Court Opinion

ID: 9786790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:02:46.088088+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:48.719356
License: Public Domain

*452ARMSTRONG, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the decision to affirm the order that granted defendants’ motion to suppress. I write separately, however, to describe the analysis that I believe should govern our decision.
The majority concludes that defendants abandoned their interest in the duffel bag before the police opened it as part of the inventory of the contents of the car that one of the defendants was driving. The majority nevertheless affirms the suppression order because it concludes that the state failed to establish that defendants were not “prompted or coerced by illegal police conduct” to abandon their interest in the bag. 170 Or App at 448-51.
I believe that the majority errs in concluding that defendants abandoned their interest in the bag. The majority relies for its decision on cases that have distinguished between abandonment of property under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution and abandonment under property law. See id. at 446-48. I explained in my dissent in State v. Cook, 163 Or App 24, 34, 986 P2d 1228 (1999), rev allowed 330 Or 138 (2000), the difficulties that I have with that distinction. I believe that our use of it causes us to lose sight of the two fundamental issues that these cases commonly present. Those issues are (1) whether the defendant, in fact, has a possessory or ownership interest in the property that entitles her to object to the state’s intrusion into that interest and (2) whether the state had lawful authority to intrude into that interest.1 Statements in which a defendant disclaims an interest in property or acts in a way that subjects the property to scrutiny can bear on both issues, but it is important to distinguish between the two issues in assessing the significance of the statements or actions.
The following hypothetical illustrates my point. Assume that a homeowner is standing on the sidewalk outside her house at 2 a.m. on a cold and rainy winter morning. The front door to the house is wide open and an alarm is *453reverberating from inside the house. A police officer drives by in a marked police car, stops next to the owner and asks if the house is the owner’s. The owner says that it is not and that she knows nothing about it. The officer gets out of the car, goes to the door, and, after getting no response to rings of the doorbell, knocks on the door, and calls to occupants, walks into the house to look for people and the source of the alarm. As the officer walks through the house, she discovers marijuana plants, which she seizes. The officer subsequently determines that the person on the sidewalk is the owner and sole occupant of the house, so the officer arrests her for possession of the marijuana.
In the course of the prosecution of that charge, the defendant moves to suppress the marijuana found by the officer. Consistent with its decision in this case, the majority presumably would conclude that the statement that the defendant had made to the officer about the house would lead it to conclude that the defendant had “abandoned” her Article I, section 9, privacy interest in her home. See 170 Or App at 446-48.
I believe that the proper course is to consider the statement in relation to the two discrete issues that I have identified: whether the defendant has an interest in the house and whether the police officer had lawful authority to intrude into that interest. From that perspective, the statement does not establish that the defendant abandoned any property or privacy interest in the house, but it could be understood to give the officer legal authority to enter the house.
The first of the two issues that I have identified is purely a factual one. The defendant’s statement about her interest in the house is evidence that a court could use to determine whether the defendant, in fact, had an interest in it. If the defendant presented undisputed evidence that established her ownership and sole occupancy of the house, the court presumably could not be persuaded that the statement established that she did not have those interests. Consequently, she would be someone who could seek suppression *454of the marijuana notwithstanding her statement to the officer about her connection with the house, because she is someone who, in fact, had an ownership and possessory interest in the house when the officer entered it. See, e.g., State v. Morton, 326 Or 466, 469-70, 953 P2d 374 (1998).
The second issue, the officer’s authority to enter the house, presents both factual and legal issues. If the court found that the officer believed the defendant’s statement about her interest in the house and entered the house to protect the house and to provide aid to anyone inside it, the court could conclude that the officer had authority under ORS 133.033 to enter the house to perform a community caretaker function. The statement would bear on whether the officer reasonably believed that she needed to enter the house for that purpose and, hence, whether the entry was lawful and did not violate Article I, section 9, but it would not establish that the defendant had “abandoned” her interest in being free from a state intrusion into the house.2
The introduction of variations to the hypothetical should sharpen the point. Assume that, unbeknownst to the defendant, the officer knows that the defendant owns and is the sole occupant of the house. The officer stops her police car and asks about the open door and alarm. The defendant makes the same statement as before: that she doesn’t live in the house and knows nothing about it. The officer says nothing further to the defendant and walks into the house to look through it. Nothing in the revised hypothetical affects the resolution of the first issue, which is whether the defendant has an interest in the house. As to the second issue, the statement still should not be viewed as establishing that the defendant had abandoned her interest under Article I, section 9, to be free from police intrusion into her property. *455Rather, the statement should be understood to bear on whether it gave the officer lawful authority to enter the house. A claim by the officer that she had entered the house to fulfill a community caretaker function would be undercut by the officer’s knowledge that the homeowner was standing outside the house and had said nothing about any threat to the house or its contents. That might not prevent the court from concluding that the officer had acted in accordance with her obligation to fulfill her community caretaker function, but the court would have to analyze the issue in terms of the officer’s authority to act on that obligation, not in terms of whether the defendant had abandoned her interest in the house.3
Assume in a final variation that the defendant responds to the officer’s inquiry by saying that it is her house, that a smoke alarm went off because she had burned some cookies that she was baking for work the next day, and that the door was open to air out the house. Assume further that the officer mistakenly believes that someone else owns and lives in the house and therefore concludes that the person with whom the officer is speaking had something to do with harming the person in the house and that the defendant is trying to avoid having the officer discover it. The officer directs the suspect to accompany her into the house, proceeds to walk through it, and, as a result, discovers the marijuana.
Obviously, in deciding the motion to suppress, the defendant’s statement would not support an argument that she had abandoned a property interest in the house. I believe *456that it should be equally obvious that the statement should be analyzed in the same way that the first statement should be analyzed, which is to consider its effect on the two issues presented by these cases: whether the defendant had a relevant interest in the property and whether the officer had lawful authority to intrude into that interest. In all of the hypothetical variations, the defendant’s statements should be analyzed in terms of their effect on the officer’s authority to enter the house, not in terms of whether they establish that the defendant had abandoned her property interest in the house.4
Applying the foregoing principles to this case, it is readily apparent, as the majority recognizes, see 170 Or App at 446, that defendants’ statements about the duffel bag have no bearing on whether they had a relevant interest in the bag. It should be equally apparent that they have no bearing on the officer’s authority to open it. The officer opened the bag pursuant to the City of Medford policy that authorizes police officers to impound the vehicles of those driving with suspended licenses and to inventory the contents of lawfully impounded vehicles. Defendants’ statements add nothing to the officer’s authority to conduct that inventory, because the statements had no bearing on whether the bag would or could be inventoried or opened pursuant to the inventory policy. Furthermore, whether the statements were true or false, they are irrelevant to anything that the officer did with the bag. Consequently, they provide no support for the state’s claim that the officer had lawful authority to open the bag, which is the second of the two issues that must be resolved in order to uphold the officer’s examination of the bag’s contents. As the majority correctly points out, the officer had no lawful authority to open the bag. It follows, therefore, that the officer violated Article I, section 9, by opening the bag, that defendants can challenge the lawfulness of the officer’s conduct in doing that, and that the trial court did not err by *457granting defendants’ motion to suppress. It is unfortunate that the majority relies on abandonment to reach the correct result in this case, because it continues to direct litigants and trial courts away from the issues that these cases properly present. However, the majority reaches the right result, so I concur in its disposition of the case.

 For these purposes, lawful authority means authority that has been given to the officer that is consistent with the constraints imposed by the state and federal constitutions on the grant or exercise of that authority.

 The only other issue on which the statement might bear is whether the defendant had waived her right to be free from such an intrusion. The use of abandonment as a concept in this setting rather than waiver has the effect of creating a waiver without requiring the state to establish the prerequisites for it and without requiring courts to analyze the statement in relation to it. Although I question whether the statements and actions on which we have relied to conclude that a defendant had abandoned a privacy interest under Article I, section 9, would constitute a waiver and, hence, whether it serves any purpose to apply waiver principles to those statements and actions, waiver at least would be a legitimate principle to apply in the cases. Abandonment in the form that we apply it is not.

 Of course, the officer’s position would be improved if the officer told the defendant before entering the house that she knew that the defendant owned the house and was its sole occupant and that the officer was concerned about the open door and the alarm and with the defendant’s denial of an interest in the house, and the defendant responded with another denial of knowledge about the house. That might reasonably lead the officer to question the defendant’s mental state and to conclude that providing appropriate aid required the officer to enter the house to determine whether something in the house had caused the defendant’s condition or to determine whether something in the house presented a serious danger to the defendant or the house and its contents. I assume, for these purposes, that the standard to be used to determine whether the officer acted lawfully in entering the house on that basis is whether she believed that she had to enter it to prevent serious harm or render aid to the defendant or someone else or to protect the house and its contents from serious harm, see ORS 133.033, and whether her beliefs were objectively reasonable. See id.

 To the extent that abandonment has a role to play in these cases, it is the abandonment that is recognized under property law. That form of abandonment gives people, including police officers, the authority to deal with property without requiring the people to consider the interests of the former owner. In other words, that form of abandonment properly bears on both the existence of the defendant’s interest in the property and the officer’s authority to seize and examine it.