Court Opinion

ID: 9565853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:29:12.305452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:31.146784
License: Public Domain

*422NEWMAN, J.,
dissenting
The majority errs when it holds that Churma’s act of shining the flashlight into defendant’s truck was not a search within the meaning of Article I, section 9. It states in a conclusory fashion that “use of the flashlight to see what was otherwise in plain view did not significantly impair defendant’s freedom from scrutiny and was, therefore, not a search[.]” 102 Or App at 421. I disagree.
The purpose for which Churma was lawfully on the premises was to conduct an investigation of a domestic dispute. He did not make a traffic stop. See State v. Jackson, 296 Or 430, 438 n 4, 677 P2d 21 (1984). The truck, situated in defendant’s driveway, had nothing to do with Churma’s investigation. Nothing occurred while Churma was there to make the truck relevant to that investigation. The record discloses no reason why he needed to shine his flashlight into the truck. Churma’s testimony was that he acted purely out of personal curiosity, unrelated to any official purpose. Unlike the officer in State v. Evans, 101 Or App 340, 790 P2d 1177 (1990), Churma did not need to shine the flashlight into the truck to keep defendant under observation. Defendant was not in the truck, and he did not attempt to reach inside it while Churma was present.
Use of the flashlight to illuminate the interior of the truck was a search, because it was a purposive intrusion into an area — the vehicle — in which defendant had a privacy interest. See State v. Slowikowski, 307 Or 19, 27, 761 P2d 1315 (1988); see also State v. Goin, 101 Or App 503, 791 P2d 149 (1990); State v. Ainsworth, 95 Or App 240, 770 P2d 58, rev allowed 308 Or 158, 776 P2d 859 (1989). Churma’s conduct was a significant impairment of defendant’s freedom from scrutiny. The protection of privacy that Article I, section 9, affords will be seriously eroded if a police officer may shine a flashlight into a person’s vehicle without a warrant, probable cause and exigent circumstances, consent or other authority, merely to satisfy his own curiosity (or his interest in “nice looking pickups”). Moreover, use of a technological enhancement —the flashlight — to observe what was otherwise shrouded in *423darkness is significant, because the flashlight was the instrumentality of the intrusion. The trial court correctly suppressed the vial.1
I dissent.

 The majority asserts that the flashlight allowed Churma to observe “what was otherwise in plain view.” 102 Or App at 421. The vial was not in plain view, because Churma’s discovery was not inadvertent; it resulted from his purposive intrusion into the truck with his flashlight. See State v. Handran, 97 Or App 546, 550, 111 P2d 981 (1989).