Court Opinion

ID: 9792994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:40:32.990377+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:22.906509
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
dissenting.
This ease presents two principal questions: (1) whether the consent to search was obtained by improper coercive methods, and (2) assuming that coercion did not vitiate the search, whether it was necessary to inform defendant of his constitutional rights before making the search.
The majority opinion concludes that the consent to the search was voluntary because defendant testified that he was prompted to open the suitcase as a result of his brother-in-law’s influence and not that of the officers. In addition, importance is attached to the circumstance that defendant did not merely give his verbal consent to the search but deliberately opened the suitcase and dumped out its contents. It is not made clear why this latter circumstance is important.
It is unnecessary to rest the decision on the foregoing evidence. The officer’s threat that he would obtain a warrant if defendant did not consent to the search did not constitute the kind of coercion that renders a search involuntary. Concededly such a threat may be coercive in the sense that an accused would not have consented to the search in the absence of the threat. But not all coercion inducing consent to a search is constitutionally impermissible. If the officers threaten only to do what the law permits them to do, the coercion that the threat may produce is not constitutionally objectionable.
The majority holds that defendant was not en*82titled to be informed of Ms constitutional rigMs because he was not yet a “focal suspect” and was not under arrest or in the “custody” of the police. I disagree. In my opinion accused was clearly a focal suspect at the time he was interrogated. Even if we were to accept the view that the facts must be sufficient to establish probable cause before a person is a focal suspect, there were such facts in the present case.① And at the time the police elicited the information from the accused, he was “deprived of his freedom of action” in a “significant way.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436, 444, 86 S Ct 1602, 16 L Ed2d 694, 706 (1966). The city marshal testified that the accused would have been detained if he had attempted to leave. As I indicated in my dissent in State v. Travis, 250 Or 213 at 218 et seq, 441 P2d 597, 599 (1968), I would not limit the application of Miranda to the interrogation in a coercive environment. But it is not necessary to adopt that view in this case because the setting was coercive in character.②
In State v. Williams, 248 Or 85, 432 P2d 679 (1967) we held that pre-interrogation warnings are necessary not only where a confession is sought but also where the interrogation is aimed at obtaining the defendant’s consent to search and seizure. The *83principle announced there should be applied in the present case. There was no warning prior to interrogation. Therefore, the evidence disclosed by the search should have been suppressed.

This court has held that a focal suspect is “one whom the police have probable cause to arrest * * *.” State v. Travis, 250 Or 213, 216, 441 P2d 597 (1968); cf., State v. Cook, 242 Or 509, 514, 411 P2d 78 (1966). In order to have probable cause, “[t]he officer must have probable cause to believe in the guilt of the suspected party; that is, circumstances must exist which would lead a reasonably prudent man to believe in the guilt of the accused.” State v. Elk, 249 Or 614, 619-20, 439 P2d 1011 (1968). See also State v. Shaw, 3 Or App 346, 473 P2d 159 (1970); United States v. Pasterchik, 267 F Supp 44 (D Oregon 1966).

 Cf, Orozco v. Texas, 394 US 324, 89 S Ct 1095, 22 L Ed2d 311 (1969); Windsor v. United States, 389 F2d 530 (5th Cir 1968).