Court Opinion

ID: 9612612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:10:07.668706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:36.927391
License: Public Domain

BUTTLER, J.,
dissenting.
Defendant, a passenger in the automobile, was not “stopped” within the meaning of ORS 131.605 when the officer stopped the driver of the automobile for driving at night without headlights on.1 See State v. Zimmerlee, 45 Or App 107, 607 P2d 782, rev den 289 Or 71 (1980).
However, when Officer Wight asked defendant to step out of the car and remove her leather jacket, and then frisked her and patted down the jacket, she was stopped within the meaning of ORS 131.605. Assuming that the officers had a reasonable suspicion that defendant had committed a crime, ORS 131.615(1), there is no evidence that defendant was “armed and presently dangerous to the officer,” a prerequisite to the statutory authority to frisk the stopped person. ORS 131.625(1). The most that can be concluded from the testimony is that Wight frisked defendant’s *593coat because the driver of the car was carrying an unloaded weapon and because he thought that the car might have been stolen. Wight’s testimony that two out of the three people in the car had identified themselves falsely, although defendant had not done so, adds nothing to the suspicion that defendant was armed and dangerous. Defendant was cooperative and non-threatening. One of the other officers testified that it would have been foolish to assume that, if one person has a weapon, other people there do not have weapons; as he put it, “[T]here could be weapons on other people also.” Officer Smith also testified that he was concerned that there might be weapons in the possession of other persons.
The officers’ concern, however, does not rise to the level of a reasonable individualized suspicion that defendant had committed a crime or that she was armed and presently dangerous. See State v. Baldwin, 76 Or App 723, 712 P2d 120 (1985). This case may be one of those in which evidence is seized in a “routinized, unconsented search of the belongings of a person who has been detained by public officers not on suspicion of criminal conduct” for the protection of the person and others. State v. Okeke, 304 Or 367, 745 P2d 418 (1987). In such a case, the evidence may not be used to prosecute the person, without violating Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.
Even if the stop and frisk of defendant was lawful, the “pat down” of her jacket was more intrusive than is statutorily authorized to determine if the jacket contained a weapon. The authority of ORS 131.625 to frisk the stopped person for weapons is not authority for a general search of the person. The statute is clear, precise and limited:
“If, in the course, of the frisk, the peace officer feels an object which the peace officer reasonably suspects is a dangerous or deadly weapon, the peace officer may take such action as is reasonably necessary to take possession of the weapon.” ORS 131.625(2). (Emphasis supplied.)
The only justification that the officer gave for emptying defendant’s pockets was that one of the objects felt like it might be a knife.2 Accepting that statement as true, the officer *594would have been justified in removing that object, but not other objects that he had no reason to believe might be weapons, in the absence of evidence that it was reasonably necessary to do so in order to take possession of the suspected weapon. State v. Gressel, 276 Or 333, 554 P2d 1014 (1976).
The state’s and the majority’s reliance on State v. Weeks, 29 Or App 351, 563 P2d 760 (1977), is ill-founded. There, after the automobile in which the defendant was a passenger had been stopped, the officers learned that the automobile matched the description of one involved in a robbery the previous night. After the driver had been arrested and the owner of the automobile could not be ascertained, the officers impounded the automobile and inventoried its contents. During the inventory, they found a pistol under the passenger seat, at which point they had a reasonable suspicion that the passenger was armed and dangerous. In patting him down, they found a shoulder holster on his person. That is not this case.
I can find no basis for stopping defendant or for frisking her for weapons. Even if defendant was lawfully stopped and frisked, the officer exceeded the limited permissible “pat down” for weapons. The evidence may not be used to prosecute defendant. Accordingly, I dissent.

 The authority to stop the automobile for driving without headlights, ORS 811.521, is found in ORS 810.410(3)(b), which does not authorize a frisk of the person stopped for weapons. However, when the driver gave the officer a fictitious name, he committed a Class A misdemeanor, ORS 807.620, authorizing the officer to stop and detain him under ORS 131.615. During the latter stop, ORS 131.625 is applicable.

 The majority points out that Wight felt at least two objects that were “large enough” to be weapons; he did not, however, say that he suspected both of being weapons.