Court Opinion

ID: 9788854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:20:43.718845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:43:15.545010
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, J.,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority’s holding that the trial court did not err in denying defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal. The majority also holds that the traffic stop of defendant had not ended when the officer asked defendant if there were any drugs or weapons in his car and whether, if a “drug dog were to walk around the vehicle, it would detect anything.” I disagree with that holding for the reasons expressed below.
In his first assignment of error, defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the evidence of marijuana under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. In defendant’s view, by asking him questions about drugs and what a drug dog would find if it walked around his vehicle, the officer unlawfully extended the traffic stop without any reasonable suspicion that defendant had committed a crime. The state counters that, prior to asking defendant those questions, the officer made statements to defendant that made it clear that the traffic stop had ended and that defendant was free to leave. Moreover, it asserts that the officer’s questions about drugs or weapons and a drug dog did not constitute a second restraint on defendant’s freedom of movement under Article I, section 9, because the questions did not manifest an exercise of the officer’s authority.
Article I, section 9, provides, “No law shall violate the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search, or seizuret.]”1 An officer cannot lawfully continue to detain a *480motorist under Article I, section 9, after a legal traffic stop has ended without reasonable suspicion that the defendant is engaged in some criminal activity. State v. Toevs, 327 Or 525, 534-35, 964 P2d 1007 (1998). On the other hand, not every question unrelated to the reason for a traffic stop will constitute a restraint on a person’s liberty under Article I, section 9. State v. Amaya, 336 Or 616, 626, 89 P3d 1163 (2004). Rather, some encounters between a police officer and a citizen constitute “mere conversation.” Id. Such noncoercive encounters do not interfere with a person’s liberty of movement and therefore do not constitute a “seizure” under Article I, section 9. Id. at 627. In contrast to conversational encounters, “[p]olice conduct interfering with a person’s liberty of movement may take the form of either physical force or a show of authority.” State v. Hall, 339 Or 7, 17-18, 115 P3d 908 (2005). Thus, the pivotal consideration in deciding whether police conduct implicates Article I, section 9, is whether “the officer, even if making inquiries a private citizen would not, has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that would be perceived as a nonoffensive contact if it had occurred between two ordinary citizens.” State v. Holmes, 311 Or 400, 410, 813 P2d 28 (1991).
Under Toevs and Amaya, the determination of whether the traffic stop of defendant had ended and reverted to a noncoercive conversational encounter involves both questions of facts and questions of law. Here, in response to defendant’s argument that the officer “illegally increas [ed] the length of the stop,” the trial court, without making any express factual findings, concluded that there had not been an illegal stop. Under Ball v. Gladden, 250 Or 485, 487, 443 P2d 621 (1969), “[i]f findings are not made on all [historical] facts, and there is evidence from which such facts could be decided in more than one way, we will presume that the facts were decided in a manner consistent with the ultimate conclusion[.]”
In arriving at its conclusion that the traffic stop of defendant did not end when the officer returned defendant’s driver’s license to him, the majority posits that the “only evidence that the state relies on to prove the ending of the stop is a 10- to 15-second gap in the dialogue between the police officer and defendant between the official warnings about *481defendant’s future conduct and the drug interrogation.” 230 Or App at 478 (emphasis in original). Based on that premise, the majority concludes that “the time lapse alone is insufficient to discharge the state’s burden of proof on this issue.” Id.
With respect, the majority’s characterization of the state’s argument and the evidentiary record is too narrow. In its brief, the state points to the facts that defendant had successfully completed a field sobriety test after which the officer had returned his identification to him, warned him against littering, and reminded him to get his brake light fixed. Also, the state emphasizes the absence of any exercise of authority by the officer over defendant at any point in time after he returned defendant’s driver’s license to him. The majority also asserts that defendant appeared to be nervous and concludes that defendant apparently did not believe that the traffic stop had ended “because he continued to tremble and did not return to his car.” 230 Or App at 478. However, defendant did not testify at the suppression hearing, and the trial court made no finding as to defendant’s subjective belief. Moreover, defendant’s nervousness existed before he was asked to take a field sobriety test. The officer testified that, “when I asked * * * him to get out of the car, he seemed to be doing it a little bit more.” When asked if his nervousness increased after his driver’s license was returned to him, the officer responded, “Not that I recall.”
Rather than the narrow view of the record relied on by the majority, the proper determination of whether a person has been “seized” under Article I, section 9, requires a fact-specific inquiry examining the totality of the circumstances in a particular case. Hall, 339 Or at 18. The following circumstances are not in dispute. The officer activated his overhead lights and then saw a can of beer being thrown out of defendant’s car window. When contacted, defendant admitted that he had been drinking beer and there was a slight odor of alcohol on his breath. The officer requested that defendant take some field sobriety tests. Defendant agreed to the request and got out of his car and went with the officer to the back of his car. The officer turned down his overhead lights so that he could examine defendant’s eyes and “do an *482HGN on him.”2 The officer testified, “After I checked his eyes, I could tell he wasn’t intoxicated, so I warned him about driving with a container and littering, and reminded him to get his light fixed” after returning defendant’s driver’s license to him. The officer could not recall if he expressly told defendant that he was free to leave.3
Then, while the officer was preparing to return to his patrol car, defendant remained at the location where the earlier contact had occurred.4 When asked about the lapse of time between his statements to defendant and the subsequent questions about drugs and weapons that the majority characterizes as a continuation of the traffic stop, the officer responded, “If I had to guess, probably ten to 15 seconds.” The officer also testified,
“I was getting ready to walk back to my car, and he still stood there.” But that’s generally how I will end a traffic stop, and most people take that as an end — hand their license back, and tell them to get whatever it is fixed, or drive safe, or whatever the contact happened to be.”
Thus, the appropriate legal inquiry is whether defendant’s liberty of movement was interfered with based on the totality of the above circumstances. A person’s freedom of movement can be restrained physically, orally, or by a *483combination of words and actions. However, in order to implicate Article I, section 9, the net effect of the officer’s conduct must be coercive in nature in the sense that it manifests objectively an interference with the person’s freedom of movement. Amaya, 336 Or at 627; Holmes, 311 Or at 407.
There is no evidence that the officer physically restrained defendant from returning to his vehicle. Indeed, the only actions of the officer toward defendant were verbal and not physical. In the abstract, some words spoken in the absence of physical actions are inherently capable of interfering with a person’s liberty of movement: for example, a command by a police officer to “stay right where you are!” However, here, the officer’s statements to defendant were the antithesis of continuing the traffic stop; the officer returned defendant’s driver’s license to him and verbally admonished him after performing the HGN test and deciding that he was not under the influence of alcohol. The officer’s verbal statements about open containers, littering, and the repair of defendant’s brake light by themselves simply do not manifest the continuation of an objectively reasonable interference with defendant’s freedom of movement.
The other pertinent circumstance regarding whether the traffic stop had ended is the pause of 10 to 15 seconds that occurred after the above events and before the officer asked defendant about whether he had weapons or drugs in his car. In analyzing the legal import of that circumstance, the circumstances in State v. Toevs are instructive because they provide an illustration of when words combined with actions are deemed to constitute a coercive restraint on a person’s freedom of movement. In Toevs, officers, after telling the defendant that he was free to leave, immediately asked the defendant if they could search his vehicle and continued asking for consent even though the defendant refused. One officer also asked the defendant if he possessed any drugs. The other officer intervened when it became apparent that the first officer was unable to persuade the defendant to give his consent to search, and he asked the defendant two more times if he had any drugs in the vehicle. The court concluded that under the totality of the circumstances, “the officer’s continuous show of police authority constituted conduct that was ‘significantly beyond that accepted in ordinary *484social intercourse,’ ” Toevs, 327 Or at 536-37 (quoting Holmes, 311 Or at 410). Therefore, the court held that the officers had continued to detain the defendant after he had been told that he was free to leave. Toevs, 327 Or at 537.
Unlike in Toevs, where the officers continuously sought to persuade the defendant to consent to a search throughout the traffic stop, with defendant, the issue regarding drugs in this case arose only after it was evident that the traffic stop investigation was at end. Indeed, a reasonable person in defendant’s circumstances would have understood that the traffic stop had been resolved with the return of defendant’s driver’s license to him and the officer’s warnings that defendant acknowledged. Although 10 to 15 seconds is not a long period of time, it is long enough in the context of ordinary social intercourse when combined with the other circumstances in this case to objectively indicate that the traffic stop had ended. Under those circumstances, the period of silence when neither defendant nor the officer spoke after the officer had returned defendant’s driver’s license to him would have been a clear indication to a reasonable person that the traffic stop was over. It follows that the majority incorrectly concludes that the officer’s words effectively continued the traffic stop rather than ending it.
For the above reasons, I would affirm defendant’s conviction.
Brewer, C. J., and Landau and Wollheim, JJ., join in this dissent.

 A “seizure” under Article I, section 9, occurs when a law enforcement officer intentionally and significantly restricts, interferes with, or otherwise deprives an individual of the liberty or freedom of movement, or, alternatively, whenever an individual believes that his or her freedom of movement has been interfered with and such a belief is objectively reasonable under the circumstances. State v. Holmes, 311 Or 400, 409-10, 813 P2d 28 (1991).

 An “HGN” or Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test measures the “angle of onset of nystagmus, or jerky movement, as the eye tracks a steadily moving object, such as a finger, pencil, or pen-size flashlight.” State v. O’Key, 321 Or 285, 287, 899 P2d 663 (1993). According to the record, the HGN test was the only field sobriety test that the officer administered.

 See State v. Bretches, 225 Or App 602, 202 P3d 883, rev den, 346 Or 361 (2009) (holding that where the defendant was told he was free to leave but continued to converse with the officer, his consent did not occur in the course of an illegal stop); see also State v. Peppard, 172 Or App 311, 18 P3d 488, vac’d, 332 Or 630, 34 P3d 168 (2001) (holding that no violation occurred under Article I, section 9, when an officer told the defendant he was free to leave after handing him traffic citations and then obtained a voluntary consent to search the vehicle); State v. Arabzadeh, 162 Or App 423, 986 P2d 736 (1999) (holding that an officer did not exploit any prior unlawful conduct in obtaining a consent to search from the passenger in a car that had been stopped for a traffic violation after telling the driver that he was free to leave).

 The majority asserts that “[t]he officer did not move to return to his patrol car.” 230 Or App at 478. In fact, the officer’s only testimony on that subject was “I was getting ready to walk back to my car, and he still stood there.” Consequently, the record does not reveal whether the officer made any motions toward his patrol car.