long as the
item remains lost.  See State v. Pidcock, 306 Or 335, 340-42, 759 P2d
1092 (1988), cert den, 489 US 1011 (1989) (lost briefcase; the court
concluded that police officers lawfully could search for identification by
opening the briefcase and, later, the manila envelopes contained inside it; but
"[h]ad the deputies opened the manila envelopes in search of contraband,
they would have violated defendant's state * * * constitutional rights"). 
Once the lost item is returned to its owner, all constitutionally protected
interests ordinarily are renewed.  Even when a privacy interest in an effect has
been lost by execution of a search warrant authorizing its search and seizure, the
owner or possessor can renew the privacy interest in the effect by regaining
its possession.  See State v. Munro, 339 Or 545, 552, 124 P3d 1221
(2005) (seizure of a videotape under authority of a warrant destroyed the
defendant's privacy interests "[u]ntil such time as defendant regained
lawful possession of the videotape").
Moreover, we do not read Cook to
require permanent relinquishment.  As we have quoted previously, the legal
test stated by the court in Cook was "whether the defendant's
statements and conduct demonstrated that he relinquished all constitutionally
protected interests in the articles of property."  332 Or at 608.  The
word "permanently" occurs only once in the Cook opinion, when
the court applied the law to the facts.  In context, the court used the word
"permanently" only to emphasize the transient nature of the
defendant's relinquishment of possession of the property.  See id.
at 608-09 (noting that defendant had "relinquished his immediate
physical possession" of the bag and clothing, but only at the direction of
the officer, and concluding that that was "not conduct demonstrating an
intent permanently to relinquish" either possession or the
accompanying privacy interest (emphases added)).(3) 
In all events, if Cook implied such a requirement, doing so was
unnecessary to our holding in that case, and we disavow that requirement now.
Accordingly, we reject the conclusions
of the Court of Appeals and the trial court that the defendant's conduct must
demonstrate an intent to permanently relinquish all constitutionally
protected interests.  
With the foregoing cases and
discussion in mind, we now consider "whether the defendant's statements
and conduct demonstrated that [she] relinquished all constitutionally protected
interests in the articles of property."  Cook, 332 Or at 608.  Defendant
had a possessory and privacy interest both in the room and in the bags when she
encountered the police.  She relinquished her privacy interest in the room by
denying that she was Katrina Ivanov and giving another (false) identity.  As a
result, the hotel manager insisted that defendant (and the others) leave the
room.  Defendant then was given an opportunity to remove her personal
possessions.  She repeatedly and expressly denied that the bags were hers. 
Defendant made no attempt to claim them or to take them with her.  Her statements
and actions were identical to those of a person who had no possessory or
privacy interest in the bags at all.  Thus, defendant relinquished, at least
temporarily, her possessory and privacy interests in the two bags.
In concluding that suppression of the
evidence was required, the Court of Appeals also emphasized that defendant was
aware that the bags were going to be left in a locked hotel room rented by a
person whom she knew.  Brown, 228 Or App at 204.  To determine whether,
and to what extent, that fact is relevant to our analysis, we first review this
court's prior case law regarding searches of property that has been placed in
the custody of another.
In Tanner, 304 Or at 312, the
defendant had stolen property from his employer and pledged the property to a
couple as collateral for a loan.  Police discovered the property at the couple's
home during an illegal search of their residence.  There was no question that
the illegal search of the couple's home had violated the couple's privacy
rights; as noted previously, however, this court concluded that it needed to
determine whether the search had violated the defendant's privacy
rights.  Id. at 315-16.  The court first explained that nonresidents may
have a privacy interest in the home of another.  The court elaborated on that
with a series of hypotheticals:
"If A invites B to dinner at A's house and the police
burst in on the dinner, it would be ludicrous to contend that the police have
infringed upon a privacy interest of A but not upon a privacy interest of B. *
* * 
"It is true that B, as a dinner guest, has
no right to exclude the police (or anyone else) if A invites them in, but in
that case the police have not violated section 9 at all.  A section 9 privacy
interest is an interest against the state; it is not an interest against
private parties.  That A controls access to the house does not preclude B from
asserting a privacy interest against the state if it violates the privacy of
the house.
"Should the result be any different if,
instead of inviting B to dinner, A allows B to store effects on A's premises? 
In both cases A has allowed B to make use of the privacy of A's house.  * * *
Again, B's section 9 interests will not be violated if A allows the police to
enter the house and discover the effects, but that is because A controls access
to the house, not because B does not have a privacy interest against the
state."
Id. at 321-22 (footnote and citations omitted).  The
court concluded that "the entrustment of an effect to another is
sufficient to establish a privacy interest that is violated when the effect is
discovered through an unlawful search."  Id. at 323.
The Tanner court then
considered whether, on the facts, the defendant had a privacy interest that had
been violated by the state.  The court concluded that he did.  In doing so,
however, the court recognized that the defendant's privacy interest depended
not only on the privacy of the house, but also on the interest that the
defendant had retained in the entrusted property:
"Had the circuit court found that
defendant had sold or given away the effects, that might have been a sufficient
basis for concluding that defendant no longer had a privacy interest that could
be violated by the discovery of the effects, but a person who pledges
effects as collateral is in much the same position as one who entrusts effects
to another for other purposes.  The state contends that defendant had no
immediate right of access to the tapes and equipment, but that fact alone does
not preclude defendant's continuing entrustment of the effects.  So long as
there remained a possibility that defendant would reclaim the effects, the
entrustment was sufficiently viable to demonstrate that the illegal search of
the [couple's] residence violated his privacy interests under section 9."
Id. (citation omitted; emphasis added).
More recently, this court addressed a
similar situation in Howard/Dawson, 342 Or at 635.  There, the
defendants had thrown away garbage that the sanitation company had voluntarily
delivered to the police.  The court first noted that the defendants did not
claim that they had retained any ownership or possessory interest in the garbage
after the sanitation company picked it up.  "If any entity had a
constitutionally protected possessory interest [in the garbage], it was the
sanitation company[,] but that company voluntarily turned the property over to
the police."  Id. at 640.
The only question was whether the
defendants retained a protected privacy interest in the garbage.  Id.  This
court concluded that they did not.  "[W]hen a person gives up all rights
to control the disposition of property, that person also gives up his or her
privacy interest in the property in the same way that he or she would if the
property had been abandoned."  Id. at 642-43 (citation omitted). 
The question whether the defendants retained a constitutionally protected
privacy interest in the garbage was controlled by "the legal relationship
between [the] defendants and the sanitation company."  Id. at 642; see
id. at 641 (noting that the defendants "have not claimed that their
contract with the sanitation company limited what the company could do with the
garbage once the company took possession of it").  Because the defendants
"turned the garbage over to the sanitation company without any restriction
on its disposition, they effectively abandoned that property."  Id.
at 642.
In light of those cases, we now return
to the issue of what weight should be given in this case to defendant having
left the bags in a locked room rented by someone she knew.  We conclude that
that fact does not affect our holding that defendant had relinquished her
constitutionally protected interests in the bags.  As we have already noted,
defendant disclaimed ownership of the bags and voluntarily gave up possession
of them.  In doing so, she abandoned her bags in a locked room to which she
would not have access.  Defendant thus relinquished her possessory rights in
the bags to Beal.  See Howard/Dawson, 342 Or at 640 (noting that it was
uncontested that the defendants had relinquished their possessory interests in
garbage to the sanitation company, once the sanitation company had picked up
the garbage).  Because defendant had relinquished her  possessory rights, she
also had relinquished her privacy interests in the bags.  See id. at
642-43 ("when a person gives up all rights to control the disposition of
property, that person also gives up his or her privacy interest in the property
in the same way that he or she would if the property had been
abandoned").  Beal, by virtue of his control of the room, held the only
remaining possessory and privacy interest in the two bags.  Beal's consent to a
search relinquished the remaining privacy interest in the room and its
contents.  See Tanner, 304 Or at 322 ("B's section 9 interests will
not be violated if A allows the police to enter the house and discover the
effects, * * * because A controls access to the house * * *.").  Accordingly,
when Officer Pfaff searched the two bags, she did not violate any
constitutionally protected privacy interest held by defendant.  The Court of
Appeals and the trial court erred in holding otherwise.
Defendant alternatively contends that
the search violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  It
was unnecessary for the Court of Appeals to reach that question, given its resolution
of the case under Article I, section 9.  In accordance with principles of
judicial economy, we will consider defendant's Fourth Amendment argument.  
The Fourth Amendment protects against
governmental violations of a defendant's reasonable expectation of privacy.  See
Campbell, 306 Or at 163 ("Since Katz [v. United States,
389 US 347, 88 S Ct 507, 19 L Ed 2d 576 (1967)], the [United States Supreme]
Court has defined a Fourth Amendment search as a government action that
infringes upon a 'reasonable expectation of privacy.'" (footnote omitted)). 
In this case, we conclude that defendant's Fourth Amendment rights have not
been violated, for essentially the same reasons that we have already
articulated in connection with our analysis of Article I, section 9.  Defendant
disclaimed ownership of the bags and voluntarily left them behind.  Under the
totality of the circumstances, she no longer retained a reasonable expectation
of privacy in the bags at the time of the search.
The decision of the Court of Appeals
is reversed.  The order of the circuit court is reversed, and the matter is
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
1. It
is not clear from the record whether any evidence was found in the second bag.
2. Tanner
explained the principle further:
"It is not correct * * * to say that a
warrantless search of A's house violated section 9 because it violated
A's privacy interests in the house.  It would be more accurate to say that the
search of A's house violated section 9 because it violated the privacy of the
house.  Given that the police have violated the privacy of the house, the
question then arises whether that violation has infringed upon anyone's privacy
interests.  If the house proves to be abandoned, the police may have violated
section 9 without violating anyone's section 9 rights."
304 Or at 321 (emphases in original).
3. The
relevant part of Cook states:
"Although [the] defendant had relinquished his
immediate physical possession of the bag and clothing by leaving them on
the ground, undisputedly he did so only after [the officer] instructed him to
'step out' of the area near the dumpster where [the] defendant was sorting the
clothes  into the bag.  Leaving the items on the ground in compliance with the
officer's request to 'step out' is not conduct demonstrating an intent
permanently to relinquish possession of the items or the privacy interests
that accompanied the right to possess them.  Under those circumstances, the
officers could not have reasonably concluded that [the] defendant intended to
relinquish his possessory and privacy interests in the clothing and the
bag."
Id. at 608-09 (emphases added).