Court Opinion

ID: 9566080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:33:21.0674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:04.865930
License: Public Domain

GILLETTE, J.,
concurring.
I join in the opinion of the court. I write separately to emphasize what I perceive to be the pivotal sentence of the opinion and to offer a warning to those who might be tempted to rely heavily on a decision of this court that the majority opinion discusses today.
First, as to the pivotal sentence. We state today, concerning the scope of a consent to search: “For a consent to conduct a search retroactively to validate earlier police activity, * * * there must be evidence that the person giving the consent intended the consent to be retroactive.” 319 Or at 221-22. We then go on to discuss the evidence in this case and the facts found from it by the trial judge. Id at 222.1 do not wish the latter discussion to mask the importance of the earlier sentence, however.
The effect of our decision today is to say that, although the scope of a consent to search is a question of fact, in the absence of any evidence as to that issue, the default outcome is that a consent is treated for the purposes of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, as being intended to be prospective only. This means, in any case in which the prosecution wishes to rely on consent as a basis for obtaining *223evidence that was acquired before the consent was given, that there must be affirmative evidence (that is accepted by the trial judge) that it was the intention of the person giving consent to include within the scope of that consent the earlier official conduct.
That is not the only rule that this court could have adopted. We could have ruled that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, a consent applied retrospectively as well as prospectively. But I wholeheartedly concur in the adoption of the rule that we announce today, because that rule better comports with the well-recognized principle that, in the absence of a warrant, the state bears the burden of proving the existence of an exception to the warrant requirement. See, e.g., State v. Paulson, 313 Or 346, 351-52, 833 P2d 1278 (1992) (demonstrating application of the foregoing principle with respect to proof of voluntariness of a consent under Article I, section 9).
This brings me to my second point. The state in this case relies on certain passages in State v. Quinn, 290 Or 383, 623 P2d 630 (1981). The court today goes to some length to distinguish Quinn. 319 Or at 220-21. The distinction that the court draws may be valid, but it leaves the impression that Quinn remains a valid statement of search and seizure law that may be relied on in future. I am not so sure of that proposition.
Quinn was a case in which the police conducted an unlawful search of the defendant’s impounded car. Evidence discovered during that unlawful search implicated the defendant in a murder. Police officers then asked the defendant for consent to search his car; the defendant gave it. The officers seized the evidence that had been discovered earlier and, with the help of that evidence, were able to persuade the defendant to confess to the murder. The defendant challenged the admissibility of his confession, on the ground that it was the fruit of an illegal search.
The court rejected the defendant’s argument, stating:
“An otherwise valid consent search may nevertheless he invalid if it is tainted as a result of earlier unlawful police conduct. This consent follows an unlawful search. The police *224knew about and sought the underwear due solely to their observations during that search. Although the underwear might not have come to light but for the earlier search, it is also true that defendant was unaware at the time he gave consent that the underwear had been found. That fact did not in any way affect defendant’s decision to give or withhold his consent. The next issue, therefore, is whether unlawful police activity which leads the police to seek defendant’s consent to search, but does not influence the defendant in giving that consent, taints the consent so as to require exclusion of the fruits of the consent search.”
State v. Quinn, supra, 290 Or at 394. The court then went on to hold that the evidence at issue need not be suppressed because, while that evidence “might not have come to light had the officer not reached under the car seat, * * * the police [did not seek] * * * defendant’s consent to search * * * by exploitation of that illegal discovery.” Id. at 396.
The foregoing conclusion seems to me to approach being (and it may in fact be) unsupportable. So far as the Quinn opinion demonstrates, the officers would never have asked the defendant for permission to search the car, had it not been that their attention was directed to him and the car by the result of the earlier, illegal search. A more direct exploitation of illegal government activity would be difficult to posit.
Because its analysis of the search and seizure issue is so suspect, it probably would be unwise for a party in the future to place much reliance on that portion of Quinn. Today’s decision, although it distinguishes the case, does nothing to imply that, were the court required to address the issue, we would adhere to the Quinn search and seizure analysis.
I concur.