Opinion ID: 1365667
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The officers were authorized to stop defendant after seeing him commit a traffic violation.

Text: Defendant and the Court of Appeals have characterized the stop in this case as a pretext stop. We have used that term in the past, although without defining its meaning. In State v. Florance, 270 Or. 169, 527 P.2d 1202 (1974), we reexamined the question of the permissible scope of a search of the person incident to a custodial arrest in light of the then recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973). In Florance we held (at 182-84) that Article I, § 9 of the Oregon Constitution [3] should not be construed to place greater restrictions on searches incident to arrests than does the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as interpreted in Robinson. We overruled our prior decisions which placed greater limitations on such searches than did the Robinson rule. The present case does not involve the validity of a search, and the Robinson rule itself, as adopted in Florance, has no application. However, in our opinion in Florance we indicated that further refinement might be required in a case involving what we described as a pretext arrest. [4] As the dissent in Florance pointed out, we did not undertake in that case to define a pretext arrest. There was no need to do so in Florance. We also see no need to define a pretext stop in this case. To attempt to define the term would suggest that it has independent legal significance and would invite the difficulties which attend the creation and labeling of a legal category. [5] We prefer simply to turn our attention to the factual situation before us, treating it as an example of similar factual patterns. Specifically, we are faced first with the validity of the initial stop of a bicycle operator by police officers who had seen him violate a traffic law by failing to stop at a stop sign after the officers' attention had been attracted by behavior which was somewhat unusual, but which did not constitute grounds for a reasonable suspicion that the operator had committed a crime. More generally stated, the first issue before us is whether an officer may validly stop a person who has committed a minor offense in the officer's presence when the officer's curiosity or suspicion has first been aroused by other behavior which would not itself justify a stop. For purposes of analysis we will further assume that the officer might not have noticed the violation itself if his attention had not been attracted by the earlier behavior or appearance and that were it not for the curiosity or suspicion so aroused the officer would probably not have stopped the violator for the offense that he observed. Stopping a vehicle and detaining its occupants is a seizure of the person within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief. Delaware v. Prouse, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660, 667 (1979). The decision to make such a stop may not depend solely upon the standardless and unconstrained discretion of the officer in the field. Id. at ___, 99 S.Ct. at 1400, 59 L.Ed.2d at 672. A police officer's statutory authority to stop a person who has committed an offense in the officer's presence, although not expressed in terms of a stop, is clear. ORS 133.310(1) provides that a peace officer may arrest a person without a warrant if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any offense in the officer's presence. [6] ORS 484.100(1) provides: A police officer may arrest or issue a citation to a person for a traffic offense at any place within the jurisdictional authority of the governmental unit by which he is authorized to act. The authority to stop is a necessary part of the authority to arrest or to issue a citation. Such a stop, clearly authorized by statute, is reasonable for constitutional purposes because based on probable cause when the offense has been committed in the officer's presence and no warrant or additional justification is required. See Hunter v. Clardy, 558 F.2d 290 (5th Cir.1977). An officer who stops a vehicle when he sees its operator commit a traffic violation does not interfere with the operator's freedom of movement based only on the officer's standardless and unconstrained discretion. We see no reason to hold that such a stop is improper or invalid simply because, in addition to probable cause to arrest for a specific offense (or to stop for purposes of issuing a citation), the officer also has a suspicion which contributes to the decision to make the stop. Nor do we believe that determining the validity of an otherwise authorized stop on the basis of the officer's purpose, or primary purpose, in making it would be either practical or desirable. Although some courts have made statements in the course of opinions holding that evidence should be suppressed, indicating that a stop or an arrest was improper because of the arresting officer's motive, we do not believe those cases actually stand for a lack of authority to make the stop at all. [7] No one has contended, either in this case or in the cases cited by defendant, that a citation for the minor offense should be dismissed because the stop was improper. The real concern in those cases was not the validity of the stop itself, but rather the events which followed it and which led to the discovery of evidence of other unrelated offenses. The Court of Appeals stated in State v. Carter/Dawson, 34 Or. App. 21, 28, 578 P.2d 790 (1978) review pending, that a portion of our decision in State v. Valdez, 277 Or. 621, 561 P.2d 1006 (1977), can be read as applying a subjective test in the determination of the validity of a vehicle stop. In that case we held (at 628, 561 P.2d 1006) that an avowedly investigatory stop was improper because the circumstances, viewed objectively, were insufficient to give rise to reasonable suspicion of a crime under ORS 131.615. In the opinion, however, we indicated (at 624, 561 P.2d 1006), without discussion, that we were disregarding evidence of a minor traffic violation because the officer who observed the violation testified that it was not the reason for the stop. Valdez was presented to both the Court of Appeals and this court as a case involving the validity of an investigatory stop. The state did not contend that the stop was justified by the traffic infraction and we did not decide the case on that basis. Valdez simply holds that when a police officer says that although he observed a traffic violation he actually made a stop for an entirely different reason, and was not concerned with enforcement of the traffic laws, the courts will take him at his word. It does not hold that when an officer sees a traffic violation, and when he stops the violator for the avowed purpose of citing for that violation, the court will hold the stop improper for purposes of the exclusionary rule if it concludes that the officer also had other motives for the stop. [8] Judge Tanzer, dissenting in State v. Carter/Dawson , would hold that evidence of other offenses discovered during a traffic stop should not be admissible unless either (1) the officer would have made the stop for that violation even if he did not suspect possible criminal activity and want to investigate further; or (2) the officer had grounds for reasonable suspicion of criminal activity which would justify a stop without regard to the traffic offense. We believe this approach would be unworkable. Any time evidence of criminal activity came to light during a routine traffic stop, trial courts would be called upon to decide whether the officer had noticed anything about the violator or the vehicle beyond the fact of the violation itself and, if so, whether he would have made the stop upon the hypothetical supposition that he had noticed nothing. The Constitution does not require such a strained approach. For these reasons we conclude that neither reason nor authority supports the argument that an otherwise authorized stop is itself rendered invalid by the arresting officer's hope or belief, even if that hope or belief is one of the reasons for his action, that evidence of some other offense may come to light during the course of the encounter. We agree with those courts which have expressly approached the question of the validity of a stop or arrest on an objective, rather than a subjective, basis. [9]