Court Opinion

ID: 9793114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:42:42.016572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:01:13.102562
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority’s explanation of why defendant may challenge the search of the black zipper pouch that the police found in a police car in which defendant had sat on the way to the station after his arrest. However, I disagree with the majority’s assertion that, by allegedly placing the pouch under the seat in the car, defendant had abandoned his Article I, section 9, interests in it. In reaching that conclusion, the majority ignores both controlling authority on what constitutes abandonment of rights in property and the Supreme Court’s emphasis in State v. Morton, 326 Or 466, 953 P2d 374 (1998), on whether the purported abandonment was the result of illegal police conduct. Because defendant did not intend to relinquish his property interest in the pouch, and because his attempt to hide it was the result of an unlawful arrest, the search of the pouch is not justified on the ground that he had abandoned it. The state does not suggest any other authority for the police to open the pouch, and I *681therefore dissent from the decision upholding the search and affirming defendant’s conviction.
The majority recognizes that Article I, section 9, protects both property and privacy interests, although it refers to property interests by the more limited term of “possessory” interest. However, relying for some inexplicable reason on a treatise that attempts to make sense of the various convolutions of Fourth Amendment law, it then suggests that the only question before us is whether defendant had abandoned whatever privacy interest he had in the pouch. Yet abandonment is a concept that derives from property law and that, by its very nature, involves the giving up of a property interest in specific property. That is how the seminal case on abandonment under Article I, section 9, treats it; under that case, defendant did not abandon the pouch by attempting to hide it from the police.
In State v. Pidcock, 89 Or App 443, 749 P2d 597, affd on other grounds 306 Or 335, 759 P2d 1092 (1988), cert den 489 US 1011 (1989), the defendant lost a briefcase that contained a large sum of money and a number of incriminating items. The person who found the briefcase turned it over to the sheriffs office. Before learning that the sheriff had the briefcase, the defendant had made a number of attempts to find it, including ordering a classified advertisement in a local newspaper. After learning that the briefcase was in the sheriffs hands, the defendant canceled the advertisement. He did not respond to an advertisement seeking the owner of the briefcase that the finder subsequently placed in the same newspaper. Before the defendant canceled the advertisement, the sheriff had opened the briefcase and examined its contents. The defendant was eventually arrested and sought to suppress evidence of the contents on the ground that the evidence was the product of an illegal search.
We held that the defendant had abandoned the briefcase and, thus, that the search did not violate his interests. In doing so, we relied on the meaning of abandonment in property law; we did not suggest that there is some special rule of abandonment that applies only to Article I, section 9. We defined “abandonment” as
*682“the voluntary relinquishment of the possession of an object by the owner with the intention of terminating his or her ownership. The intent to abandon must be clear and must be accompanied by some specific act of abandonment.”
89 Or App at 448 (emphasis added). We held that canceling the advertisement and ceasing efforts to reclaim the briefcase constituted specific acts of abandonment. In doing so, we noted that “[n]othing the police did caused [the defendant] to [forgo] his interest in the property. He did not know that the police had opened the envelopes and had tested their contents.” Rather, it was clear from the facts that the defendant had no further intention of asserting ownership of or interest in the briefcase or its contents. Id.
On review, the Supreme Court affirmed our decision but on a different ground. It implicitly accepted our view that abandonment under Article I, section 9, was the same as abandonment under property law and also accepted our understanding of what actions constituted abandonment. However, it concluded that the defendant had not taken those actions until after the sheriff had opened and searched the briefcase; thus, the defendant’s ultimate abandonment did not support the search. The court nevertheless affirmed our decision, because the sheriff properly opened the briefcase as part of assisting the finder in carrying out her statutory duty to attempt to find its owner.
Under the property rules that Pidcock describes, and that are the appropriate basis for analysis under Article I, section 9, defendant did not abandon the pouch. Although the evidence would support a finding that he intentionally hid it in the police car, there is no evidence that in doing that he gave up all further intention of asserting ownership of or an interest in it. The fact that, as a practical matter, it might have proved difficult for him to retrieve the pouch later does not mean that he gave up all intention of doing so. The pouch remained his when the police found it and when they opened it. The “abandonment” thus did not give them authority to do what they did.
Even if defendant’s actions could be seen as abandonment under Pidcock, they were the direct result of the unlawful arrest. In our decision in Pidcock, we emphasized *683that nothing that the police did caused the defendant to abandon his interest in the briefcase. On the other hand, in Morton the Supreme Court pointed out that the defendant had dropped the container only after the police had begun the process of taking him into custody, with the result that it was impossible to separate the purported abandonment from the arrest. 326 Or at 470. In contrast, in State v. McDonald, 105 Or App 102, 803 P2d 1211 (1990), which the Supreme Court cited favorably in Morton, while the police were pursuing the car that the defendant was driving at an excessive speed, he dropped a small bindle of cocaine from the driver’s side window. He thereafter denied any possessory interest in the bin-dle. His abandonment of the bindle was not the result of any improper police action.
In this case, defendant’s arrest was illegal, and his purported abandonment followed from that unlawful police action. Although it did not occur immediately at the time of the arrest, as in Morton, it occurred during the arrest process, which continued while defendant was in the car on the way to be booked. The factual variation between the two cases is not legally significant. Because the “abandonment” was the consequence of the arrest, it was not the kind of action that permits the police to open the pouch and examine its contents.
The majority relies on State v. Rodriguez, 317 Or 27, 854 P2d 399 (1993), in determining that the search of the pouch did not violate defendant’s rights. In Rodriguez, the police executed an illegal arrest warrant at the defendant’s apartment. During the execution of the warrant, they obtained the defendant’s voluntary consent to search the apartment and discovered a gun that led to the defendant’s conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The Supreme Court held that the consent was valid because the police did not exploit the illegal arrest to obtain it; a mere causal connection between the arrest and the consent was insufficient to invalidate it. Rodriguez has little if anything to do with this case, especially in light of the emphasis in Morton on whether the “abandonment” was part of the arrest process; under that approach, which is consistent with our statements in Pidcock, an “abandonment” that occurs during that process is constitutionally insufficient to permit a search. The question in this case is not a separate voluntary *684consent but what happened dining thé arrest process. Rodriguez does not deal with that issue.
I dissent.