Court Opinion

ID: 9503268
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:39:30.662094+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:21.434780
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, J.,
dissenting.
The question that these cases pose is straightforward: Did the police officers conduct unreasonable searches in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, when they (1) searched defendant Rodgers’s car, (2) conducted a patdown search of defendant Kirkeby, and (3) opened a metal container discovered in Kirkeby’s pocket during the patdown? Each of those searches yielded drug-related evidence.
In my view, those searches were not unreasonable and, thus, did not violate Article I, section 9. My reason for that conclusion is equally straightforward, although it virtually disappears from the majority’s analysis: Before searching, the police requested and obtained each defendant’s voluntary consent to the proposed search. The record confirms that the officers scrupulously conducted each search within the scope of the voluntary consent that each defendant had granted to them. Those facts are undisputed.
The upshot of those facts is that defendants voluntarily gave up any privacy interest in the areas searched, and the police lawfully observed and seized the drug-related evidence that the searches brought to light. Defendants simply defy logic in contending that the searches were unreasonable and unconstitutional, even though they voluntarily consented to each search before it occurred.1
*632The majority, however, agrees with and adopts defendants’ logic. In doing so, the majority recites several broad — and, for the most part, unhelpful — principles of search and seizure law, which I discuss below, but fails to apply the correct legal principles that, in fact, govern the disposition of these cases.
The majority’s result undermines ORS 136.432, which prohibits Oregon courts from ordering the suppression of relevant evidence for reasons that do not rise to the level of an invasion of constitutional rights (aside from the law of privileges, hearsay, and the rights of the press). 2 The majority’s result also will confuse the members of the law enforcement community about the practical efficacy of a heretofore valuable tool in roadside encounters: the consent search. Finally, the majority’s rationale creates needless confusion regarding the law that governs searches and seizures under the Oregon Constitution. Those negative consequences are both unnecessary and avoidable, for reasons that I explain below.
ORS 136.432 sets the stage for any discussion of defendants’ motions to suppress evidence. Under that provision, a criminal defendant cannot obtain suppression of *633evidence obtained through police conduct that exceeds the statutory authority of the police. ORS 136.432 effectively supersedes this court’s decision in State v. Valdez, 277 Or 621, 561 P2d 1006 (1977), in which this court upheld the trial court’s sanction of exclusion of evidence where police had obtained the evidence in violation of their statutory authority. The relevant inquiry here, therefore, is whether the police obtained the evidence that defendants seek to suppress by conducting searches that violated Article I, section 9.
Article I, section 9, 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 * * *.”
Under that provision, warrantless searches are per se unreasonable, subject to a few well-recognized exceptions, such as searches conducted following a voluntary consent. As explained in State v. Paulson, 313 Or 346, 351-52, 833 P2d 1278 (1992):
“A warrantless search by the police is ‘reasonable’ under Article I, section 9, when the search falls into one or another of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. State v. Miller, 300 Or 203, 225, 709 P2d 225 (1985), cert den 475 US 1141 (1986). One such exception is consent. ‘When there is consent to a search, no warrant is necessary.’ State v. Pogue, 243 Or 163, 164, 412 P2d 28 (1966).”
(Emphasis in original.)
Courts regard a consent search or seizure as an “exception” to the prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure for good reason, even though the constitutional text does not refer to consent. In Oregon, the people control the right to the security and privacy that Article I, section 9, protects. If a state agent wishes to examine a person’s pockets, automobile, briefcase, or other area that Article I, section 9, protects, the person is free to grant or withhold consent. But if the person voluntarily grants consent to a search or seizure, courts recognize that it is virtually impossible, certainly from the standpoint of logic, to conclude that the resulting search or seizure is “unreasonable.” Our courts do not sit to stubbornly insist on maintaining the privacy of a person’s *634property, and to suppress its admission as evidence in court, after the person himself or herself has voluntarily consented to its disclosure to the police.
We must bear in mind the particular interests that Article I, section 9, protects and the particular actions by a state actor to which that provision pertains.
“Article I, section 9, protects privacy and possessory interests. A ‘search’ occurs when a person’s privacy interests are invaded.
“* * * A ‘seizure’ [of property] occurs when there is a significant interference with a person’s possessory or ownership interests in property.”
State v. Owens, 302 Or 196, 206-07, 729 P2d 524 (1986). Unquestionably, the police in this case “searched for” and “seized” property from defendants after obtaining their consent. The dispute here is whether the searches and seizures of items of property in Rodgers’s car and in Kirkeb/s pocket unlawfully deprived defendants of their constitutional privacy and possessory interests in the seized property despite defendants’ voluntary consent to the searches.
The majority concludes that the police exceeded their statutory authority when they detained defendants by questioning them in a manner unrelated to any traffic violation. Those unlawful detentions, according to the majority, also were unconstitutional “seizures” under Article I, section 9, because they deprived defendants of their freedom of movement without lawful justification.
The police, however, did not obtain the evidence that is in dispute here simply by detaining defendants after the traffic stops should have ended. In constitutional terms, defendants’ right to personal freedom of movement and their right to the privacy of their property are distinct constitutional interests that merit independent examination when asserted against intrusive police conduct. As this court has stated,
“Not all governmental intrusions trigger the protections guaranteed by Article I, section 9, of the Oregon *635Constitution. State v. Owens, 302 Or 196, 206, 729 P2d 524 (1986). Thus, in determining whether a particular governmental action violates Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, we first must decide whether the action is either a ‘search’ or a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of that section.”
State v. Juarez-Godinez, 326 Or 1, 5, 942 P2d 772 (1997) (footnote omitted).
Juarez-Godinez illustrates this court’s insistence on a separate examination of a driver’s distinct interests in his personal liberty and the privacy of his property in the context of a traffic stop. In that case, Trooper Burdick stopped a car driven by the defendant, who was accompanied by two passengers, for exceeding the maximum speed limit. Fifteen minutes later, Burdick arrested the defendant for failure to display a valid driver’s license, placed him in a patrol car, and asked if he could search the car. The defendant refused. The court summarized the legal effect of those actions as follows:
“Indisputably, defendant had been placed under arrest. As a consequence of that arrest, defendant was unable to drive the car away himself. Still he retained a possessory interest in the car and, in normal circumstances, could have transferred possession of it to one of his passengers and directed that it be driven away. Indeed, Burdick’s request that defendant consent to the search at least arguably was a recognition of defendant’s possessory interest, and defendant’s refusal to allow Burdick to search was an effort to exercise that possessory interest.”
Id. at 7-8. After detaining the defendant’s car, the police searched it and discovered illegal drugs. The court determined that the detention of the car constituted an unconstitutional seizure of the car. The defendant argued that the drug evidence was subject to suppression because the search that brought it to light was the product of several observations of the car by Burdick during the unlawful detention of the car. This court agreed and ordered suppression. Id. at 9-10.
Juarez-Godinez is helpful in analyzing the instant case. The decision in that case demonstrates that a driver *636who has been subjected to a full-custody arrest during a traffic stop, and thus has been deprived of his personal liberty to move about, nevertheless retains a constitutionally protected possessory and privacy interest regarding his property, including his car, at the scene of the stop. That signifies that, despite being under arrest, a driver can choose, in response to a request for consent to search the car or other property, either to insist on a search warrant or to voluntarily consent to the requested search.
This court reached that very conclusion in State v. Bea, 318 Or 220, 864 P2d 854 (1993), in which this court upheld the admissibility of evidence seized from an arrestee who voluntarily consented to a search of his person. The court’s principal focus in Bea was on the voluntariness of the arrestee’s consent to the search. That was the correct focus.3 The court examined all the surrounding circumstances, including the fact that the defendant was under arrest, and determined that
“[tjhere is nothing in the record to indicate that the police ‘intimidated or coerced [defendant] in any way’ in obtaining his consent or that there were any circumstances present that might ‘impair [defendant’s] capacity to make a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent choice.’ Because defendant voluntarily consented to the search, that search did not violate defendant’s rights under Article I, section 9.”
Id. at 230-31 (citations omitted; alterations in original).
The analysis is more complicated, however, when the consent search follows a detention that is unconstitutional. The unlawfulness of an initial detention may create additional pressure on the citizen to consent to a search and, *637thus, lead to the conclusion that the citizen’s consent was not voluntary. See State v. Kennedy, 290 Or 493, 502, 624 P2d 99 (1981) (“[T]he burden [of persuasion] on the police to show voluntariness when consent occurs after illegal police conduct is greater than when no illegality has occurred.”); State v. Warner, 284 Or 147, 585 P2d 681 (1978) (defendant’s consent to search, following illegal stop, was not voluntary, given that defendant had been confronted by six officers and three marked police cars).
Apart from the voluntariness inquiry described above, this court will require suppression of evidence obtained following an initial unlawful detention if the evidence is the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” See Warner, 284 Or at 166, citing Wong Sun v. United States, 371 US 471, 83 S Ct 407, 9 L Ed 2d 441 (1963) (discussing “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine); Quinn, 290 Or at 396-97 (applying Wong Sun “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine under Oregon Constitution). This court observed in State v. Hall, 339 Or 7, 27, 115 P3d 908 (2005), that the Quinn decision had not applied the analysis in Wong Sun correctly to the facts of that case, and I agree with that conclusion. Except for that misstep, however, this court has applied the “fruit of the poisonous tree” analysis to determine whether police have exploited an initial illegal detention to obtain a defendant’s consent to a search. See State v. Rodriguez, 317 Or 27, 38, 38 n 11, 854 P2d 399 (1993) (deciding, under Article I, section 9, whether evidence seized pursuant to consent search was “ ‘fruit’ of the unlawful arrest” of the defendant).
The facts in Wong Sun illustrate the significance of a defendant’s voluntary cooperation with police in a court’s subsequent application of the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. In Wong Sun, federal narcotics officers illegally entered a dwelling without probable cause and arrested Toy. Toy made incriminating statements and gave the officers information that led them to two other persons, Yee and Wong Sun. The officers arrested Yee and seized drugs in his possession. The officers also arrested Wong Sun. The court arraigned Toy, Yee, and Wong Sun, and released them on their own recognizance. Within a few days, an officer interrogated Toy and Wong Sun, after advising them of their right to remain silent. They made incriminating statements.
*638The Court applied the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine to determine whether several distinct types of evidence were subject to suppression because the officers had obtained the evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court first decided that the officers’ entry into Toy’s dwelling and subsequent arrest had been unlawful. The Court then concluded that Toy’s oral statements to the officers in his home were the fruit of that initial illegality and were subject to suppression. 371 US at 487.
Next, the Court turned to the admissibility of narcotics seized from Yee. The seizure of those drugs was the immediate result of the oral statements by Toy in his home. The Court first determined that the officers had not obtained the drug evidence through any source independent of Toy’s declarations. The Court continued:
“ ‘[N]or is this a case in which the connection between the lawless conduct of the police and the discovery of the challenged evidence has ‘become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint.’ Nardone v. United States, 308 US 338, 341[, 60 S Ct 266, 84 L Ed 307 (1939)]. We need not hold that all evidence is ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in such a case is ‘whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’ Maguire, Evidence of Guilt, 221 (1959). We think it clear that the narcotics were ‘come at by the exploitation of that illegality and hence that they may not be used against Toy.”
at 487-88.
The Court then examined the admissibility of Wong Sun’s incriminating statement to the police after his arraignment. The Court agreed that the officers had arrested Wong Sun without probable cause, but decided that his incriminating statement to the officers was not the fruit of the unlawful arrest:
“We turn now to the case of the other petitioner, Wong Sun. We have no occasion to disagree with the finding of the *639Court of Appeals that his arrest, also, was without probable cause or reasonable grounds. At all events no evidentiary consequences turn upon that question. For Wong Sun’s unsigned confession was not the fruit of that arrest, and was therefore properly admitted at trial. On the evidence that Wong Sun had been released on his own recognizance after a lawful arraignment, and had returned voluntarily several days later to make the statement, we hold that the connection between the arrest and the statement had ‘become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint.’ Nardone v. United States, 308 US [at 341].”
Id. at 488.
Several useful principles emerge from the analysis used in Wong Sun. First, the Court focused specifically on how the police have “come at,” or obtained, the challenged evidence. Second, the Court also rejected reliance on a “but for” causal relationship between the primary illegality and a subsequent seizure of evidence. Finally, as the Court’s discussion of its conclusion pertaining to defendant Wong Sun discloses, a defendant’s voluntary cooperation in providing evidence to the police can dissipate the taint of an earlier police illegality (there, the prior unlawful arrest of Wong Sun), and justify admission of evidence despite the fact that the police would not have obtained it but for earlier illegal actions.
We must apply those principles faithfully in the context of the present cases. The majority posits, and I agree, that the police stops in these cases became unlawful seizures when the officers delayed each driver’s release at the conclusion of any traffic-related business. At that point, the officers had no probable cause to conduct any search or seizure of either defendants’ property; they had only a suspicion that defendants might possess contraband.
The officers sought each defendant’s consent to a search and, in each case, defendants granted voluntary consent to a search. Kirkeby repeatedly granted voluntary consent to the search of his pockets. The resulting searches yielded contraband. In Wong Sun terms, the police “came at” the disputed evidence because of the voluntary consent of each defendant to the requested searches. It is true that the *640seized contraband in each case has a “but for” causal link to the police stops. However, Wong Sun holds that a “but for” relationship between unlawful police conduct and evidence seized afterward is insufficient where later events have dissipated the taint of the earlier illegality.
Under the circumstances shown here, the voluntary consent granted to the police was sufficient to purge the taint of the unlawfully extended police stops. An officer’s noncoer-cive request for consent to search does no more than give a defendant the choice of whether to permit the police to invade his or her privacy interest in the property in question. If a defendant voluntarily consents to a search, any evidence that comes to light during the search owes its discovery to the defendant’s decision to consent, not to unilateral searching or seizing activity by the police.
As noted, both the illegality of a defendant’s detention and the factual circumstances surrounding a detention can bear on the voluntariness inquiry when police rely on evidence seized following a consent. But voluntariness is not challenged here. Rather, defendants contend that the court must suppress the seized evidence only because each request for consent expanded the scope of each stop, thus effecting an unconstitutional detention. That argument fails because it focuses only on the “but for” relationship between the delayed stops and the evidence seized later, and fails to account for the attenuating effect of the consents to search that actually brought the disputed evidence to light.
This case is unlike Quinn, where officers first conducted a search without a warrant or a justification for a war-rantless search, discovered the disputed evidence, and later sought and obtained defendant’s consent to again look for the same evidence. At that point, the police already had breached defendant’s privacy interest in the disputed evidence. I agree that, under those circumstances, the taint of the initial police search was not dissipated by a later consent to search.
The majority reasons that the conduct of the police in asking for consent to search was unlawful, because the requests changed the purpose of the detention from a traffic stop to a criminal investigation for which there was no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. 347 Or at 627-28. *641From that premise, the majority concludes that defendants’ consents to the requested searches were the product of unlawful police conduct — the extended traffic stops — that placed the officers in a position to request consent to search.
An obvious flaw in that reasoning is that it relies on a “but for” causal connection between the delayed stop and the officer’s request for consent and avoids any analysis of the correct issues: (1) did defendants voluntarily consent to a search; and (2) if the consents were voluntary, did that fact attenuate the taint of the delayed stop? The majority errs in terminating its analysis based only on the fact that the requests for consent occurred after the stops became unlawful and, thus, were the “product” of the extended stops.
The majority’s focus on the requests for consent to search is erroneous for another reason. Certain provisions of the Oregon Constitution do restrict the opportunity of police officers to ask questions of a suspect at certain times during a police investigation. For example, the right against self-incrimination in Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution restricts the police from subjecting a suspect to custodial interrogation unless the police first advise the suspect of his rights. State v. Scott, 343 Or 195, 203, 166 P3d 525 (2007). A suspect’s constitutional right to counsel similarly requires the police to refrain from questioning a suspect once he or she asks for a lawyer. State v. Charboneau, 323 Or 38, 54, 913 P2d 308 (1996).
Article I, section 9, prohibits unreasonable “searches” and “seizures.” In the context of a consent search, a police request for consent to search is not itself a search and does not invade the privacy of the citizen. Thus, a request for consent is distinguishable from, for example, custodial interrogation, in which the permissibility of police questioning itself is controlled by Article I, section 12.4 By contrast, courts examine a request for consent under Article I, section 9, to determine whether, based on the totality of the circumstances, the subsequent consent was voluntary. By focusing exclusively on the causal link between the delayed stops and *642the officers’ requests for consent to search, the majority is able to identify only a “but for” causal link between the traffic stops and defendants’ consents to search, and avoid altogether any examination of the voluntariness of defendants’ consent.
The majority relies on State v. Hall for the conclusion that, in this context, the state must demonstrate that the causal link between an unlawful police detention and any later consent to a search is “severed.” Hall did not attempt to distinguish, let alone overrule, our cases invoking the correct analytical rule in this circumstance, i.e., the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine.
According to the majority, under Hall, a request for a consent to search effects an unlawful stop and is impermissible police conduct, apart from any consideration of the voluntariness of the resulting consent to a search. That reading of Hall conflicts with State v. Amaya, 336 Or 616, 626, 89 P3d 1163 (2004), in which this court confirmed that a police question that does not relate to an ongoing traffic stop is not unlawful when the question is asked to ensure the safety of the police officer or others. Hall does not purport to overrule Amaya or resolve that inconsistency.
Finally, Hall sought to distinguish two cases, Kennedy and State v. Rodriguez, in which this court had denied suppression of evidence obtained pursuant to consent during assertedly unlawful police detentions. According to Hall, the defendants in those cases consented to searches without police prompting and, in Rodriguez, after a reading of Miranda rights. 339 Or at 34. But the facts in those cases showed only that the evidence on the record amply supported the conclusion of voluntariness, not that the court, as the majority sees it, could avoid the inquiry into voluntariness altogether by deciding that the detention of the citizen was unlawful.
I dissented from the reasoning and result in Hall regarding the consent search in that case. 339 Or at 37 (Durham, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The concern that I voiced there — that the majority had created an analytical model for consent searches that our precedents did not support — takes on additional weight because the majority has now extended its Hall analysis to the context of traffic *643stops, one of the most common police-citizen encounters. The result will be a decline in the safety of traffic-related law enforcement activities and an increase in the suppression of evidence seized from automobiles even though the citizen has granted the police voluntary consent to conduct a search. In my view, Hall requires reconsideration.
A traffic stop by a police officer is a limited, but still significant, abridgment of a citizen’s freedom to move about in an automobile. A traffic stop may rise to the level of a constitutional seizure if the officer detains the driver, including through questioning, without reasonable grounds. However, if an officer unlawfully detains a driver, and later develops suspicions about property in the car or on the driver’s person, the officer commits no invasion of the driver’s privacy interest in his or her property by requesting and receiving voluntary consent to search.
The request for consent places the driver and the officer in the same positions that they would have occupied before the unlawful detention, because it affords the driver the choice to decide whether to voluntarily expose the property to police examination through a search. Defendants in these cases made that voluntary choice in favor of allowing the police to search. The unchallenged conclusion that defendants acted voluntarily in consenting confirms, as a matter of logic, that the surrounding circumstances, including the unlawfully extended stop, did not coerce defendants to cooperate with the police by allowing them to search. Consequently, the searches here were not unreasonable under Article I, section 9, and, accordingly, ORS 136.432 prohibits suppression of the evidence in question.
In State v. Rodgers, I would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and affirm the judgment of the trial court. In State v. Kirkeby, I would reverse both the decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the trial court. I dissent from the contrary dispositions ordered by the majority.
Linder, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

 The majority, in reciting the pertinent facts, indicates that the searches in these cases occurred after each defendant gave “consent.” I assume that, in using that description, the majority is confirming that each defendant gave the voluntary consent that our case law requires. See State v. Quinn, 290 Or 383, 394, 623 P2d 630 (1981) (stating standard and upholding trial court’s findings that “consent to search was knowingly and voluntarily given”).
*632My own review of the record indicates that defendants voluntarily consented to the searches that the police conducted in each case. In Rodgers, the trial court expressly found that defendant’s consent to the search of his car was voluntary.
In Kirkeby, the deputy testified that defendant consented to the patdown search of defendant’s clothing and also consented to the opening of the metal container discovered during the patdown. The trial court in Kirkeby found the facts to be “as the officer testified today.” The officer’s testimony generally indicated that defendant’s consent to the requested searches was voluntary. The trial court in Kirkeby also determined that the deputy “did not have reasonable suspicion for his safety,” and thus, he had no justification to request a patdown search of defendant’s clothing. That view of the deputy’s authority to request a search does not undermine the court’s implicit determination, consistent with the deputy’s testimony, that defendant’s consent to the requested search was voluntary.

 ORS 136.432 provides:
“A court may not exclude relevant and otherwise admissible evidence in a criminal action on the grounds that it was obtained in violation of any statutory provision unless exclusion of the evidence is required by:
“(1) The United States Constitution or the Oregon Constitution;
“(2) The rules of evidence governing privileges and the admission of hearsay; or
“(3) The rights of the press.”

 Bea also confirmed that the pertinent inquiry under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is identical to the inquiry under Article I, section 9: Did the arrestee give a voluntary consent to the search that uncovered the disputed evidence? This court, describing the federal rule, stated:
“The mere fact that a defendant is in custody of police officers does not, in itself, demonstrate that a consent to search is coerced. See United States v. Watson, 423 US 411, 424, 96 S Ct 820, 46 L Ed 2d 598 (1976) (citing Schneckloth [o. Bustamonte, 412 US 218, 219, 93 S Ct 2041, 36 L Ed 2d 854 (1973)] in concluding that ‘the fact of custody alone has never been enough in itself to demonstrate a coerced * * * consent to search’).”
Bea, 318 Or at 231-32.

 Neither defendant in these cases asserts that the conduct of the police in requesting consent violated any right protected by Article I, section 12.