Court Opinion

ID: 9782650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:01:42.207643+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:27:47.835930
License: Public Domain

*635HASELTON, P. J.,
concurring.
The trial court erred in denying suppression, but not for the reasons advanced by Judge Rosenblum in the lead opinion. Our dispute turns on the timing of the operative “stop.”1
The lead opinion rests on the premise that the stop did not occur until Deputy Gerba actually contacted dispatch. See 231 Or App at 628 (characterizing Gerba’s call to dispatch as “the very act that effected the stop”). However, as amplified below, if the stop began at that point, there would be no basis for suppression under State v. Hall, 339 Or 7, 115 P3d 908 (2005), because no inculpatory information was obtained from defendant, by way of questioning, consent, or observation, during or immediately after the stop.
Conversely, in my view, the stop began earlier— when, in response to Gerba’s inquiries, defendant produced, and Gerba took, defendant’s driver’s license. At that point, “in the totality of the circumstances * * * ‘a reasonable person in defendant’s position could have believed’ that he was not free to go.” State v. Parker, 225 Or App 610, 615, 202 P3d 205, adh’d to as modified on recons, 227 Or App 413, 206 P3d 259 (2009) (quoting State v. Toevs, 327 Or 525, 536, 964 P2d 1007 (1998)); see also State v. Ashbaugh, 225 Or App 16, 24-25, 200 P3d 149 (2008), rev allowed, 346 Or 257 (2009). And it was at that point — before Gerba ever contacted dispatch — that Gerba obtained ultimately inculpatory information from defendant, viz., defendant’s identification and date of birth, which, in turn, yielded the information that defendant’s driving privileges had been suspended. Consequently, unless the trial court determines on remand that defendant did not subjectively believe that his freedom of movement had been *636significantly restrained, see, e.g., Ashbaugh, suppression is required.
At first blush, that distinction with respect to the timing of the operative stop may seem to be academic, perhaps even metaphysical — after all, defendant was stopped, and the difference is a matter of only a few seconds. However, that distinction has profound implications regarding Hall’s proper application, which I will endeavor to explain below. See 231 Or App at 641-42 (Haselton, P. J., concurring).
The facts material to our review of the trial court’s denial of suppression are undisputed and straightforward. Defendant and his girlfriend, Rodriguez, were shopping late at night in an adult novelty and book store. That establishment was posted as excluding anyone under the age of 18. Gerba, who was on patrol (and, thus, presumably was in full uniform), entered the store and, immediately upon seeing defendant and Rodriguez, “contacted” them because “on the door it says you’ve got to be 18 or older.” Gerba asked defendant and Rodriguez how old they were, and defendant replied that he was 22 years old. Gerba, who was unsatisfied with that response because “he looked pretty young to me,” then asked defendant and Rodriguez if they had any identification. In response, defendant and Rodriguez then handed their driver’s licenses to Gerba, who took them and retained them for 10 to 15 seconds, during which he contacted dispatch, which “[r]an the numbers.” Gerba did so to confirm that defendant’s and Rodriguez’s licenses were genuine, not “fake.” Gerba then returned the licenses and said, “[H]ave a good day.”
Gerba then left the store and, immediately thereafter, dispatch responded that defendant’s identification was genuine but his driving privileges had been suspended. Gerba returned to his patrol car and continued to watch the store for security purposes. About five minutes later, he saw defendant and Rodriguez come out of the store and get into a car, with defendant driving. Based on the information obtained from dispatch, Gerba stopped and arrested defendant for driving while suspended.
*637Defendant was subsequently charged with misdemeanor driving while revoked, ORS 811.182.2 Defendant moved to suppress all evidence that was the product of his encounter with Gerba in the store — including his identity and date of birth, dispatch’s consequent communication to Gerba that defendant’s driving privileges had been “suspended,” and the arrest that was predicated on that information. The trial court denied suppression and convicted defendant.
On appeal, as before the trial court, the dispute centers on suppression. As framed by the parties, the proper disposition of this case — as in the entire genre of post-Hall cases — requires consideration of three ultimately interrelated questions: (1) Was defendant unlawfully stopped? (2) If so, when? (3) Was the unlawful stop so related to inculpatory evidence that the constitution — here, defendant invoked only Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution— compels suppression of that evidence?3
I begin with the first two, interrelated questions of whether, and when, defendant was unlawfully stopped. The question of timing here is especially critical because, with respect to defendant’s ultimate arrest, the only inculpatory information that Gerba obtained from defendant, by questioning, consent, or observation, was defendant’s name and date of birth, which Gerba did not know until he took and inspected defendant’s driver’s license. Thus, if defendant were unlawfully stopped at the time that Gerba took his license, that would be a quintessential Hall scenario, in which inculpatory information was elicited or obtained during or following an unlawful stop. Conversely, if the stop did not begin until thereafter, the circumstances would depart qualitatively from those within the standard Hall construct because the only inculpatory information elicited from defendant would have been obtained before the stop.
*638Defendant (perhaps appreciating the importance of that distinction) argues that he was stopped “[a]t the moment [Gerba] took and retained defendant’s ID for the purposes of calling his information into dispatch in defendant’s presence.” That contention appears to be based on either, or both, of two propositions: (1) An officer’s mere physical receipt of a citizen’s driver’s license or similar identification in and of itself effects a stop, regardless of the attendant circumstances or how long the document is in the officer’s possession. (2) Even if an officer’s receipt and possession of a driver’s license or identification does not per se effect a stop, in the totality of circumstances here, a person in defendant’s position could, upon producing identification in response to an officer’s inquiry, reasonably believe that he or she was not free to leave, at least until the document is returned.
To the extent that defendant is relying on some bare, per se notion of mere “physical receipt and possession,” that contention is unavailing as incompatible with Hall and irreconcilable with our own pre-Hall precedent. If, in Hall, the officer’s brief retention of the defendant’s identification would have been sufficient, in and of itself, to effect a stop, the Supreme Court could easily have said so. But it didn’t. Rather, the court emphasized the concurrence of the officer contacting dispatch for a warrants check. Hall, 339 Or at 19.
Further, we have repeatedly rejected arguments that an officer’s physical receipt of a driver’s license per se effects a stop. See, e.g., State v. Woods, 102 Or App 671, 675, 796 P2d 1209, rev den, 310 Or 422 (1990) (where the defendant, in response to officer’s request, produced his driver’s license and officer, after taking it, “wrote down the license information in his notebook and immediately handed it back to [the] defendant,” “there had not been a sufficient show of authority to constitute a stop”); State v. Jackson, 91 Or App 425, 428, 755 P2d 732, rev den, 306 Or 661 (1988) (concluding that where, at officer’s request, the defendant gave identification to officer and made inculpatory admissions that his license had been revoked before the officer ran a records check, inculpatory admissions were not made during the course of an unlawful stop because they antedated the officer’s “retention” of the identification card for investigatory “record check purposes” (emphasis in original)); accord State *639v. Starr, 91 Or App 267, 269-70, 754 P2d 618 (1988) (although officer’s initial request for identification did not “transform the encounter into a stop,” subsequent retention of the license for “five to ten minutes,” “constituted a show of authority sufficient to lead a reasonable person to believe that he was not free to leave”).
Nevertheless, I do agree with defendant’s alternative, broadly contextual argument that, in the totality of the circumstances, the stop began when Gerba took defendant’s identification. That is so because, although “retention of a suspect’s identification, or the length of retention * * *, is not the touchstone of whether a stop has occurred,” in this case, in the totality of the circumstances, an objectively reasonable person in defendant’s position could have understood at that point that “he or she [was] under investigation and [was] not free to leave” until, at least, Gerba returned the license. State v. Highley, 219 Or App 100, 109, 180 P3d 1230 (2008), rev pending (2009).
The operative inquiry under State v. Holmes, 311 Or 400, 409-10, 813 P2d 28 (1991), as construed in Ashbaugh, 225 Or App at 22-25, and amplified in Parker, is as follows:
“[A] Holmes type (b) inquiry implicates conjunctive subjective and objective components — viz., the defendant subjectively believed that he or she was significantly restrained and that belief was objectively reasonable. Consequently, as the party bearing the burden of demonstrating the lawfulness of the search, the state can prevail against a Holmes type (b)-based motion to suppress if it disproves either of those conjunctive components. That is, the state can prevail either (1) by proving that the defendant did not believe that the officer had significantly restrained or interfered with the defendant’s freedom of movement or (2) if such a belief would not be objectively reasonable. [Ashbaugh, 225 Or App] at 24. In assessing whether ‘such a belief is objectively reasonable under the circumstances,’ the operative inquiry is whether ‘ “a reasonable person in defendant’s position could have believed that the officers significantly had restricted [his or her] liberty or freedom of movement.” ’ [Ashbaugh, 225 Or App] at 25 (quoting Toevs, 327 Or at 536) * * *.”
*640Parker, 225 Or App at 614-15 (emphasis omitted). See also id. at 615 (emphasizing that “the controlling inquiry” with respect to the objective component of the Holmes type (b) inquiry “is not whether every reasonable person would have so believed, but, instead, whether a reasonable person could have so believed” (emphasis in original)).
The circumstances here pertaining to the objective component of the Holmes type (b) inquiry are undisputed and straightforward: Defendant and his girlfriend were shopping in an adult bookstore, and the door to that store stated that persons under the age of 18 were excluded. Gerba, a uniformed officer, entered the store and, immediately upon seeing defendant and his girlfriend, asked defendant how old he was. When defendant responded that he was 22, Gerba obviously did not accept or believe that response. Instead, he asked defendant and his girlfriend if they had any identification. In response to that inquiry, they both produced driver’s licenses, which Gerba then took.
Thus, this was not a case in which an officer merely requested and retained identification. Rather, in context— viz., the store being posted so as to exclude persons under the age of 18, Gerba’s immediate approach to the couple and questions about their ages, and his apparent disbelief of defendant’s response — a person in defendant’s position could reasonably have understood that Gerba was investigating him for some criminal activity (ostensibly, being underage in an adult bookstore).4 A person in those circumstances could *641also have understood reasonably that Gerba had requested the production of identification — and would seek to confirm the validity of that identification — as part of that continuing investigation. Consequently, a person in defendant’s circumstances could reasonably have understood that, once Gerba took the identification, lie or she would not be free to leave until, at least, the officer returned the identification.
The circumstances of this case are conceptually analogous to those in State v. Zamora-Martinez, 229 Or App 397, 211 P3d 349 (2009). There, we reversed the defendant’s convictions for criminal possession of forged instruments, concluding that the trial court had erred in denying the defendant’s motion to suppress two forged documents that the defendant contended were the product of an unlawful stop. Id. at 399.
In Zamora-Martinez, Hillsboro police and a federal immigration agent executed a search warrant at the defendant’s sister’s house. The defendant’s sister was not present and, because all the adults who were present were taken into custody, the sister’s children would have been left without adult supervision. At his sister’s request, the defendant went to the residence to pick up the children. Id. at 399. When the defendant arrived, the Hillsboro officers asked why the defendant was there and, when he explained, the federal immigration agent asked to see the defendant’s identification. Id. at 399-400. The defendant then produced an Oregon identification card, and the immigration agent asked the defendant where he was from. When the defendant responded, “Mexico,” the agent asked whether the defendant had any other identification — and, in response, the defendant produced a resident alien card and a Social Security card, both of which the agent immediately recognized as forgeries. Id. at 400.
The dispositive issue with respect to suppression was whether the defendant had been stopped before he produced the second set of identifying documents (which became the basis for the criminal charges). Id. at 400-01. In reversing *642the trial court’s denial of suppression, we agreed with the defendant that (at least for purposes of the objective component of the Holmes type (b) inquiry) the encounter escalated into a stop when the agent “asked whether [the] defendant had additional identification.” Id. at 401.
In so holding, we concluded that the initial request for identification did not effect a stop because it was for a valid noninvestigatory purpose (i.e., to confirm that the defendant was, in fact, who he said he was — and, thus, was authorized to pick up the children). Id. at 403 (“[A] reasonable person seeking to take custody of children would expect to be asked for identification.”). When, however, the defendant presented an apparently valid Oregon identification card, that valid noninvestigative purpose had been satisfied — and, thus, a person in the defendant’s circumstances could reasonably have understood that the immigration agent’s purpose in requesting additional identification “was not to ascertain [the] defendant’s identity before releasing his nieces into his care, but to investigate whether [the] defendant was lawfully residing in the United States.” Id. at 404. Consequently, the agent’s request that the defendant produce additional identification effected an unlawful stop. Id.
Here, Gerba’s initial question to defendant about his age was the functional equivalent of the agent’s initial request for identification in Zamora-Martinez. At least arguably, Gerba’s question was “noninvestigative” in nature. However, once Gerba indicated his disbelief of defendant’s answer by requesting that he produce identification, the investigative character of the inquiry was manifest, and the encounter escalated into a stop. Again, a person in defendant’s circumstances could reasonably have understood that the officer intended, at least, to confirm the validity of the information in any identification that was produced and that he or she was not free to leave until (at the earliest) the officer received such confirmation.
With the beginning of the stop so fixed, this case comports with the standard Hall construct. That is, inculpatory information (defendant’s name and date of birth), which ultimately was the predicate for Gerba’s knowledge of defendant’s “suspended” status and consequent arrest, was *643obtained after defendant was stopped. If, however — as the lead opinion concludes — the stop did not begin until Gerba actually called dispatch in defendant’s presence, then the only information that was obtained from defendant was elicited before the unlawful stop began, and suppression would be improper.
In Hall, the Supreme Court explained that the purpose of the exclusionary rule under Article I, section 9, is to “vindicate a defendant’s personal rights” by “restoring] a defendant to the same position as if‘the government’s officers had stayed within the law.’ ” 339 Or at 24 (quoting State v. Davis, 295 Or 227, 234, 666 P2d 802 (1983)). Thus, the exclusionary rule is inapposite where “the defendant has not been disadvantaged as a result of the unlawful police conduct or, stated differently, [where] the defendant is not placed in a worse position than if the governmental officers had acted within the bounds of the law.”5 Hall, 339 Or at 25. Here, if one concludes (as does the lead opinion) that no stop occurred until Gerba contacted dispatch to confirm defendant’s personal information, then defendant was not placed in a “worse position” with respect to his ultimate arrest for driving while suspended than he would have been if Gerba “had acted within the bounds of the law.” Id.
To put the matter in more concrete terms, if the stop did not begin until Gerba contacted dispatch, then:
(1) Gerba lawfully obtained defendant’s personal identifying information before any stop occurred.
(2) Gerba did not elicit any information or consent from defendant after the stop and before he arrested defendant for driving while suspended.
(3) Although Gerba learned of defendant’s license suspension when dispatch responded to his initial contact in defendant’s presence, that response was based on defendant’s identifying information, which Gerba had lawfully obtained.
*644Thus, assuming arguendo the premises of the lead opinion, the rationale for suppression reduces to the fact that Gerba’s initial contact with dispatch occurred while Gerba was still in defendant’s presence — and that, but for that circumstance, there would not have been an unlawful stop. However, defendant was not placed in any constitutionally cognizable “disadvantage” vis-á-vis his ultimate arrest because of that circumstance. To be sure, defendant was disadvantaged because of Gerba’s call to dispatch in that, but for that call, Gerba would never have known that defendant’s license was suspended and, in turn, would never have arrested defendant. But there is nothing unlawful about an officer contacting dispatch to confirm information; that is hardly an unlawful police practice. Bluntly, there is nothing constitutionally objectionable about the call qua call.
Again, under the lead opinion’s reasoning, the constitutionally objectionable circumstance, transforming otherwise lawful police conduct (the call to dispatch) into an unlawful stop, was that the call occurred in defendant’s presence. But that circumstance had no effect on the information that Gerba received from dispatch — i.e., dispatch would have informed Gerba of defendant’s license suspension, regardless of whether Gerba had called when he was outside the store, in defendant’s presence, or in his patrol car grabbing a quick gulp of coffee. Nor did that circumstance affect defendant’s interactions with Gerba. In short, notwithstanding that Gerba called dispatch in defendant’s presence, defendant was “not placed in a worse position” with respect to his arrest than if Gerba “had acted within the bounds of the law” by contacting dispatch out of defendant’s presence. See Hall, 339 Or at 25.
The upshot is that, if one assumes that the unlawful stop did not begin until Gerba contacted dispatch in defendant’s presence, defendant suffered no constitutionally cognizable detriment from that stop that warrants suppression. Nevertheless, because a reasonable person could have understood that his or her liberty had been substantially restrained at an earlier point in this particular encounter— specifically, when Gerba took defendant’s identification— suppression could be required, depending on the trial court’s determination with respect to defendant’s subjective belief. *645See, e.g., Zamora-Martinez, 229 Or App at 404; Parker, 225 Or App at 616-17. Accordingly, the case must be vacated and remanded for that determination.6

 I fully appreciate that, in this procedural posture, my use of “stop” ostensibly begs the question. After all, both Judge Rosenblum and I agree that the ultimate determination of whether defendant was stopped will depend on the trial court’s finding on remand regarding defendant’s subjective belief as to whether his freedom of movement had been significantly impaired. See, e.g., State v. Parker, 225 Or App 610, 616-17, 202 P3d 205, adh’d to as modified on recons, 227 Or App 413, 206 P3d 259 (2009); State v. Ashbaugh, 225 Or App 16, 28, 200 P3d 149 (2008), rev allowed, 346 Or 257 (2009). Still, “stop” is unavoidable, and useful, shorthand in this context.

 Although dispatch told Gerba that defendant’s driving privileges had been suspended, they had actually been revoked.

 I use the term “inculpatory” in its broadest sense of information that materially contributed to defendant’s arrest.

 To be sure, as the state points out, there is no crime of being “underage in an adult bookstore” (or some functional equivalent). Rather, culpability under potentially applicable statutes runs solely against the owner, operator, or manager of such an establishment. See, e.g., ORS 167.080 (a person commits the crime of displaying obscene materials to minors “if, being the owner, operator or manager of a business or acting in a managerial capacity, the person knowingly or recklessly permits [an unaccompanied] minor * * * to enter or remain on the premises” where various materials are “visibly displayed”).
However, Gerba did not tell defendant and Rodriguez that his ostensible investigation pertained solely to the manager or proprietor of the establishment. Further, the statutes governing licensed establishments selling alcoholic beverages do provide that a person under the age of 21 is criminally liable if he or she “enter[s] or attempt[s] to enter any portion of a licensed premises that is posted or otherwise identified as being prohibited to the use of minors.” ORS 471.430(3). Consequently, unless the “reasonable person” standard requires complete command of the Oregon Revised Statutes — which Gerba himself candidly acknowledged he did not have *641(“I don’t know the statute off hand, but there is a statute that prohibits explicit material to minors”) — a person in defendant’s circumstances could reasonably have understood that he or she was the subject of a criminal investigation.

 As the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized, Oregon’s exclusionary rule is not predicated on a rationale of deterring unlawful police conduct. See, e.g., Hall, 339 Or at 24 n 14; State v. Sargent, 323 Or 455, 462 n 4, 918 P2d 819 (1996).

 I concur in the lead opinion’s disposition of defendant’s second assignment of error, pertaining to the alleged insufficiency of the charging instrument.