Court Opinion

ID: 9786888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:04:20.852008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:49.684105
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that it does not matter whether the officer acted out of curiosity when he opened the folded paper from defendant’s purse or because he believed that defendant had consented to his doing so. The majority is wrong. Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, requires a police officer to be consciously aware of the authority by which the officer acts when he intrudes into another person’s property and to conform his conduct to his understanding of that authority. Consequently, if the officer unfolded the paper because he was curious about what he might find, rather than because he believed that defendant had consented to his doing that, the officer violated Article I, section 9. Because the trial court did not resolve whether, in fact, the officer unfolded the paper pursuant to defendant’s consent, we should vacate the judgment and remand the case for the trial court to resolve that issue.
The majority is correct that no Oregon case has addressed the precise question presented here. However, properly understood, the Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Owens, 302 Or 196, 204, 729 P2d 524 (1986), governs the resolution of it.
Owens involved a warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest. In upholding that search, the court held that a search incident to arrest is valid under Article I, section 9,
“when it relates to a crime which there is probable cause to believe that the arrestee has committed, and when [the search] is reasonable in all the circumstances. This probable cause requirement properly limits the objects to be sought in searches incident to arrest, and thus limits the intensity of the search.”
Id. at 204 (citation omitted). The court further explained:
*245“When there is probable cause to arrest a suspect for a crime, a reasonable search incident to arrest for evidence of that crime may be upheld, even if the officer does not articulate to the arrestee that this is the crime for which he is being arrested and searched. Probable cause under the Oregon Constitution has both a subjective and an objective component. An officer must subjectively believe that a crime has been committed and thus that a person or thing is subject to seizure, and this belief must be objectively reasonable in the circumstances. The test is not simply what a reasonable officer could have believed when he conducted a warrantless search or seizure, but it is what this officer actually believed, based upon the underlying facts of which he was cognizant, together with his own training and experience. Neither is the test whether the officer articulates to the suspect the basis for a second ground for arrest. What is required is that the officer formulates such a basis to himself at the time he acts.”
Id. (original emphasis; citation omitted).
As the quoted statements indicate, Owens establishes that Article I, section 9, requires police officers both to have lawful grounds to search or seize property and to consciously conclude that they have lawful grounds to do that before searching or seizing property. That is a distinctive feature of Oregon constitutional law. The Fourth Amendment is not understood to impose a similar limitation on police conduct. See, e.g., Whren v. United States, 517 US 806, 811-15, 116 S Ct 1769, 135 L Ed 2d 89 (1996).
The effect of the Oregon analysis is to require courts to look at a search from the perspective both of the person whose property is searched and of the officer who conducts the search. The objective component of the analysis addresses the former perspective. It considers whether the search intruded to a degree greater than the law permits. The subjective component addresses the officer’s perspective. Irrespective of whether the search stayed within the bounds that the law permits, the subjective component considers whether the officer believed that she had authority to intrude to the degree that she did. If the officer did not believe that *246she had that authority, then, under the Oregon analysis, the search violates Article I, section 9.1
The Oregon analysis gives effect to the oft-stated principle that we are a government of laws and not of people. It does that by seeking to ensure that those who enforce the law are guided by it when they act, thereby giving effect to the indisputable principle that a police officer should not, in fact, use her authority as an officer to conduct a search that she does not believe that she has authority to conduct. In other words, it says to officers that they are to act in the belief that the law authorizes their actions, rather than in the belief that they should act and let someone else, most commonly a judge, decide later whether they acted lawfully. Of course, a challenge to the lawfulness of a search will require a court to consider whether the officer acted lawfully, but that does not mean that the officer does not also have a legal obligation to resolve that issue when the officer acts. Owens recognized that the officer does have that obligation.2
The majority analyzes the consent search at issue in this case solely from an objective perspective, thereby distinguishing a warrantless consent search from a warrantless search incident to an arrest. I believe that the principle *247established in Owens applies equally to both.3 From the perspective of the person whose property is searched, the objective issue in both searches is the same: Is the intrusion reasonable because it is one that the law allows, whether because of consent or because of the principles applicable to searches incident to arrest? There is no reason that the subjective issue established in Owens does not apply to both types of searches as well: Did the officer act pursuant to the authority that the law gave him to intrude into property as he did?
Because the trial court did not resolve whether the officer unfolded the paper in the belief that defendant’s consent gave him authority to do that, I believe that we must remand this case for the court to determine that.41 therefore dissent from the majority’s conclusion that Article I, section 9, does not require the trial court to resolve that issue.

 In effect, Owens establishes that a search is unreasonable and, hence, violates Article I, section 9, if it is conducted by an officer who does not consciously believe that she has the authority to conduct it, as well as when the search exceeds the scope permitted by the relevant law.

 Police officers have the same obligation as do judges to conform their conduct to law. Officers cannot conduct a search that they have failed to determine is one that they are authorized to conduct any more than judges can uphold a search that they have failed to determine is one that the officers were authorized to conduct. All that Owens did was to give meaning to the recognized obligation that officers have to determine that they have authority to conduct a search before they conduct it. They have that obligation because Article I, section 9, applies to all three branches of government. That means that police officers are legally obliged to comply with Article I, section 9, when they search or seize property. They can fulfill that obligation only if they consider the effect of Article I, section 9, on their actions before they act. Although courts do not enforce all recognized legal obligations (for example, they do not provide a means by which to challenge a warrant on the ground that the judge who signed it violated Article I, section 9, by failing to consider whether it was based on probable cause), Owens establishes that Oregon courts do enforce the obligation that police officers have to determine their authority to search or seize property before they act on that authority.

 The principle applies to searches pursuant to a warrant as well. If an officer searches a place or thing that the officer does not believe that the warrant authorized her to search, the officer violates Article I, section 9, even if the warrant otherwise authorized the search.

 It is worth noting that an officer does not violate Article I, section 9, by acting with mixed motives in conducting a search. For example, in this case the officer could have believed that defendant’s consent gave him authority to unfold the paper, because it could contain a check, yet have also believed that it was more likely that the paper would contain something else and have been curious about what he would find. That curiosity would not render the search invalid.