Title: Oregon v. Stevens
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S065140
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: December 6, 2018

No. 63	
December 6, 2018	
91
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE
STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
CASSANDRA RENEE STEVENS,
Petitioner on Review.
(CC 12CR1676FE, 12CR1963FE)
(CA A156431 (Control), A156432) (SC S065140)
En Banc
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted June 27, 2018.
Brett J. Allin, Deputy Public Defender, Office of Public 
Defense Services, Salem, argued the cause and filed the 
briefs for petitioner on review. Also on the briefs was Ernest 
G. Lannet, Chief Defender.
Rolf C. Moan, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued 
the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review. Also 
on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and 
Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.
Alexander A. Wheatley, Fisher & Phillips LLP, Portland, 
filed the brief on behalf of amicus curiae Oregon Justice 
Resource Center. Also on the brief was Justin Withem, Janet 
Hoffman & Associates LLC, Portland.
KISTLER, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The 
judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is 
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
____________
	
*  On appeal from Douglas County Circuit Court, Ann Marie Simmons, 
Judge. 286 Or App 306, 399 P3d 1053 (2017).
92	
State v. Stevens
Case Summary: Defendant, a passenger in a lawfully stopped vehicle, moved 
to suppress evidence obtained during that traffic stop after an officer made a 
statement regarding trouble with her parole officer if she were untruthful with 
him. The trial court denied defendant’s motion and convicted defendant of unlaw­
ful possession of methamphetamine after a stipulated facts trial. The Court 
of Appeals affirmed in a written opinion. Held: (1) a passenger in a lawfully 
stopped vehicle is not stopped for purposes of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon 
Constitution; but (2) defendant was stopped when the officer told her during the 
traffic stop that there would be trouble with her parole officer if she were untruth­
ful with him about another passenger’s name.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The judgment of the cir­
cuit court is reversed, and the case is remanded to the circuit court for further 
proceedings.
Cite as 364 Or 91 (2018)	
93
	
KISTLER, J.
	
In State v. Amaya, 336 Or 616, 89 P3d 1163 (2004), 
this court stated that stopping the driver of a car does not 
constitute a seizure of the passengers for the purposes of 
Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. We allowed 
review in this case to decide whether that statement consti­
tuted part of the court’s holding and, if it did, whether we 
should overrule that part of Amaya. For the reasons set out 
below, we conclude that our statement was part of the hold­
ing in Amaya, and we adhere to it.
	
The remaining question in this case is whether 
defendant (a passenger in a van) was stopped without rea­
sonable suspicion at some point during a stop of the driver. 
The trial court ruled that defendant was not stopped until 
an officer asked her for consent to search her backpack, and 
it accordingly denied her motion to suppress evidence dis­
covered during the search. The Court of Appeals upheld the 
trial court’s ruling but on a different ground; it determined 
that the stop did not occur until after defendant had con­
sented to a search of her backpack. State v. Stevens, 286 Or 
App 306, 399 P3d 1053 (2017). Because we hold that the 
stop occurred before defendant gave consent and that the 
officer lacked reasonable suspicion at that point, we reverse 
the Court of Appeals decision and the trial court’s judgment.
	
We take the facts from the hearing on defendant’s 
suppression motion and state them consistently with the 
trial court’s ruling. While on patrol, Officer Klopfenstein 
stopped a van because one of its headlights was out. There 
were three passengers in the minivan. After asking the 
driver for his identification, the officer asked the driver 
about the passengers, and the driver explained that he had 
just met them. Klopfenstein returned to his patrol car to ask 
dispatch to run a records check on the driver.
	
While Klopfenstein waited for dispatch to get back 
to him, he approached the van a second time. On coming 
back to the van, Klopfenstein noticed that one of the pas­
sengers in the back seat was acting as if he were extremely 
intoxicated. Klopfenstein asked that passenger for identifi­
cation. The passenger responded that he did not have any 
94	
State v. Stevens
identification on him but said that his name was Jonathan 
Shaw. When Klopfenstein asked Shaw to spell his name, 
Shaw gave multiple, inconsistent spellings of Jonathan. 
Klopfenstein asked the driver if he could open the sliding 
door to the back of the van so he could hear Shaw better. The 
driver agreed, and Klopfenstein opened the door.
	
When that proved unsuccessful, Klopfenstein 
directed his attention toward defendant, who was sitting 
in the back seat next to Shaw. Klopfenstein asked defen­
dant for her name. Defendant told him her name and added 
that she was on parole. When Klopfenstein asked defen­
dant if she knew Shaw, she said that she had known him 
for a couple of years and that she had always known him 
as Jonathan Shaw. With that information, Klopfenstein 
returned to his patrol car to run a records check on both 
Shaw and defendant.
	
That records check confirmed that defendant was 
on parole, but the photograph on file for Jonathan Shaw did 
not resemble the person in the van. By this time, a second 
officer had arrived, and Klopfenstein again returned to the 
van. He asked Shaw to step out of the van. According to 
Klopfenstein, he confronted Shaw with the fact that he did 
not resemble the picture of Jonathan Shaw on file with the 
Department of Transportation. As Klopfenstein testified, he 
kept “going back to [defendant] and going back to [Shaw] 
and going back” to defendant to find out Shaw’s real name. 
Klopfenstein explained that his interactions with defendant 
were very friendly “other than initially me coming back to 
her saying (—Inaudible—) you’re on parole. If [Shaw] has a 
warrant and you’re telling me he’s Jonathan and he’s Jimmy 
there’s going to be trouble for you * 
* 
* potentially through 
your P[arole] O[fficer].” After Klopfenstein implied that he 
would be speaking with defendant’s parole officer, defendant 
told him Shaw’s real name—Jimmy.
	
At that point, a records check on Jimmy Shaw came 
back showing that there were no outstanding warrants. 
While he was away from the van and without defendant’s 
knowledge, Klopfenstein called defendant’s parole officer. 
During that call, the parole officer told Klopfenstein that 
she recently had found a backpack with pills in it and that 
Cite as 364 Or 91 (2018)	
95
she thought that the pills belonged to Shaw. The parole offi­
cer explained that defendant had been with Shaw when the 
pills were found in the backpack and that, if defendant was 
with Shaw again, “it was [the parole officer’s] opinion that 
[defendant] was * 
* 
* likely using drugs again.”
	
After speaking with the parole officer, Klopfenstein 
returned and noticed that defendant had gotten out of the 
van. He also noticed that defendant had a backpack over her 
shoulder and that it “appeared she was going to be walking 
off.”1 Klopfenstein did not tell defendant to stop, but he did 
ask her if he “could search her backpack.” She consented.
	
Although the record is not completely clear, at some 
point during that process, the second officer had begun 
searching Shaw’s bag. What is clear from the record is that, 
when Klopfenstein asked defendant if he could search her 
backpack, the second officer “was over on the other side 
of his car with Mr.  Shaw wrapping up.” As Klopfenstein 
explained,
“Mr. Shaw was putting his stuff [back] because we had 
searched Mr. Shaw’s bag and found some brass knuckles 
and other stuff, and [the other officer] was in the process of 
just kind of watching Mr. Shaw while he bundled his stuff 
up getting ready to leave.”
When Klopfenstein searched defendant’s backpack pur­
suant to her consent, he found a pipe with residue in it, 
which turned out to be methamphetamine. At that point, 
Klopfenstein read defendant her Miranda rights, asked her 
more questions, and placed her under arrest.
	
The state charged defendant with possessing meth­
amphetamine. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress 
	
1  Defendant testified to a different version of events. She testified that 
Klopfenstein was waiting for a call from the parole officer, that she “was tired of 
waiting [for the parole officer to call] and I asked him, I said, well, can I just walk. 
He says yeah.” The trial court, however, did not credit defendant’s testimony. 
Rather, it explicitly found, as Klopfenstein had testified, that he was not in fact 
waiting for a call from the parole officer and that, when Klopfenstein finished 
the call with the parole officer, he “saw the Defendant getting out of the van and 
asked her if he could search and she consented.” Because the trial court cred­
ited Klopfenstein’s version of the events, it necessarily did not credit defendant’s 
statement that, while Klopfenstein was waiting for a call from her parole officer, 
she asked him whether she could “just walk,” and he said “yeah.”
96	
State v. Stevens
the evidence discovered as a result of the consent search, 
arguing, among other things, that Klopfenstein unlawfully 
had stopped her before she consented. The trial court denied 
her motion and found that Klopfenstein “did not ask [defen­
dant] to get out of the van,” that defendant voluntarily con­
sented to the search of her bag, and that “the stop actu­
ally initiated when [Klopfenstein] asked [defendant] if [s]he 

[w]ould consent.” After a stipulated facts trial, the court 
found defendant guilty of unlawful possession of metham­
phetamine and entered judgment accordingly.
	
Defendant appealed from the judgment, assigning 
error to the trial court’s ruling denying her motion to sup­
press. On appeal, defendant renewed her argument that 
Klopfenstein had unlawfully stopped her before she con­
sented to the search and that the search was a product of 
that illegality. See Stevens, 286 Or App at 307. The Court 
of Appeals concluded that the stop and the resulting con­
sent were lawful. Consistently with this court’s decision in 
Amaya, the Court of Appeals reasoned that “a passenger 
in a lawfully stopped vehicle is not automatically seized by 
virtue of her status as a passenger.” Id. at 312. The court 
then held that defendant was not stopped until after she had 
given voluntary consent to search. The court explained that, 
before then, “all that [Klopfenstein] had done was ask defen­
dant questions, request information, and seek her coopera­
tion with respect to [the] investigation of Shaw’s identity.” 
Id. at 314. Because defendant’s consent preceded the stop, 
the Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s ruling denying 
defendant’s motion to suppress. Id.
	
On review, defendant raises primarily two issues. 
Relying on Brendlin v. California, 551 US 249, 127 S Ct 2400, 
168 L Ed 2d 132 (2007), she argues initially that we should 
hold under Article I, section 9, that the passengers in a car 
are stopped when the car is stopped. Defendant acknowl­
edges that for us to accept her proposed rule, we would 
have to either distinguish or overrule Amaya and State v. 
Thompkin, 341 Or 368, 143 P3d 530 (2006). Defendant recog­
nizes that both cases clearly stated that stopping a car does 
not constitute a seizure of the passengers for state constitu­
tional purposes, but she argues that the court’s statements 
Cite as 364 Or 91 (2018)	
97
in those cases were either dicta or inadequately considered.2 
Alternatively, defendant argues that, even if she were not 
stopped when the car was stopped, Klopfenstein unlawfully 
stopped her later when he told her that she could be in trou­
ble with her probation officer if it turned out that Shaw’s 
name was not Jonathan and there was a warrant out for his 
arrest. Defendant reasons that her consent was the product 
of that unlawful seizure.
	
We begin with defendant’s argument that our 
decisions in Amaya and Thompkin should either be distin­
guished or overruled. Defendant argues initially that our 
ruling in those cases—that for state constitutional pur­
poses stopping a driver does not constitute a seizure of the 

passengers—was dicta. It follows, she concludes, that we 
need not overrule Amaya and Thompkin. It is sufficient to 
distinguish them. In considering defendant’s argument, we 
begin with our decision in Amaya.
	
The defendant in Amaya was a passenger in a van 
that was stopped for failing to signal and driving with a bro­
ken license plate light. 336 Or at 618. The defendant argued 
that an officer had seized her, at the latest, when he asked 
her about the contents of her bag after she had stepped out 
of the van at the officer’s request. Id. at 629-30.3 In seeking 
to determine the point at which the stop occurred, this court 
began by recognizing that, in stopping the van, the officer 
had not seized the defendant for the purposes of Article I, 
section 9; that is, the stop of the driver of the van was not 
itself a coercive circumstance as to the defendant, neither 
was the officer’s request for the defendant to step out of the 
van at least when the driver had consented to a search of 
the van. Id. at 630-31. However, this court observed that 
a further exercise of coercive authority after the defendant 
	
2  In defendant’s view, the continuing validity of Amaya matters because 
Klopfenstein unnecessarily prolonged the stop of the driver. Defendant argues 
that, if the stop of the driver was thus unlawful and she was stopped derivatively, 
then her stop was also unlawful.
	
3  The defendant identified a series of actions that the officer took before he 
asked her about the contents of her bag that, in the defendant’s view, constituted 
a seizure. Amaya, 336 Or at 628-30. The court rejected some of those arguments 
as either unpreserved or because they depended on factual premises that were 
inconsistent with the trial court’s findings. Id.
98	
State v. Stevens
had stepped out of the van could constitute a seizure. Id. at 
631.
	
Ultimately, this court concluded that it was “unnec­
essary * 
* 
* to decide if [the] defendant was ‘seized’ by [the 
officer]’s question[s]” to the defendant because, by the time 
he posed the questions, any stop was justified because he 
reasonably suspected that she posed an immediate threat 
of serious injury to him. Id. As we read the court’s decision 
in Amaya, it was necessary to consider the coercive force 
of the circumstances that preceded the officer’s questions 
about the defendant’s bag to determine whether a stop 
occurred before the officer posed those questions. It may 
be, as defendant argues, that this court could have ana­
lyzed the stop issue in Amaya differently than it did. It does 
not follow, however, that this court’s conclusion—that the 
stop of the driver was not a seizure of the passengers for 
the purposes of the Oregon Constitution—was dicta. The 
fact that the court might have reached the same conclusion 
by a different route does not mean that the route it chose 
to take does not have precedential force. See Engweiler v. 
Persson/Dept. of Corrections, 354 Or 549, 558-59, 316 P3d 
264 (2013) (explaining that foundational reasoning is not 
dicta even when the rationale could have been structured 

differently).
	
Any doubt about the precedential force of Amaya 
was resolved two years later in Thompkin. The defendant in 
Thompkin was a passenger in a lawfully stopped car, as the 
defendant in Amaya had been. Thompkin, 341 Or at 371. In 
considering whether the defendant was seized at some point 
after the car had been stopped, the court began in Thompkin 
by quoting Amaya for the proposition that passengers in a 
lawfully stopped car are not automatically seized for the 
purposes of Article I, section 9. Id. at 377. The court also 
recognized that the officer in Thompkin had no independent 
reasonable suspicion for stopping the defendant. Id. at 376. 
The court concluded that the officer had seized the defen­
dant midway through the stop without reasonable suspicion 
when the officer retained the defendant’s identification, con­
ducted a warrants check, and questioned her about illegal 
activity. Id. at 378-79.
Cite as 364 Or 91 (2018)	
99
	
Defendant argues that there was no need for this 
court to decide whether the defendant in Thompkin was 
seized when the car was stopped initially because the court 
determined that she was seized later during the stop. We 
reach a different conclusion. It was only because the court 
held initially that the defendant had not been seized when 
the officer first stopped the driver that the later seizure of the 
defendant without reasonable suspicion became a constitu­
tional problem. Put differently, if the defendant in Thompkin 
had been lawfully stopped as a result of the earlier consti­
tutional stop of the driver, then it is difficult to see how the 
officer’s later actions during a lawful stop would have consti­
tuted a separate seizure that required additional justifica­
tion, at least under the precedents that defendant urges us 
to adopt. Contrary to defendant’s argument, the proposition 
from Amaya—that the stop of the driver is not a seizure of 
the passengers for state constitutional purposes—was a nec­
essary predicate to the court’s holding in Thompkin that the 
officers seized the defendant without reasonable suspicion in 
violation of Article I, section 9, midway through the lawful 
stop of the driver.
	
Having concluded that the rule announced in 
Amaya and applied in Thompkin was essential to those 
decisions, we turn to defendant’s argument that we should 
reconsider that rule. As we understand defendant’s argu­
ment, she faults this court’s decision in Amaya on the 
ground that the court did not offer any “analysis or expla­
nation” for its rule. Additionally, relying on Brendlin, she 
argues that passengers in a stopped car would not feel 
free to walk away and that there are sound policy reasons 
for treating a stop of a car as a stop of the passengers. As 
we understand the rule in Brendlin, it rests on the propo­
sition that, even when an officer lacks a reasonable suspi­
cion that the passengers in a stopped car have committed 
a traffic or criminal offense, a categorical rule that passen­
gers may be seized when the driver is stopped is justified 
for officer safety reasons. Brendlin, 551 US at 258 (citing 
Maryland v. Wilson, 519 US 408, 414-15, 117 S Ct 882, 137 
L Ed 2d 41 (1997)); see Arizona v. Johnson, 555 US 323, 
331-32, 129 S Ct 781, 172 L Ed 2d 694 (2009) (discussing 

Brendlin).
100	
State v. Stevens
	
Oregon has taken a different course. Unlike the 
federal courts, the Oregon courts have not recognized a 
categorical right to direct the passengers to step out of a 
stopped car or comply with the officer’s demands. See State 
v. Ayles, 348 Or 622, 628, 237 P3d 805 (2010) (accepting 
the state’s concession that retaining the passenger’s iden­
tification during an otherwise valid traffic stop constituted 
an unjustified seizure of the passenger). Indeed, this court 
declined to adopt the state’s proposed per se rule that offi­
cers always may ask a stopped defendant whether he or she 
has a weapon. State v. Jimenez, 357 Or 417, 426, 353 P3d 
1227 (2015). It held instead that an officer may extend a stop 
by asking the defendant about a weapon only when the ques­
tion is “reasonably related” to the stop—i.e., when there is 
a “reasonable, circumstance-specific” relationship between 
the stop and the question. Id. at 429; see also State v. Miller, 
363 Or 374, 422 P3d 240, adhered to as modified, 363 Or 742, 
428 P3d 899 (2018) (applying Jimenez to a suspect stopped 
for driving under the influence).
	
This court’s decisions in Amaya and Thompkin fit 
comfortably within that state constitutional framework. 
They recognize that a reasonable suspicion that a driver 
has committed a traffic or other offense does not justify a 
categorical limitation on the passenger’s freedom and that 
an officer may not seize a passenger without a constitutional 
justification for doing so. Moreover, implicit in Amaya and 
Ayles is the proposition that the passengers in a car stopped 
for a traffic or criminal offense would not understand that 
the officer’s show of authority in stopping the driver extended 
to them. For us to overrule Amaya, as defendant requests, 
would create an anomaly in an otherwise consistent pat­
tern of Article I, section 9, decisions. We decline to do so and 
adhere to our decision in Amaya.
	
Because Klopfenstein’s stop of the driver did not 
seize defendant, the question becomes whether he seized 
defendant later during the stop. That is, did Klopfenstein 
convey to defendant “either by word, action, or both, that 
[she was] not free to terminate the encounter or otherwise 
go about [h]er ordinary affairs.” State v. Backstrand, 354 Or 
392, 401, 313 P3d 1084 (2013); see id. (“What is required is a 
reasonable perception that an officer is exercising his or her 
Cite as 364 Or 91 (2018)	
101
official authority to restrain.”). On that issue, we have rec­
ognized that “verbal inquiries by officers are not seizures.” 
Id. at 403 (internal quotation marks omitted). “[S]omething 
more than just asking a question, requesting information, or 
seeking an individual’s cooperation is required of an officer’s 
conduct.” Id. However,
“when the content of the questions, the manner of asking 
them, or other actions that the police take (along with the 
circumstances in which they take them) would convey to 
a reasonable person that the police are exercising their 
authority to coercively detain the citizen, then the encoun­
ter rises to the level of a seizure, the lawfulness of which 
must be analyzed as such.”
Id. at 412.
	
With that standard in mind, we turn to the 
facts of this case. Under Backstrand, the mere fact that 
Klopfenstein asked defendant to confirm Shaw’s name did 
not constitute a seizure. As Backstrand explained, offi­
cers are free to ask citizens for information without mere 
conversation becoming a seizure. However, after that ini­
tial inquiry, Klopfenstein’s questions and actions became 
increasingly coercive. Specifically, Shaw had been behaving 
oddly, and Klopfenstein asked Shaw for his identification.4 
Even though Shaw’s response (he could not spell Jonathan) 
raised questions, defendant told Klopfenstein that she had 
known Shaw for two years and confirmed that his name 
really was Jonathan Shaw. She thus became enmeshed in 
Klopfenstein’s extended inquiry of Shaw.
	
Specifically, when Klopfenstein learned after run­
ning a records check that Jonathan Shaw’s picture did not 
resemble the passenger in the minivan, he confronted Shaw 
with that discrepancy. Defendant had been sitting beside 
Shaw and had vouched that his name was Jonathan, and 
Klopfenstein went “back and forth” between Shaw and defen­
dant asking each one what Shaw’s real name was. Finally, 
he turned to defendant and told her that if she were lying 
about Shaw’s real name and if it turned out that there was 
	
4  We express no opinion on whether Klopfenstein’s question to Shaw was rea­
sonably related to the stop of the driver.
102	
State v. Stevens
an outstanding warrant for Shaw’s arrest, defendant could 
potentially be in trouble with her parole officer.
	
At that point, if not before, Klopfenstein’s inter­
action with defendant constituted a seizure. See State v. 
K. 
A. 
M., 361 Or 805, 813, 401 P3d 774 (2017); see also State 
v. Jackson, 268 Or App 139, 146, 342 P3d 119 (2014) (col­
lecting cases holding that asserting that a person has com­
mitted a crime can constitute a stop). A reasonable person 
in defendant’s position would not have felt free to terminate 
the inquiry and go about her business. Indeed, by warning 
defendant that, if it turned out she were lying, she could 
be in trouble with her parole officer, Klopfenstein implicitly 
communicated to defendant that she was not free to leave 
until he determined who Shaw really was and whether a 
warrant had been issued for Shaw’s arrest.
	
By the time that Klopfenstein made that statement, 
Shaw and defendant had become inextricably intercon­
nected. She had vouched for him when she confirmed that 
his name was Jonathan, and Klopfenstein had insistently 
focused on both of them in trying to figure out Shaw’s real 
name, confronting Shaw with the discrepancy between his 
appearance and the picture of Jonathan Shaw, going “back 
and forth” between Shaw and defendant in an effort to 
learn Shaw’s name, and leveraging the possibility of trouble 
with defendant’s parole officer to cause her to admit Shaw’s 
real name. In short, defendant reasonably perceived from 
Klopfenstein’s show of authority that she was not free to 
leave until Shaw’s true identity and warrant status were 
determined.
	
The state does not argue that Klopfenstein rea­
sonably suspected that defendant had committed a crime 
when he told her that she could be in trouble with her parole 
officer if she were lying about Shaw’s name.5 The state, 
	
5  At that point, Klopfenstein had not spoken to defendant’s parole officer. 
Moreover, even after he had done so, he testified that he did not believe he had 
a basis for stopping her. Specifically, Klopfenstein agreed on cross-examination 
that, when he asked defendant for consent to search her backpack, he “didn’t have 
information that [defendant had] violated the law and [the parole officer] didn’t 
actually ask [him] to detain [defendant].” Klopfenstein also agreed that, in ask­
ing for consent, it was “[n]ot so much that [he had] reasonable suspicion so much 
as it [wa]s that [he] just fe[lt] that there’s some things that [he] should look into 
if [defendant] w[ould] let [him].”
Cite as 364 Or 91 (2018)	
103
however, argues that any seizure that occurred as a result of 
that statement ended before Klopfenstein asked defendant 
for consent to search her backpack. The state notes that 
Klopfenstein testified that, when he finished his call with 
defendant’s parole officer, he saw that defendant had gotten 
out of the van, and it “appeared she was going to be walking 
off.”6 The state reasons that, because it appeared as if defen­
dant was “just going to be walking off,” either Klopfenstein’s 
earlier statements had not, in fact, restrained her or the 
seizure had ended and she understood that she was free to 
leave.
	
One difficulty with the state’s argument is that, 
when Klopfenstein saw defendant apparently walking off, he 
asked her for consent to search her backpack. To be sure, he 
did not explicitly tell her to stop. However, his question com­
municated that she was not free to go. He still wanted to see 
what she had in the backpack. Whatever might be inferred 
from defendant’s incipient effort to walk off, Klopfenstein 
did not let her go. Moreover, the other officer was conclud­
ing a search of Shaw’s belongings when Klopfenstein asked 
defendant for consent to search her backpack. We are not 
persuaded that a reasonable person in these circumstances 
would have understood that the encounter had reverted to 
mere conversation.
	
Beyond arguing that any seizure had ended before 
Klopfenstein asked for consent to search defendant’s back­
pack, the state reasonably does not argue that defendant’s 
consent was not the product of the earlier unlawful sei­
zure. See State v. Unger, 356 Or 59, 75, 333 P3d 1009 (2014) 
(explaining that, when consent to search follows an unlaw­
ful stop, the state must “demonstrat[e] that (1) the consent 
was voluntary; and (2) the voluntary consent was not the 
product of police exploitation of the illegal stop or search”). 
Not only was there no break in time between the seizure and 
the request for consent, but the contemporaneous search of 
	
6  The state also relies on defendant’s testimony about the events that sur­
rounded Klopfenstein’s call to the probation officer. As noted above, however, 
the trial court rejected defendant’s testimony and credited Klopfenstein’s. As we 
read the trial court’s findings and the record, the court could not have credited 
Klopfenstein’s testimony without rejecting all of defendant’s testimony on that 
issue.
104	
State v. Stevens
Shaw’s belongings reinforced the notion that Klopfenstein’s 
request to search her backpack related to and grew out of his 
efforts to learn Shaw’s name. See State v. Jarnagin, 351 Or 
703, 277 P3d 535 (2012) (noting factors that bear on attenu­
ation). Because Klopfenstein unlawfully stopped defendant 
before asking for her consent to search her backpack and 
because we are not persuaded that defendant’s consent was 
attenuated from the unlawful seizure, we conclude that 
the trial court should have granted defendant’s motion to 
suppress.
	
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. 
The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case 
is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.