Court Opinion

ID: 9603586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:08:07.443016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:13.061133
License: Public Domain

*28LENT, J.,
dissenting.
Because this court’s majority affirms the decision of the Court of Appeals in State v. Slowikowski, 87 Or App 677, 743 P2d 1126 (1987), I think it is important at the very outset to observe that this court’s majority does not affirm the basis of the decision of the Court of Appeals. That court stated:
“The dispositive issue is whether a dog-sniff is a search. On these specific facts, we conclude that a dog-sniff is not a search. Therefore, we affirm.”
87 Or App at 679. Later the court explained why it deemed the “specific facts” to be important:
“On these specific facts, we hold that, because defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the odor of marijuana escaping from his unit, the dog sniff here was not a search.” (Emphasis added.)
87 Or App at 685.
As the majority of this court notes (307 Or at 26), since the time of the Court of Appeals decision in this case, this court has rejected the term “reasonable expectation of privacy” to describe the interest protected under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. We did so unanimously in State v. Campbell, 306 Or 157, 164, 759 P2d 1040 (1988).1
I would also here note the extreme narrowness of the majority opinion in this court. Essential to that opinion is the majority’s assumption that the trial court found as historical fact that Breaker was on a training mission and that his alerting to defendant’s locker was just a fortuitous event. In other words, the majority does not purport to allow the police to take a trained dog out to cast about for contraband as does a bird dog in the fields for game. The majority makes this clear (307 Or at 23) by stating that “we must determine” whether the officers were legitimately on the premises and then determining that they were by accepting the trial court’s implied finding that this was a training exercise.
*29The majority later states:
“[I]t may be that, inasmuch as dogs have been used for purposes analogous to the one for which Breaker was utilized since long before the advent of either the state or federal constitutions, there is an historical exception for such use of dogs, i.e., such a use would not be a search.”
307 Or at 26.1 would observe that there were many practices indulged in by government long prior to the advent of either state or federal constitutions. Until overthrown in the Revolutionary War, the British government long made use of the practice of breaking into commercial buildings to uncover uncustomed goods. After the successful revolution, the states and federal governments adopted constitutions to prevent that very activity. Because those practices were not named specifically in the search and seizure provisions of the various constitutions, are we to assume that they were not searches because of the history of their use?
At 307 Or 22-23, the majority quotes at some length from the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals that was authored by Judge Young and joined by Chief Judge Joseph and Judge Newman. I am essentially in agreement with the reasoning of that opinion.
The majority acknowledges what this court said so recently in State v. Louis, 296 Or 57, 61, 672 P2d 708 (1983), about technological enhancement of the efforts to discover what is within a container. I disagree with the majority that the locker in this case “ ‘announced its contents’ in much the same manner as did the transparent container in Owens.” If it “announced” marijuana, it was to Breaker, not to the deputy. The dog sniff in this case was as much a sensory-enhanced observation of the interior of a “protected premise” as the observation in Louis would have been had a higher power camera lens been employed. That the police have trained a dog, rather than designed or used a machine, to make these observations should be of no constitutional moment. This case should be a relatively straightforward application of the idea expressed in Louis.
I dissent.
Linde and Campbell, JJ., join in this dissent.

 The Court of Appeals also relied on its decision in State v. Bridewell, 87 Or App 316, 742 P2d 648 (1987), for the proposition that there was no search in the case at bar. Since the time of the opinion of the Court of Appeals in the instant case, we have reversed the decision in Bridewell. State v. Bridewell, 306 Or 231, 759 P2d 1054 (1988).