State v. Jacobus

809 P.2d 108, 106 Or. App. 496, 1991 Ore. App. LEXIS 552
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedApril 10, 1991
DocketC88-10-38136; CA A61294
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 809 P.2d 108 (State v. Jacobus) 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. Jacobus, 809 P.2d 108, 106 Or. App. 496, 1991 Ore. App. LEXIS 552 (Or. Ct. App. 1991).

Opinions

[498]*498RICHARDSON, P. J.

Defendant appeals his conviction for possession of a controlled substance, heroin. ORS 475.992. He contends that the court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence seized from his person without a warrant. After the motion was denied, defendant stipulated to the facts, was convicted and appeals. We affirm.

The arresting officer, Costello, was the only witness to testify at the hearing. We summarize the trial court’s findings, which defendant does not dispute. At about 8 or 9 p.m., Costello was dispatched by police radio to a Minit Mart convenience store near the intersection of 77th Avenue and Foster Road in Portland. The dispatcher said that a store employee had been told by a customer that the customer had overheard the occupants of an orange Datsun automobile say “there was only one clerk in the store.” The clerk had asked that the police check out the Datsun, which was said to be parked on the street near the store but could not be seen from the store.

Costello approached southbound on 77th Avenue and saw an orange Datsun parked on 77th Avenue facing north and out of view of the front of the Minit Mart. As he drove toward the Datsun, he saw that there were two men and a woman in the car. He went past the car, turned around and saw the occupants “move around [in] the vehicle quite frantically,” as if stuffing something under the seats. When he pulled in behind the vehicle and turned on the overhead lights, the female and one male got out and walked past him toward the Minit Mart. The other male, defendant, remained in the back of the Datsun.

As Costello approached the car, he saw defendant stuffing something down behind the seats or under some clothing. He asked defendant to get out of the car, which he did after the third request. Costello turned defendant over to another officer who had arrived to help cover the call and went to the store to talk to the clerk and to check on the two people who had left the car. He returned after not finding the two people. He asked defendant for identification, and defendant said that he did not have any. Costello asked defendant whose coat it was laying in the back of the car, and defendant said that it was his. Costello testified that he then asked if defendant “minded if [I] looked through the coat. He said, ‘Go [499]*499ahead.’ ” The officer picked up the coat and felt a wallet in one pocket and a small object in another. He did not reach into the pockets but handed the coat to defendant, after he was satisfied that it contained no weapons. As defendant reached for the coat, a small object, a finger ring box, fell to the ground. The officer asked what the container was, and defendant replied that he did not know. Costello testified that he asked “if he minded if [I] looked through it because it came out of his coat, and he said, ‘Go ahead.’ ” The officer looked in the ring box and found heroin.

Defendant argues that when the officer pulled in behind the Datsun and turned on the overhead lights, that constituted a stop and that, because there was no basis for it, the stop was unlawful under ORS 131.615 and the state and federal constitutions. Therefore, he contends, the unlawful stop, in conjunction with the other circumstances, made the search unlawful.

The state conceded at trial that there was a stop under ORS 131.615, at least when the officer asked defendant to get out of the car. It argues, however, that there was reasonable suspicion that the three people were involved in criminal activity and that the stop was lawful under the statute. The state also contends that, even if the stop violated the statute, defendant’s consent to search was valid and the evidence was properly seized.

In State v. Kennedy, 290 Or 493, 624 P2d 99 (1981), the court held that an unlawful stop does not necessarily require suppression of evidence obtained following the stop. In other words, there is not a “but for” test to determine if the evidence is legally seized. If the search is based on the consent of the defendant after the unlawful police conduct, the question is whether, under all the circumstances, including the facts of the unlawful conduct, the consent is a product of the defendant’s free will. State v. Quinn, 290 Or 383, 623 P2d 630 (1981). The court noted in Kennedy that the burden on the state to show voluntariness when consent occurs after an unlawful stop is greater than when no illegality has occurred. The court rejected the concept that, because the unlawful police conduct put the defendant in a position so that his consent could be requested and obtained, consent was therefore invalid.

[500]*500Whether there was consent and whether it was voluntary or involuntary is a fact inquiry. However, as the court said in State v. Williamson, 307 Or 621, 625, 772 P2d 404 (1989), “while the events and their psychic effects may be questions of fact, the legal effect of the ‘voluntary’ disclosure [of evidence] remains a legal, not a factual, judgment.” See also State v. Wolfe, 295 Or 567, 669 P2d 320 (1983); State v. Kennedy, supra; State v. Douglas, 260 Or 60, 488 P2d 1366 (1971), cert den 406 US 974 (1972) . Although there may be elements of coercion in every police-citizen encounter, not every coercive factor inducing a consent to search is constitutionally impermissible. State v. Douglas, supra.

In State v. Kennedy, supra, the Portland Police Bureau received information from the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sheriffs Office that two men who fit a “drug smuggler’s profile” had boarded a plane for Portland. The Portland officers were given a description of the men, went to the airport and saw two men fitting the description. When the two men parted, two officers followed one of them, the defendant. They approached him in the terminal concourse, identified themselves as police officers, asked if they could speak with him and told him that they had information that he might be carrying narcotics on his person or in his luggage. He denied that he had narcotics and said, “Would you like to search my luggage?” The officers “frisked” the defendant and then searched his luggage and found narcotics. The court said that it was unnecessary to decide if the stop was proper because, even assuming an unlawful stop and the heightened burden on the state, the defendant’s consent was voluntary. The court noted that there were only two police officers present, that the confrontation occurred in the public area of the airport and that the defendant offered to open his luggage without a request from the officers.

At some distance on the factual spectrum from Kennedy is State v. Williamson, supra. Defendant and the dissent argue that Williamson supports the proposition that the police may not exploit the inherent coerciveness of a stop to gain consent when the stop is unlawful. The syllogism of the dissent is that unlawful coercion makes the consent invalid; there is coercion inherent in a stop; if the stop is unlawful, the inherent coercion is unlawful and the consent is invalid. However, the Supreme Court, in deciding Kennedy, specifically [501]

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State v. Jacobus
809 P.2d 108 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1991)

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Bluebook (online)
809 P.2d 108, 106 Or. App. 496, 1991 Ore. App. LEXIS 552, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-jacobus-orctapp-1991.