State v. Gonzales

337 P.3d 129, 265 Or. App. 655, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1315
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedOctober 1, 2014
DocketC072951CR; A150682
StatusPublished

This text of 337 P.3d 129 (State v. Gonzales) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Gonzales, 337 P.3d 129, 265 Or. App. 655, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1315 (Or. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

ORTEGA, P. J.

Defendant challenges his conviction for possession of a controlled substance, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress. The case is before us on appeal for the second time. In the first appeal, State v. Gonzales, 236 Or App 391, 236 P3d 834 (Gonzales I), adh’d to as modified on recons, 238 Or App 541, 243 P3d 116 (2010) (Gonzales II), the trial court had denied defendant’s suppression motion after concluding that a police officer was justified in impounding defendant’s car and conducting an inventory search of the car under the “community-caretaking doctrine.” On appeal, we determined that the trial court had erred because the community-caretaking doctrine did not authorize the seizure of defendant’s car. Gonzales I, 236 Or App at 402. Accordingly, we concluded that the evidence discovered in the inventory search should have been suppressed, and we reversed and remanded. However, on reconsideration, we modified our opinion to allow the state to raise alternative arguments on remand that it had not raised in the original suppression hearing. Gonzales II, 238 Or App at 545. On remand, the state argued that the “good-faith exception” to the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution applied and that suppression was not required. The trial court agreed, and denied defendant’s motion to suppress. Defendant appeals, contending that the officer reasonably should have known that impoundment of defendant’s car was unconstitutional in the circumstances of this case and, thus, the trial court erred in determining that the good-faith exception applied. We agree with defendant, and reverse and remand.

We take the facts from our opinion in Gonzales I.

“In November 2007, Officer Blood of the Cornelius Police Department saw defendant commit a traffic violation and activated the overhead lights on his patrol car, signaling defendant to stop. Defendant continued to drive for two or three blocks and then pulled into his own driveway and stopped. He informed Blood that his driver’s license was suspended and gave him an expired insurance card. ORS 809.720 and Cornelius City Code section 10.40.030 both provide that a police officer may impound a vehicle if the driver was driving while suspended or without insurance. [657]*657Blood decided to impound the car that defendant was driving and, in preparation for having it towed, conducted an inventory. He found defendant’s wallet under one of the seats and, in the wallet, a small plastic bag containing cocaine. Defendant moved to suppress the evidence resulting from the inventory, arguing that Blood did not have authority to impound the vehicle and that the inventory was therefore unlawful. The trial court denied the motion and subsequently convicted defendant.”

236 Or App at 393.

In Gonzales I, the parties argued, as they had in the trial court, about whether the community-caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement authorized the impoundment of defendant’s car.1 Id. at 396. The state also made two alternative arguments in the original appeal: (1) the exclusionary rule should not apply because the officer impounded the car in good-faith reliance on ORS 809.720 and Cornelius City Code (CCC) section 10.40.030 and (2) defendant had no possessory interest in the car, and thus could not benefit from the exclusionary rule. Id. We disposed of the state’s alternative arguments first, concluding that we could not consider them because the state had raised those alternative grounds for the first time on appeal, and the record might have developed differently if the state had presented those arguments in the trial court. See Outdoor Media Dimensions Inc. v. State of Oregon, 331 Or 634, 659-60, 20 P3d 180 (2001) (concluding that, if the question is not purely one of law, we will affirm a trial court decision on an alternative ground only if, among other requirements, “the record [is] materially * * * the same one that would have been developed had the prevailing party raised the alternative basis for affirmance below”).

As for the community-caretaking exception, we concluded, relying in part on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ reasoning in Miranda v. City of Cornelius, 429 F3d 858 (9th Cir 2005), that, “under the circumstances of this case, community caretaking does not extend to impounding a car from the defendant’s driveway.” Gonzales I, 236 [658]*658Or App at 403. Accordingly, we stated that “[i]t follows that the warrantless seizure of the car was unlawful and that the evidence discovered in the subsequent inventory should have been suppressed.” Id.

The state petitioned for reconsideration, arguing that we had erroneously narrowed the scope of remand, precluding the state from raising its alternative arguments on remand in opposition to the motion to suppress. Gonzales II, 238 Or App at 543. The state argued that it should have an opportunity to make those arguments on remand because “the alternative arguments relate to a step of the analysis that the trial court was not required to reach because it came to a dispositive conclusion at an earlier point in the analysis.” Id. at 544. We agreed, and modified Gonzales I to omit the statement that “‘the evidence discovered in the subsequent inventory should have been suppressed.’” Gonzales II, 238 Or App at 545. We further noted that “[t]he state is free on remand to raise its alternative arguments in opposition to suppression.” Id.

As relevant here, on remand, the state advanced the “alternative” argument that, because the officer impounded defendant’s car “based on an objectively reasonable reliance on state and local law,” the exclusionary rule should not be applied to suppress evidence that resulted from the impoundment.2 Defendant countered that two years before his arrest, the Ninth Circuit had held in Miranda that it was unreasonable, under the Fourth Amendment, for a Cornelius Police Officer to impound a car under circumstances that were almost identical to the facts of this case. Defendant argued that, given Miranda, Blood should have known that impounding defendant’s car under those circumstances violated the Fourth Amendment; therefore, he could not reasonably have relied on ORS 809.720 or the city code to impound defendant’s car.3 The trial court denied [659]*659defendant’s motion, concluding that “what [Blood] did was reasonable.”

On appeal, defendant again relies on the existence of Miranda, and the factual similarities between that case and this one, to argue that “it is unreasonable to believe that a member of a small police force would not know that the Ninth Circuit recently held that the actions of a fellow officer violated the Fourth Amendment in a nearly identical situation and under the same statute and ordinance.”

The state responds that the Ninth Circuit stopped short of declaring unconstitutional ORS 809.720

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Related

United States v. Peltier
422 U.S. 531 (Supreme Court, 1975)
United States v. Leon
468 U.S. 897 (Supreme Court, 1984)
Illinois v. Krull
480 U.S. 340 (Supreme Court, 1987)
Outdoor Media Dimensions Inc. v. State
20 P.3d 180 (Oregon Supreme Court, 2001)
State v. Gonzales
236 P.3d 834 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2010)
State v. Gonzales
243 P.3d 116 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2010)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
337 P.3d 129, 265 Or. App. 655, 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1315, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-gonzales-orctapp-2014.