Court Opinion

ID: 9792330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:27:09.947238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.508169
License: Public Domain

HASELTON, J.,
concurring.
I agree that the cocaine seized from defendant’s car must be suppressed. However, I cannot join in the majority’s *299reiteration of State v. Allen, 112 Or App 70, 826 P2d 127, rev den 314 Or 176 (1992), because I believe that Allen was wrongly decided. Accordingly, I concur.1
The majority invokes Allen for the proposition that “[w]hen á request to search contains no limitations and a defendant places no limitation on the search, the scope of the allowable search may be fairly broad.” 131 Or App at 297. That analysis cannot be squared with the general treatment of consent searches under the Oregon Constitution.
Consent searches are an exception to the warrant requirement of Article I, section 9. See, e.g., State v. Weaver, supra n 1, 319 Or at 219. To be valid, a consent to search must be voluntary. See, e.g., State v. Paulson, supra n 1, 313 Or at 352-53; State v. Stevens, supra n 1, 311 Or at 135. Consistent with those principles:
“Under the consent exception to the warrant requirement, the state must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that someone having the authority to do so voluntarily gave the police consent to search the defendant’s person or property and that any limitations on the scope of the consent were complied with.” State v. Weaver, supra, 319 Or at 219.
Allen subverts those principles by inviting subterfuge. It encourages peace officers to cast requests for consent in the broadest and most ambiguous of terms, putting the onus on citizens, confronted with uniformed authority, to define and limit the search. Accord State v. Allen, supra, 112 *300Or App at 76 (Joseph, C. J., dissenting) (“That is a wonderful way of switching the burden from the state to the defendant”).
Such a burden-shifting gambit of studied imprecision is constitutionally unacceptable. In requesting consent, agents of the state must clearly identify the intended scope and object of their search or bear the risk of any imprecision.2

 Although I agree that “objective reasonableness” defines the scope of a citizen’s consent to search, I am by no means confident in that conclusion. As the majority acknowledges, neither this court nor our Supreme Court has “expressly declared that whether an officer exceeded the scope of a consent” is an issue of law or of fact. 131 Or App at 295. Certainly, there is authority, albeit implicit, for the contrary proposition. See, e.g., State v. Paulson, 313 Or 346, 351-53, 833 P2d 1278 (1992) (remanding to trial court for resolution of “factual question” of whether defendant’s 9-1-1 call for emergency assistance conferred consent for police officers to enter apartment). Accord State v. Weaver, 319 Or 212, 222-24, 874 P2d 1322 (1994) (Gillette, J., concurring). But see State v. Stevens, 311 Or 119, 135, 806 P2d 92 (1991) (although reviewing court is bound by trial court’s findings of historical fact regarding voluntariness of consent to search, trial court’s ultimate determination of voluntariness is subject to de novo review).
Nonetheless, to the extent our Supreme Court wishes us to employ an analysis different from the sensible and workable “objective reasonableness” approach of the federal cases — a different analysis which, incidentally, would insulate trial court determinations regarding scope of consent from effective appellate review — we should await a clearer signal.

 This rationale is hardly remarkable. In the civil context, we routinely construe ambiguities in contractual language against the person employing that language. See, e.g., Heinzel v. Backstrom, 310 Or 89, 97, 794 P2d 775 (1990) (applying “rule that any ambiguity in an agreement is to be resolved against the party who drafted it”). It is risky business importing civil contractual concepts into the criminal law — and I am not proposing that we do so. Still, the parallel between offer and acceptance on one hand, and requests for consent and the granting of consent on the. other, is instructive.