Court Opinion

ID: 9790936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:01:39.480264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:32.452091
License: Public Domain

YOUNG, J.,
dissenting.
Because I believe that the officers should have obtained a warrant before conducting the second, intensive search of the car, I dissent. In State v. Flores, 68 Or App 617, 634, 685 P2d 999 (1984), we said that “when a search reaches a logical stopping point the police must obtain a warrant before proceeding further.” (Emphasis supplied.) The majority recognizes this requirement and then avoids it. As a result, it fails to give guidance to officers as they try to determine when they must take their case to a judge before continuing to search, and it fails to give the protection which Article I, section 9, provides for the citizens of Oregon.
Every encounter between the police and citizens has its own rhythm, and when the encounter results in an arrest the police have a right to search incident to that arrest so long as there is no break in the rhythm and it does not last too long or stray too far from the original beat. When the rhythm reaches a natural rest, the right to search incident to the arrest also ends. That is the point of Flores, and that is also one of the points of State v. Lowry, 295 Or 337, 667 P2d 996 (1983), which Flores attempted to interpret. In Lowry the discovery of the pill bottle containing a powder broke the rhythm of the encounter. In Flores the search was continuous, and the majority found no break in the rhythm. In this case the natural rhythm of the encounter reached a rest when Sergeant Sitton allowed defendant and his companions back into the *425car and then returned to his patrol car and called for help. There was a break of ten to fifteen minutes at that point. After help arrived, and before the intensive search began, all three occupants of the car were effectively under arrest. Defendant was in the back seat of the patrol car. Sitton had completed searches of the people involved and had already made a limited search of the car. The police were in complete control of the situation and had the ability to impound and tow the car. The search had reached a logical stopping point. The subsequent search was thus not properly incident to arrest.
The majority emphasizes that it was highly likely that this search would be productive. I do not disagree. Indeed, I doubt if there is a judge in the state who would refuse a warrant on these facts. That is not the point. A search incident to arrest is based on a limited exception to the warrant requirement, justified by “practical necessity” in some sense of the term. State v. Lowry, supra, 295 Or at 347; see State v. Flores, supra, 68 Or App at 628-29. Such a search need only be reasonable; it does not require probable cause beyond that required for the arrest itself. State v. Fesler, 68 Or App 609, 612, 685 P2d 1014 (1984). A search incident to arrest may thus be proper even when probable cause, which would justify the issuance of a search warrant, is lacking, as may be the case, for instance, when the arrest is made by officers who are simply executing an arrest warrant. See, e.g., State v. Cota, 66 Or App 650, 675 P2d 1101, rev den 297 Or 124 (1984). The requirement that the search end when it reaches a logical stopping point is a primary method of keeping the search incident to arrest exception within proper limits. If the police can continue searching despite the opportunity they had here to seek a warrant, they can do so in other situations where the search cannot be supported by probable cause and therefore could not legally occur except for the exception. The result will be to undercut both the probable cause and the warrant requirements of Article I, section 9, and the citizens of Oregon will not have the protection for their “persons, houses, papers, and effects” which they thought their constitution had secured them. I cannot agree with that result and therefore dissent.