Court Opinion

ID: 9900367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-18 22:11:44.760998+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:04.874085
License: Public Domain

98                    September 13, 2023          No. 461

          IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                  STATE OF OREGON

                     JAMES MARTIN,
                    Petitioner-Appellant,
                              v.
                     Brandon KELLY,
                      Superintendent,
                 Oregon State Penitentiary,
                  Defendant-Respondent.
                Marion County Circuit Court
                   19CV05714; A177158

     Claudia M. Burton, Judge.
     Submitted August 8, 2023.
   Jedediah Peterson and O’Connor Weber LLC filed the
brief for appellant.
  Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin
Gutman, Solicitor General, filed the brief for respondent.
   Before Lagesen, Chief Judge, and Kamins, Judge, and
Kistler, Senior Judge.
     KISTLER, S. J.
     Reversed and remanded.
Cite as 328 Or App 98 (2023)   99
100                                                          Martin v. Kelly

           KISTLER, S. J.
          Petitioner appeals a judgment denying his claims
for post-conviction relief. The primary question he raises on
appeal is whether his trial counsel was constitutionally inad-
equate for failing to file a motion to suppress.1 As explained
below, we conclude that counsel’s failure to file a suppres-
sion motion fell below the minimum level of assistance that
the state and federal constitutions require. We also conclude
that petitioner was prejudiced by his counsel’s failure; spe-
cifically, we disagree with the post-conviction court’s con-
clusion that a motion to suppress would have failed because
the automobile exception permitted the officers’ search. We
accordingly reverse the post-conviction court’s judgment
and remand for further proceedings.
         We state the facts consistently with the post-
conviction court’s findings. Using a false name, petitioner
tried to cash a check at the drive-through window of a credit
union. During that transaction, the credit union staff ini-
tially became suspicious and later convinced that the check
was forged. While the staff were investigating, petitioner
and his codefendant drove away. The credit union’s camera
captured a picture of the car’s license plate.
         The credit union staff reported the incident to the
local police department, which determined that the owner of
the car (the codefendant) had outstanding felony warrants
for her arrest and that the person whose name petitioner
had used at the bank also had outstanding felony warrants.
Later, police officers found the codefendant’s car parked out-
side a restaurant. The officers waited for approximately 15
    1
      Petitioner also challenges the post-conviction court’s resolution of two of
his other claims for relief. First, he argues on appeal that his trial counsel was
constitutionally inadequate for failing to foresee that the United States Supreme
Court would hold, at some point in the future, that the Sixth Amendment requires
unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal proceedings and for failing to advise
him of that possibility. See Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 US ___, 140 S Ct 1390, 206
L Ed 2d 583 (2020) (holding that the Sixth Amendment requires unanimous jury
verdicts in state criminal trials). Our decision in Smith v. Kelly, 318 Or App 567,
508 P3d 77 (2022), rev den, 370 Or 822 (2023), answers his inadequate assis-
tance claim. Second, he contends that his guilty plea in this case was not know-
ing because he understood when he pled guilty that he could be convicted by a
nonunanimous jury. Our decision in Peeler v. Reyes, 328 Or App 110, ___ P3d ___
(2023), decided this date, answers that claim.
Cite as 328 Or App 98 (2023)                                               101

to 20 minutes until petitioner and the codefendant came
out of the restaurant and began heading for the car. By
that point, the officers had “surrounded” the car, and they
stopped petitioner and the codefendant “[r]ight at the front
of the car. Right on the sidewalk.”
         An extended conversation followed. Petitioner ini-
tially gave the officers a different false name from the one
that he had used at the credit union. Later during the con-
versation, he defaulted to the false name he used at the
credit union. After the officers found “several credit cards
and a check” that constituted “identity theft evidence” in
petitioner’s wallet, petitioner told the officers that he had
purchased identification documents and stolen checks from
an unnamed person.
          The officers opened a purse and wallet that belonged
to the codefendant, where they found similar identification
documents. The codefendant said that she also had pur-
chased the documents from an unnamed person. The offi-
cers pressed the codefendant for consent to search her car,
which the officers testified she gave them. In the car, the
officers found what the post-conviction court described as a
“veritable bonanza of fraudulent identity documents.”
         Relying on the evidence found in the codefendant’s
car, the grand jury issued an amended indictment charging
petitioner with four counts of aggravated identity theft,
each of which was based on 10 or more separate violations of
identity theft within a 180-day period. See ORS 165.803(1)
(defining aggravated identity theft).2 The amended indict-
ment also charged petitioner with one count of identity theft
and one count of second-degree forgery.
        Petitioner’s counsel did not move to suppress the
evidence found in the codefendant’s car. When asked in the
post-conviction proceeding what his “thought process” had
been in deciding not to file a suppression motion, petitioner’s
counsel explained that both petitioner and the codefendant
    2
      All told, the grand jury charged petitioner with possessing the personal
identification documents of 44 separate people. Although the officers found some
identification documents on petitioner, there appears to be no dispute that the
grand jury could not have charged petitioner with aggravated identity theft with-
out the identification documents discovered in the codefendant’s car.
102                                                           Martin v. Kelly

were outside her car when the police officers contacted them,
“and [he] didn’t believe that [petitioner] had a protected pri-
vacy interest in the vehicle.” Later, petitioner’s counsel tes-
tified that he could not remember whether he had spoken
with the codefendant’s attorney before he advised petitioner
to plead no contest. Finally, when asked during the post-
conviction proceeding if he could “clarify for the record why
[he] did not attempt to suppress the evidence in [p]etition-
er’s case,” petitioner’s counsel explained: “I did not believe
[petitioner] had a protected privacy interest [in the car], so I
thought it would be an unproductive motion.”3
          Approximately five weeks after the grand jury first
charged petitioner in April 2018 and less than a month
after it issued the amended indictment adding four counts
of aggravated identity theft, petitioner pled no contest to two
counts of aggravated identity theft. The trial court found
him guilty on both counts and sentenced him, as the state
had recommended, to two concurrent 60-month sentences.
Each 60-month sentence reflected an upward departure
from the presumptive 30-month sentence that petitioner
faced for aggravated identity theft.
         Approximately two and one-half months after peti-
tioner pled no contest, the codefendant moved to suppress
the evidence found in her purse, wallet, and car. The trial
court’s analysis of the codefendant’s suppression motion is
relatively complex. The bottom line, however, is that the
court ruled that the officers lawfully searched the code-
fendant’s purse and wallet as a search incident to arrest.
It reached a different conclusion regarding the search of
her car. It ruled that she had not validly consented to that
search. Without a search warrant or an identified exception
to the warrant requirement, the trial court ruled that the
warrantless search of the codefendant’s car violated the
Oregon Constitution and suppressed the evidence the offi-
cers found there.

    3
      Later in his deposition, petitioner’s counsel was asked if he thought that fil-
ing a motion to suppress would have affected plea negotiations. He answered that
he thought that “generally” it would, and he predicted that he would have gotten
a “less good” plea offer if he had moved to suppress. Counsel did not explain
whether his prediction about a “less good” plea offer assumed that a motion to
suppress would have been “unproductive.”
Cite as 328 Or App 98 (2023)                                                   103

         Petitioner filed a timely post-conviction petition
claiming, among other grounds, that his trial counsel had
been constitutionally inadequate for failing to move to sup-
press the evidence discovered during his stop and later
arrest. The post-conviction court found that the officers
properly had searched petitioner’s wallet and person as a
search incident to arrest, and the dispute before the post-
conviction court centered on whether petitioner’s trial coun-
sel was constitutionally inadequate for not seeking to sup-
press the evidence discovered in the codefendant’s car.
         On that issue, the post-conviction court found that
petitioner’s “[t]rial counsel did not file a motion to suppress
because he thought that petitioner did not have a pro-
tected privacy interest in the [codefendant’s] car.” The post-
conviction court concluded that counsel’s reason for not fil-
ing a suppression motion was wrong. As the post-conviction
court observed, the Oregon Supreme Court had held more
than 40 years earlier that a person who entrusts his or
her property to another has a protected privacy interest in
the other person’s house or, in this case, car. See State v.
Tanner, 304 Or 312, 314-20, 745 P2d 757 (1987) (interpreting
Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution).
         Having found that petitioner’s counsel incorrectly
believed that petitioner lacked a protected privacy inter-
est in the codefendant’s car, the court turned to the ques-
tion whether a motion to suppress would nonetheless have
failed because the warrantless search of the codefendant’s
car came within an exception to the state warrant require-
ment. See Trujillo v. Maas, 312 Or 431, 435, 822 P2d 703
(1991) (inadequate assistance claims require proof that
counsel’s performance was both constitutionally inadequate
and prejudicial).4 In analyzing that question, both parties

    4
      As we understand the post-conviction court’s reasoning, it relied on the
automobile exception to conclude that counsel’s decision not to file a suppression
motion did not prejudice petitioner; that is, even if counsel had filed a suppression
motion, the motion would have failed because the automobile exception would
have permitted the search. As the post-conviction court appears to have ana-
lyzed petitioner’s inadequate assistance claim, it faced two “no prejudice” hur-
dles: First, would a suppression motion have failed, and second, even if it would
have succeeded, would petitioner nonetheless have accepted the plea offer instead
of going to trial? As discussed below, the post-conviction court did not reach the
latter issue.
104                                          Martin v. Kelly

started from the proposition that the trial court’s ruling in
the codefendant’s case was correct; that is, they agreed that
the codefendant’s consent to search her car was invalid and
would not justify the officers’ warrantless search of the car.
         The superintendent argued, however, that the
search was permissible under the Oregon automobile excep-
tion. Relying on older Oregon Court of Appeals cases, the
superintendent argued that, after petitioner and the code-
fendant left the restaurant and approached her parked car,
they were close enough to the car to come within the automo-
bile exception. The superintendent reasoned that, because
the automobile exception justified the officers’ search of the
car, counsel’s decision not to file a suppression motion had
not prejudiced petitioner. The post-conviction court agreed
and denied petitioner’s inadequate assistance claim.
         On appeal, the superintendent argues that coun-
sel’s decision not to file a motion to suppress was reason-
able. The superintendent contends that, after weighing
multiple factors, petitioner’s counsel made a reasonable tac-
tical decision to forgo a suppression motion and to immedi-
ately begin negotiating a plea bargain. Cf. Premo v. Moore,
562 US 115, 126-27, 131 S Ct 733, 178 L Ed 2d 549 (2011)
(discussing the considerations that can bear on the decision
whether to file a suppression motion). One hurdle that the
superintendent’s argument faces is that the question why
trial counsel decided against filing a suppression motion is,
in the first instance, a factual issue for the post-conviction
court. See Pereida-Alba v. Coursey, 356 Or 654, 673, 342 P3d
70 (2015).
          On that issue, the post-conviction court found that
“[t]rial counsel did not file a motion to suppress because he
thought that petitioner did not have a protected privacy
interest in the [codefendant’s] car.” After making that find-
ing, the court pivoted immediately to whether a suppres-
sion motion would have failed under the automobile excep-
tion. Given the post-conviction court’s finding that counsel’s
stated reason for not filing a suppression motion was wrong
and its quick pivot to the automobile exception, we conclude
that the post-conviction court did not find that petitioner’s
Cite as 328 Or App 98 (2023)                                               105

trial counsel made the nuanced, alternative tactical deci-
sion that the superintendent attributes to him on appeal.5
         To be sure, the post-conviction court’s finding that
counsel decided against filing a suppression motion for one
reason does not necessarily mean that counsel might not
have had other, alternative reasons for not filing a suppres-
sion motion. However, that is not how we read the post-
conviction court’s findings. Rather, as the post-conviction
court found, counsel’s reason for not filing a suppression
motion was based on a mistaken understanding of a long-
established, core principle of Oregon constitutional search
and seizure law. Given the post-conviction court’s findings,
we conclude that counsel’s decision fell below the minimum
level of assistance that the state and federal constitutions
require. See Montez v. Czerniak, 355 Or 1, 6-8, 322 P3d 487
(2014) (describing state and federal standards for constitu-
tionally adequate assistance).
          The remaining question is whether, even if counsel
had moved to suppress the evidence found in the car, the
motion would have failed because the search was permissi-
ble under the Oregon automobile exception. On that ques-
tion, petitioner argues on appeal that the two older Court
of Appeals automobile exception cases on which the post-
conviction court relied require greater proximity between
a defendant and a parked car than was present here.
Alternatively, he contends that, even if those cases would
have permitted the officers’ search of the codefendant’s
parked car, a motion to suppress in petitioner’s 2018 crimi-
nal case could have led to the Oregon Supreme Court’s aboli-
tion of the automobile exception, a course that the court took
three years later in State v. McCarthy, 369 Or 129, 501 P3d
478 (2021).
         Petitioner need not reach forward three years into
the future to show that the automobile exception did not jus-
tify the search of the codefendant’s car in 2018. Controlling
precedent is closer to hand. In 2011, the Oregon Supreme
Court reaffirmed that the automobile exception “does not
    5
      Accordingly, we need not decide whether the record would have permitted
the post-conviction court to infer that petitioner’s counsel made such a tactical
decision.
106                                              Martin v. Kelly

permit a warrantless search of a defendant’s vehicle when
the vehicle is parked, immobile, and unoccupied at the time
that the police encounter it in connection with a crime.” State
v. Kurokawa-Lasciak, 351 Or 179, 181, 263 P3d 336 (2011).
That was true even though the police officers were aware
that the defendant in Kurokawa-Lasciak had engaged in
money laundering at the Seven Feathers Casino and even
though they encountered him and his car almost immedi-
ately after he parked it in the casino parking lot and began
walking back toward the casino. See id. at 182 (noting that
the defendant was approximately 30 feet from his parked
car when the officers encountered him).
        Six years later, in State v. Andersen, 361 Or 187,
390 P3d 992 (2017), the court sought to clarify the line that
divided its Oregon automobile exception cases. The court
reasoned:
   “[W]e reaffirm that the Oregon automobile exception
   applies if the automobile is mobile when the officers first
   encounter it in connection with the investigation of a crime.
   We also reaffirm that the exception does not apply if the car
   is parked, unoccupied, and immobile when officers encoun-
   ter it.”
Id. at 197. The court explained that, if a car is mobile when
the officers first encounter it in connection with a crime, the
fact that the car came to a momentary stop before the offi-
cers could effectuate a stop did not preclude the automobile
exception from applying. See id. at 198. But, as the law stood
when petitioner pled no contest, if the car was parked, unoc-
cupied, and immobile when the officers first encountered it
in connection with a crime, the automobile exception did not
apply. Kurokawa-Lasciak, 351 Or at 193.
         Both Kurokawa-Lasciak and Andersen had been
decided when petitioner’s counsel decided not to file a sup-
pression motion in 2018. Both made clear that the automo-
bile exception did not apply to the search of the codefendant’s
car because it was parked, unoccupied, and immobile when
the police first encountered it in connection with their inves-
tigation of petitioner’s attempt to cash a fraudulent check.
Kurokawa-Lasciak and Andersen established that, as the
law stood when petitioner pled no contest in 2018, the two
Cite as 328 Or App 98 (2023)                                                    107

older Court of Appeals cases on which the superintendent
relied in the post-conviction court did not justify the officers’
search.6 The superintendent does not argue that any other
exception to the warrant requirement applied. We accord-
ingly conclude that, if petitioner’s trial counsel had filed a
motion to suppress the evidence found in the codefendant’s
car, the motion would have succeeded. Counsel provided
constitutionally inadequate assistance.
          One other issue remains. Petitioner argues that
his counsel’s failure to file a suppression motion prejudiced
him because “there is a reasonable possibility that, but for
counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded [no contest] and
would have insisted on going to trial.” See Hill v. Lockhart,
474 US 52, 59, 106 S Ct 366, 88 L Ed 2d 203 (1985) (stat-
ing that prejudice standard in the context of a guilty plea);
Moen v. Peterson, 312 Or 503, 513, 824 P2d 404 (1991) (fol-
lowing Hill as a matter of state law). As the prejudice stan-
dard was stated in Hill and Moen, the question whether
counsel’s deficient performance prejudiced petitioner turns
on whether petitioner would have accepted the state’s plea
offer if his counsel had filed a successful motion to suppress.
Specifically, would he have decided against pleading no
contest to two counts of aggravated identity theft and have
chosen instead to go to trial on the crimes charged in the
amended indictment?
          On that issue, petitioner’s prejudice argument
appears to have some merit. There appears to be little dispute
that, if the evidence found in the car had been suppressed,
the remaining evidence would have been insufficient to
prove two counts of aggravated identity theft. Moreover, if
petitioner had chosen to go to trial, there appears to be lit-
tle dispute that the state could not have proved four counts

      6
        At the hearing on the codefendant’s suppression motion, the prosecutor
asked one of the officers, “And your understanding of the search and seizure laws
of the vehicle is that the vehicle was not mobile at the time [you encountered
it].” The officer replied, “Well, not at the time, no.” The prosecutor then clarified,
“No, I mean, as in you couldn’t do an automobile exception,” to which the officer
replied, “Right. Right.” Petitioner does not argue that, as a matter of issue preclu-
sion, the state’s apparent conclusion in the codefendant’s case that the automobile
exception did not apply binds the superintendent in this post-conviction proceed-
ing. As our discussion makes clear, however, we agree with the prosecutor and
the officer’s apparent conclusion.
108                                           Martin v. Kelly

of aggravated identity theft, leaving a risk of conviction
on only the two remaining, more minor charges. There is,
accordingly, a substantial basis for questioning whether
petitioner would have decided to plead no contest to two
counts of aggravated identity theft if his counsel had filed a
motion to suppress. Cf. Blain v. Cain, 327 Or App 584, 588,
___ P3d ___ (2023) (holding that the petitioner had failed to
introduce sufficient evidence to prove that, even if his coun-
sel had filed a motion to suppress, he would have chosen to
go to trial rather than plead guilty).
         The post-conviction court, however, did not find
whether petitioner had “established [a] reasonable proba-
bility that he would not have entered his plea but for his
counsel’s deficiency.” See Premo, 562 US at 130. At a mini-
mum, it is necessary to remand this case so that the post-
conviction court can make that finding. We also note that, in
the post-conviction proceeding, the superintendent submit-
ted an affidavit from the deputy district attorney who prose-
cuted this case. In his affidavit, the deputy district attorney
stated that, if the evidence in the codefendant’s car had been
suppressed, he would have sought a new indictment that
charged petitioner with several individual counts of iden-
tity theft, and he would have asked the grand jury to add a
charge for possession of a controlled substance. The deputy
district attorney explained that, given such a restructured
indictment, he would not have accepted a plea to anything
less than 60 months.
          The deputy district attorney’s affidavit assumes
that the question whether petitioner was prejudiced by his
counsel’s failure to file a suppression motion is not measured
at the point in time that petitioner chose to take the state’s
plea offer but is measured at some future point in time
and will depend on how later events could have unfolded
if petitioner’s counsel had successfully moved to suppress.
On appeal, the superintendent’s brief relies on the deputy
district attorney’s affidavit and appears to argue that the
question whether petitioner was prejudiced by his counsel’s
inadequate performance turns on what the state might
have done if a successful suppression motion had been filed.
However, neither the superintendent nor petitioner explains
Cite as 328 Or App 98 (2023)                             109

why we should or should not focus on how future events
could have unfolded in deciding whether counsel’s deficiency
prejudiced petitioner. We leave that legal issue, as well as
the factual question of what petitioner would have done if
his counsel had filed a successful suppression motion, to the
post-conviction court on remand.
        Reversed and remanded.