Court Opinion

ID: 9787722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:23:10.040733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:59.907081
License: Public Domain

NORBY, J.
pro tempore, dissenting.
The majority holds that, under the facts of this case, no objectively reasonable person would be suspicious that the beer containers in the park were associated with defendant and his group. Since that limited conclusion eliminates reasonable suspicion for the officer’s stop, it avoids the question more pointedly posed on appeal about particularization of reasonable suspicion. The majority’s analysis creates an overly restrictive threshold for reasonable suspicion in this case, which is the primary reason I respectfully dissent. Secondarily, I dissent because I believe that the test on review of the legality of a stop should be applied in a manner that accounts for a continuum of reasonable points of view, not one that attempts to convert reasonableness into a false absolute. Finally, because I would hold that the stop in this case was lawful, I reach the question most pointedly posed by the parties regarding particularization of reasonable suspicion.
THE MAJORITY CREATES AN OVERLY RESTRICTIVE THRESHOLD FOR REASONABLE SUSPICION
The trial court made the following finding of fact:
“[The officer] saw several beer cans that he indicated were approximately 10 feet from the group and believed that those cans were associated with the individuals in the group.”
That finding of fact reflects the trial court’s conclusion that the officer testified credibly. The trial court continued:
“I believe under the circumstances of a case like this, where an officer has a group and believes that individuals in the group are connected with a particular crime, that he—a reasonable suspicion has occurred * *
*728Implicit in that statement is the trial court’s conclusion that the officer’s suspicion, linking the beer containers to defendant’s group under the historical facts of this case, was objectively reasonable.
The historical facts establish that the 18-year-old defendant was socializing with four or five friends on St. Patrick’s Day near midnight in a public park in Portland. There were several beer bottles and beer cans on the ground near them.
One possible explanation for defendant’s circumstances is that other people, not associated with defendant’s group, placed the beer containers on the ground, and defendant’s group coincidentally socialized near other people’s beer containers. Another possible explanation is that members of defendant’s group placed the beer containers on the ground after they drank the contents.
Reasonable suspicion is a less exacting standard than probable cause. State v. Hammonds/Deshler, 155 Or App 622, 964 P2d 1094 (1998). That is because reasonable suspicion authorizes only the commencement of investigatory questioning.
“[A]n officer does not need certainty or even probable cause, but only a reasonable suspicion, to support an investigation. The possibility that there may be a non-criminal explanation for the facts observed or that the officer’s suspicion will turn out to be wrong does not defeat the reasonableness of the suspicion.”
State v. Kolendar, 100 Or App 319, 323, 786 P2d 199 (1990); see also State v. Crites, 151 Or App 313, 316, 948 P2d 757 (1997), rev den, 327 Or 82 (1998) (“[Possible lawful explanations for behavior do[ ] not mean that it does not also give rise to reasonable suspicion of criminality.”).
The fact that the beer containers in this case could have been placed on the ground by other people not associated with defendant’s group does not defeat the objective reasonableness of the officer’s suspicion that the beer containers were associated with defendant’s group.
*729Moreover, “[reasonable suspicion does not require that the articulable facts as observed by the officer conclusively indicate illegal activity but, rather, only that those facts support the reasonable inference that a person has committed a crime.” Hammonds/Deshler, 155 Or App at 627 (emphasis in original). The majority’s analysis suggests that the reasonable suspicion threshold may have been met here if the officer smelled an odor of alcohol on defendant’s breath, or the breath of a member of defendant’s group, or if the officer saw defendant or a member of his group holding a beer container. Those additional facts, however, would conclusively indicate that the crime of drinking in public had occurred. Therefore, the addition of either fact would create probable cause. Since probable cause is a higher standard than reasonable suspicion, the absence of such facts should not be dispositive in a threshold analysis for the lower standard.
Further, the majority’s application of the facts to the concept of possession, control, and dominion is overly restrictive. If all circumstances articulated by the officer in this case remained the same, except that the evidence on the ground nearby was a bomb or grenade rather than beer containers, it would be objectively reasonable to become suspicious that one or more of defendant’s group had been in possession of a destructive device. ORS 166.382. Similarly, if the evidence on the ground nearby was burglary tools, it would be objectively reasonable to become suspicious that one or more of defendant’s group had been in possession of burglary tools. ORS 164.235. The articulated facts required to raise mere suspicion of possession should not vary depending on which item a crime proscribes.
THE STANDARD ON REVIEW OF LEGALITY OF STOPS SHOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT EMPHASIS
The secondary reason for my dissent is that I believe that the test for review of the legality of a stop should emphasize a continuum of reasonableness, rather than pretending that reasonableness is a false absolute. This shift in emphasis would not require a change in the standard of review, but would demystify application of the cumbersome test and encourage greater consistency and predictability on review.
*730In State v. Holmes, 311 Or 400, 409-10, 813 P2d 28 (1991), the Supreme Court held that a person is stopped
“(a) if a law enforcement officer intentionally and significantly restricts, interferes with, or otherwise deprives an individual of that individual’s liberty or freedom of movement; or (b) whenever an individual believes that (a), above, has occurred and such belief is objectively reasonable in the circumstances.”
The type (a) stop in this case is properly reviewed by weighing the facts the officer testified to at the hearing to assess whether the officer’s subjective belief met the standard for objective reasonableness under the totality of the circumstances. State v. Belt, 325 Or 6, 12, 932 P2d 1177 (1997). A type (b) inquiry similarly examines a defendant’s subjective belief and evaluates its objective reasonableness. State v. Toevs, 327 Or 525, 535, 964 P2d 1007 (1998).
That two-pronged test of subjective belief and objective reasonableness is well established in our jurisprudence and often applied. Nonetheless, as noted in a concurring opinion in State v. Ashbaugh, 225 Or App 16, 30, 200 P3d 149 (2008) (Brewer, C. J., concurring), the test “is inherently difficult to apply in a predictable and consistent way.” The Ashbaugh concurrence isolated the core difficulty, noting that “application of the Holmes test * * * places a reviewing court in the position of channeling what a reasonable person * * * could (or would) believe.” Id. Too narrowly applied, it paradoxically creates a subjective test of objectivity, because a conclusion that definitively identifies “objective reasonableness” can only be reached by evaluating facts in light of the intellectual and philosophical benchmarks in the evaluator’s own life experience. Such benchmarks inevitably differ for each evaluator and too often dictate divergent conclusions based on the same facts, even among reasonable minds.
It is virtually impossible to eliminate all risks in application of this test. But the Ashbaugh concurrence suggests, and I agree, that consistency and predictability would be better served if evaluations of “objective reasonableness” did not occur within the awkward construct of a definitive absolute, but instead allowed for a continuum of reasonable *731possibility. To improve the test and achieve greater consistency on review, the emphasis should be on what an actual reasonable officer, defendant, or person could believe, not what an imaginary reasonable person invented under a cumbersome legal construct would believe.1
If the emphasis in applying the test on review is whether a reasonable officer could hold the subjective belief required, it would minimize the risk that a reviewing court must inhabit an amorphous legal construct in order to generate a definitive intellectual model for a “reasonable officer.” It would shift the focus to a simpler assessment of reasonableness as understood by those uninitiated into the complexities of legal fictions.
Specifically, applying the test to the historical facts of this case with the emphasis on what a reasonable officer could believe, we could expand the reasonableness analysis to include a slightly broader continuum of possibility. If any reasonable parent, student, or passerby uninitiated in the law saw a group of young people socializing near midnight in a public park on St. Patrick’s Day with several beer containers nearby, a suspicion that the young people were associated with the beer containers would be natural. Only someone thoroughly indoctrinated in legal complexities could divest herself of such a suspicion, and then only through painstaking legal dissection of both the facts and the law. An officer should not have to resist acting on suspicions that any reasonable person would find natural. More importantly, the test for objective reasonableness used to review the legality of a stop should not superimpose a fictitious legal absolute on *732the undeniably variable landscape of rational, good faith, human interaction.
PARTICULARIZATION OF REASONABLE SUSPICION
Because I would affirm the trial court’s conclusion that reasonable suspicion existed for the stop in this case, I would decide the more far-reaching question posed by the parties and the trial judge regarding particularization of reasonable suspicion. Defendant argued that, even if the officer had reasonable suspicion to believe someone in his group committed the crime of drinking in public, that suspicion could not authorize a stop of the entire group because that suspicion was not sufficiently particularized to any specific individual in the group. I would hold that reasonable suspicion can extend to more than one individual when the nature of the crime to be investigated and the totality of the circumstances implicate more than one person, and when there are identifiable characteristics that link the set of suspects to each other and the crime.
Oregon appellate courts have consistently held that “a person’s appearance alone never can support a reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity” and “[a] police officer’s suspicion must be particularized to the individual based on the individual’s own conduct.” State v. Miglavs, 337 Or 1, 12, 90 P3d 607 (2004). However, it is reasonable for officers to draw inferences about human behavior based on their training and experience, including their training and experience regarding individuals who purposely associate with a specific, identifiable group that shares common characteristics. Id. at 13.
Here, the behavior of defendant and his friends, as well as the circumstances of their encounter with the officer, give rise to at least one significant inference. Based on his observations of the group’s behavior and movements as they socialized in the public park on St. Patrick’s Day near midnight, the officer could reasonably infer that one or more of them were associated with the beer containers on the ground nearby.
A similar inference authorized the stop of multiple individuals based on a single set of circumstances in State v. Walker, 181 Or App 548, 47 P3d 65 (2002). In Walker, this *733court held that officers had reasonable suspicion to stop three apparent minors walking together, only one of whom was holding a bottle that looked like a beer bottle. In that case, the officers called out to the three minors and two walked to the police car, but one walked away behind a parked vehicle. The officers testified that they subjectively believed that the three may have been minors in possession, and this court concluded that the subjective belief was objectively reasonable for all three men. Id. at 551.
That result, based on the understanding that an officer has reasonable suspicion to stop more than one member of a limited and defined set of people based on shared characteristics and presence in a particular location, is unsurprising. This court has consistently held that individuals who fit a witness’s description of a suspect and are in the vicinity of a recent crime may reasonably be suspected and stopped, even though each is only one of many individuals who fit that description. See, e.g., State v. Nguyen, 176 Or App 258, 263-64, 31 P3d 489 (2001) (stop of individual who may or may not have fit description of suspect, but who was driving suspiciously late at night near reported location of recent car prowl, was based on reasonable suspicion); State v. Armstrong, 52 Or App 161, 168, 628 P2d 1206 (1981) (stop and arrest of individual who fit general description of robbery suspect, and who was driving suspiciously late at night five hours after a reported robbery took place in the same city, was based on probable cause); State v. Canape, 46 Or App 453, 459, 611 P2d 1190 (1980) (stop of individual who closely matched the description of a burglary suspect, and who was found in same general area as recent scenes of burglaries, was based on reasonable suspicion).
Here, as in Walker, I would hold that it was reasonable to suspect that all of the five or six individuals who were socializing on St. Patrick’s Day near midnight in the public park were associated with the beer bottles and cans on the ground near them. Therefore, I would hold that it was objectively reasonable to stop all of those individuals to investigate the suspicion that one or more of them was drinking in public. No further particularization of the officer’s reasonable suspicion was required by law or the facts in this case.

 Although the term “would” has consistently been used to articulate the standard for review, the term “could” has notably been substituted in courts’ conclusions based on the standard of review. In Belt, the Supreme Court reviewed a type (a) stop, concluding that under the totality of the circumstances, “an officer reasonably could hold the required subjective belief based on objective information available to him[.]” 325 Or at 13 (emphasis added). The same court had earlier articulated the test as a determination about whether the officer testified to facts sufficient “to give rise to an inference that a reasonable officer would hold the required subjective belief.” Id. at 12 (first emphasis in original; second emphasis added).
Also, in Toevs, the Supreme Court reviewed a type (b) stop, concluding that under the totality of the circumstances, “a reasonable person in defendant’s position could have believed that the officers significantly had restricted his liberty or freedom of movement.” 327 Or at 536 (emphasis added).