Opinion ID: 835088
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts, procedural background, and parties' arguments

Text: For purposes of the issue presented here, the relevant facts of each case are undisputed.
Defendant Rodgers was stopped by Corvallis Police Officer Van Arsdall for driving a vehicle with a burned-out license plate light in violation of ORS 816.330. Defendant provided Van Arsdall with a valid driver license and vehicle registration, but was unable to provide proof of insurance. Defendant explained that the vehicle was borrowed and that he was driving it with the owner's permission. While they were talking, Van Arsdall noticed a large container of blue liquid on the front passenger floorboard and a white sack with a smaller, square, metallic container inside it on the back seat. Van Arsdall also noticed that defendant had sores on his face, which Van Arsdall believed to be consistent with methamphetamine use. Van Arsdall returned to his patrol car and radioed a request for a records check. In the meantime, a second officer, Kantola, arrived. Van Arsdall explained his observations to Kantola and told him that he believed that defendant had items in his vehicle that likely were used to produce methamphetamine. However, Van Arsdall testified at the suppression hearing that, at that point, he did not have enough information to arrest defendantdefendant's records check had come back clear, and Van Arsdall therefore had a sufficient basis only to issue defendant a traffic citation. Notwithstanding the clear records check, Van Arsdall approached the driver's side of the vehicle, while Kantola approached the passenger side. Van Arsdall asked defendant about the blue liquid, and defendant explained that it was windshield washer fluid. Van Arsdall then expressed concern about the metallic container in the white sack. Defendant removed the container from the sack and explained that it contained denatured alcohol, which he used for his job at a company that manufactured fertilizer. Van Arsdall then asked defendant for consent to search the vehicle. Defendant agreed, and, during the search, the officers found acid, lithium batteries, foil, and cold medicine containing pseudoephedrineall precursor materials for manufacturing methamphetamine. Defendant was charged with unlawful manufacture of a controlled substance. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress the evidence found in the vehicle, on the ground that Van Arsdall unconstitutionally had extended the scope and duration of the traffic stop by questioning him without reasonable suspicion that a crime had been or was being committed. The trial court concluded that Van Arsdall did not have reasonable suspicion to request to search the vehicle. However, the trial court found that defendant's consent to search was voluntary and that Van Arsdall's request for consent did not extend the duration of the stop. The trial court therefore denied defendant's motion to suppress, and defendant was convicted. Defendant appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded. That court concluded that Van Arsdall had extended the traffic stop beyond a reasonable time when he asked defendant about the containers instead of issuing a traffic citation. The Court of Appeals noted that Van Arsdall's questions had been unrelated to the traffic infraction. Because Van Arsdall had lacked reasonable suspicion to extend the stop, the Court of Appeals concluded that defendant's consent was the product of an unlawful seizure under Article I, section 9, and that the evidence discovered in the search of the vehicle therefore should have been suppressed. Rodgers, 219 Or.App. at 374, 182 P.3d 209.
A deputy sheriff who knew defendant by sight and knew that his driver license had been suspended saw defendant driving with a passenger in downtown Willamina. The deputy contacted his dispatcher, who confirmed that defendant had a suspended license but otherwise had no outstanding arrest warrants. Based on that information, the deputy activated his overhead lightswhich remained on throughout the duration of the stopand stopped defendant. Both defendant and the deputy got out of their respective vehicles and walked towards one another. The passenger remained in defendant's vehicle. The deputy was concerned for his safety, because defendant had left his vehicle. When the deputy told defendant the reason for the stop, defendant seemed surprised and handed the deputy an Oregon driver license. Defendant was cooperative and businesslike, and he did not act in a threatening or aggressive manner. Also, throughout the deputy's extensive history of prior contacts with defendant, defendant never had acted in a threatening or violent manner and never had displayed a weapon. At that point, the deputy had defendant's name, date of birth, and driver license number, which was all the information necessary to complete a traffic citation. However, the deputy testified that he probably did not have all the information that he needed because he did not have the vehicle registration and proof of insurance. The deputy told defendant that the license was no good and asked him if he had any weapons on his person or in the vehicle. Defendant stated that he did not have any weapons. The deputy then asked for consent to conduct a patdown, and defendant agreed. At some point, two additional officers arrived and observed the passenger while the deputy talked with defendant. After the patdown of defendant, the deputy felt fairly confident that defendant did not have any firearms on his person, but nonetheless asked for consent to examine each of the items that he had felt in defendant's pockets, because he did not know what they were and wanted to investigate further. Defendant consented. The deputy testified that defendant was not free to leave at that time. The deputy, with defendant's further consent, opened a small metal cylindrical container that he had found during the patdown and discovered two ziplock bags containing a residual amount of a clear crystalline substance that appeared to be methamphetamine. By that time, four to five minutes had elapsed since the beginning of the stop. Defendant was charged with possession of a controlled substance. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress the evidence obtained during the patdown search. He acknowledged that questions concerning the presence of weapons may be authorized under ORS 810.410(3)(d), set out post, 647 Or. at 619 n. 3, 227 P.3d at 701 n. 3. However, defendant argued that, unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion of an immediate threat of serious injury, such questioning including asking for permission to search for weaponsconstituted an unlawful seizure in violation of Article I, section 9, and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The trial court granted defendant's motion. The court concluded that the deputy's request to conduct a patdown had not violated ORS 810.410; however, the trial court further concluded that that request had violated Article I, section 9, because the patdown had gone beyond ordinary social intercourse and therefore had amounted to a seizure of defendant without reasonable suspicion that defendant either posed a danger to the deputy or others, or had committed a crime. The state appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, determining that the outcome was controlled by its decision in Rodgers. The Court of Appeals noted that, at the time that the deputy asked for consent to conduct a patdown, the deputy was not waiting for further information or otherwise prevented from completing the traffic stop; that is, instead of asking defendant for his vehicle registration and proof of insurance, the deputy had proceeded down an unrelated path. The court further determined that, under State v. Hall, 339 Or. 7, 115 P.3d 908 (2005), the consensual search was the product of unlawful police conduct, because defendant had shown that, if not for the unlawful seizure, the deputy would not have been in a position to request consent, and the state for its part had not shown that intervening circumstances or factors had severed the connection between the unlawful stop and defendant's consent. Therefore, the Court of Appeals concluded the trial court properly suppressed the evidence found in the container. Kirkeby, 220 Or.App. at 187, 185 P.3d 510.
The state petitioned for review in both cases. On review, the state argues that the Court of Appeals refused to engage in what is necessarily a fact-specific inquiry into the reasonableness of the totality of [each] encounter. The state contends that, instead, the Court of Appeals adopted a bright-line rule that will require police officers to follow a predetermined list of investigative steps, thereby imposing an artificial and unnecessary restriction on officers that is in no manner compelled by the protection against unreasonable seizures set out in Article I, section 9. The state concedes that the questioning here was unrelated to the traffic violations for which defendants were stopped and that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion to act on what they saw. However, the state asserts that the questions that the officers asked were of the same variety that this court has held to be permissible in officer-citizen encounters, without amounting to seizures under Article I, section 9. See State v. Holmes, 311 Or. 400, 410, 813 P.2d 28 (1991) ([L]aw enforcement officers remain free to approach persons on the street or in public places, seek their cooperation or assistance, request or impart information, or question them without being called upon to articulate a certain level of suspicion in justification if a particular encounter proves fruitful.). The state also asserts that this court already has rejected the premise that an officer may never ask questions unrelated to the stop itself, citing State v. Amaya, 336 Or. 616, 626, 89 P.3d 1163 (2004) (To the extent that defendant argues that every question by an officer that is unrelated to the reason for a valid traffic stop violates Article I, section 9, unless the question is based on reasonable suspicion, we reject defendant's argument. (emphasis in original)). The state acknowledges that, in the context of a lawful traffic stop, the police will have stopped the motorist to question him or her about a traffic violation. Therefore, the state argues, the question becomes whether an officer is entitled to ask questions, including seeking consent to search, without effecting an unreasonable seizure under Article I, section 9. Focusing on the scope and length of the questioning at issue, the state proposes a rule that police questioning that is unrelated to a traffic stop, or a request for consent to search during a lawful traffic stop, will not constitute an unconstitutional seizure if that questioning creates only a de minimis delay during an otherwise lawful stop. That determination, the state argues, involves a fact-specific inquiry into the totality of the circumstances that can take into account the many factors that contribute to the determination [of] whether any given circumstance amounts to an unreasonable seizure. Applying its proposed rule here, the state asserts that, in Rodgers, Van Arsdall's questions and request to search defendant's vehicle did not constitute an unreasonable seizure under Article I, section 9, because Van Arsdall posed the same kinds of questions to defendant during the course of the lawful traffic stop that he could have posed to defendant had he approached him on the street. The two questions that Van Arsdall asked about the blue liquid and the white sack took only a few moments and caused only a de minimis delay. Thus, the state argues, the questions did not render the traffic stop unreasonable in either its length or scope. Likewise, the state argues that, in Kirkeby, the officer's single question about whether defendant had any weapons, followed by a request for consent to conduct a patdown and then a search, did not constitute an unreasonable seizure, because the exchange took only about four to five minutes and the questions could have been asked of any person walking down the street. In response, defendants assert that the traffic stop itself is a seizure for constitutional purposes. Defendants contrast mere conversation between an officer and a person on the streetwho freely may end the interaction and walk awaywith a traffic stop, where the motorist is legally obligated to stop at an officer's direction, must interact with and respond to officer-initiated inquiries, is not free to end the encounter, and may not leave without the officer's consent. Therefore, defendants argue, Article I, section 9, limits an officer to investigatory questions about the vehicle code violation for which a driver is stopped, unless the officer develops reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe that the driver has committed, is attempting to commit, or is committing a crime. [2] Defendants argue that the state's proposed rule, which focuses only on the temporal duration of a stop, is unworkable, because too many variables arise in the traffic stop context. For example, defendants argue that traffic stops have no standard length: an experienced officer would be more efficient than an inexperienced officer, while a stop for a more serious traffic infraction could take longer than a stop for a minor infraction.