Court Opinion

ID: 9790671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:57:14.653524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:30.844114
License: Public Domain

WARREN, P. J.,
concurring.
I agree with the result of the lead opinion, but not with its analysis. Our review is for errors of law. Defendant asserts that there is an alternative basis for affirming the trial court. He contends that the officers did not have probable cause when they seized the notebook and manilla folders. Defendant is correct.
Searches and seizures must be analyzed separately. State v. Tanner, 304 Or 312, 316, 745 P2d 757 (1987). Generally, a warrantless seizure is per se unreasonable unless it falls within one of the limited exceptions to the warrant *177requirement. State v. Stevens, 311 Or 119, 126, 806 P2d 92 (1991). Here, the threshold issue is whether the officers acted lawfully when they seized defendant’s papers without a warrant.
The state argues that the search was lawful because
“[t]he detectives had seen defendant writing in that notebook only moments earlier, and the exigency of the circumstances surrounding the arrest — defendant’s refusal to provide a handwriting exemplar and his attempt to give the notebook to his attorney to keep it out of the hands of the police — permitted the officers to seize the spiral [notebook] on the spot without a warrant to prevent disappearance or destruction of evidence.”
The state is correct that exigent circumstances may create an exception to the warrant requirement. Id. Before reaching the issue of exigent circumstances, however, the initial inquiry is whether or not the officers had probable cause before the seizure to believe that defendant’s papers contained evidence of a crime. State v. Ali, 105 Or App 193, 197, 803 P2d 1231 (1991).
Under Article I, section 9, there are two components to probable cause: ‘ ‘An officer must subjectively believe that a crime has been committed and thus that a person or thing is subject to seizure, and this belief must be objectively reasonable in the circumstances.” State v. Owens, 302 Or 196, 204, 729 P2d 524 (1986). The state does not argue or refer us to any evidence in the record that the officers, when they arrested defendant for theft by receiving, had probable cause to believe that a different crime had been committed and that defendant’s papers contained evidence of that crime. It argues only that the officers properly seized defendant’s papers as evidence of a handwriting exemplar.
A handwriting exemplar is evidence of identity. It is not per se evidence of a crime. In the absence of any argument by the state or facts that suggest that defendant’s papers contained evidence of a crime, I would conclude that the initial seizure was unlawful because the state has not shown that the officers had probable cause to seize defendant’s papers.