State v. Lane

347 Or. App. 229
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedFebruary 19, 2026
DocketA183592
StatusPublished

This text of 347 Or. App. 229 (State v. Lane) 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. Lane, 347 Or. App. 229 (Or. Ct. App. 2026).

Opinion

No. 111 February 19, 2026 229

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF OREGON

STATE OF OREGON, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. DAVID FRANK LANE, Defendant-Appellant. Marion County Circuit Court 20CR47352; A183592

Daniel J. Wren, Judge. Argued and submitted January 7, 2026. Sara De La Cruz, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant. Also on the briefs was Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate Section, Oregon Public Defense Commission. Joanna Hershey, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Dan Rayfield, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General. Before Ortega, Presiding Judge, Joyce, Judge, and Hellman, Judge. JOYCE, J. Affirmed. 230 State v. Lane

JOYCE, J. Defendant entered a conditional plea to one count of felon in possession of a firearm, reserving his right to chal- lenge the trial court’s rulings on two motions to suppress. Defendant’s first motion to suppress sought to exclude evi- dence that officers obtained by using a camera attached to a telephone pole (pole camera) because the use of the camera constituted a “search” and officers did not have a warrant. The second motion to suppress sought to exclude evidence that officers obtained through a search warrant, which defendant contended was based on stale information and was insufficiently particular. As to the pole camera, we con- clude that the officers did not conduct a search under either the Oregon or United States constitutions because it cap- tured information that would otherwise be available to the public and was not pervasive in terms of the scope of infor- mation that it recorded. As to the second motion to suppress, the trial court correctly concluded that the information upon which officers relied was not stale and that the warrant itself was sufficiently particular. We therefore affirm. I. MOTION TO SUPPRESS POLE CAMERA EVIDENCE A. Factual Background We describe the facts relevant to defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence derived from the pole camera. We review the trial court’s ruling for legal error and are bound by the trial court’s factual findings if there is evidence in the record to support them. State v. Ehly, 317 Or 66, 75, 854 P2d 421 (1993). Police installed a pole camera outside of a house on Baldwin Street in Salem after learning that items sto- len during a burglary of a marijuana dispensary had been taken to the house. Police believed that defendant had been involved in the burglary and wanted to see if he lived at or fre- quented that home.1 Police installed a camera on a telephone 1 The police installed two cameras, but because the state did not rely on any footage from the second camera, the trial court did not consider any footage from that camera. We therefore describe only the location of and evidence that came from the camera from which officers obtained the evidence that defendant sought to exclude. Cite as 347 Or App 229 (2026) 231

pole that allowed the police to “remotely manipulate” the camera’s position and zoom in and out. The camera’s vantage point allowed police to see a part of the house’s exterior, the driveway, and the walkway to and from the front door. They could not see inside the home or the backyard. The police used the pole camera to surveil defen- dant for approximately four weeks. Officers saw defendant coming and going from the house 15 times, and 10 of those observations were from the pole camera’s footage. Police then obtained a search warrant for the house (the details of which we will address in response to defen- dant’s second assignment of error). After executing the war- rant, officers found drugs and weapons. Defendant moved to suppress the evidence from the pole camera, as well as its derivative fruit.2 He argued that use of the pole camera constituted a “search” within the meaning of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and, because officers did not have a warrant to use the pole camera, that the search was unconstitutional. The trial court denied the motion. The court found that the view from the pole camera did not show the front door; it captured the driveway and part of a walkway, both of which were “fair game for people on the streets to see[.]” If “a police officer sat in that same area for 30 days 24/7, we would not be concerned,” and the fact that officers used technology to capture what they otherwise would be able to see themselves did not create a “search” as that term is used in either the state or federal constitutions. The trial court distinguished cases in which both the Oregon Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court have found that the use of technology was a “search” by noting that those cases—both of which involved the placement of loca- tion trackers on a person’s car—were “more intrusive when

2 In the motion to suppress, defendant expressly disclaimed that the home that was surveilled was his personal residence and stated that his home was located elsewhere in Salem. Officers confirmed through a records check that defendant’s address was not the surveilled house. As explained below, those facts are significant in light of the protections of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 232 State v. Lane

we’re talking about comings and goings” and allowed offi- cers to track “each and every location that that car goes,” whereas the pole camera was “a stationary object that just record[ed] comings and goings of a particular location[.]” See State v. Campbell, 306 Or 157, 759 P2d 1040 (1988) (use of a radio transmitter attached to a car to track its location was a search under Article I, section 9); United States v. Jones, 565 US 400, 132 S Ct 945, 181 L Ed 911 (2012) (attachment of a GPS device to a car to track the car’s movements was a search under the Fourth Amendment). The court therefore concluded that the evidence obtained from the pole camera was not a search under Article I, section 9, or the Fourth Amendment and denied defendant’s motion to suppress. Defendant appeals, reprising his argument that police conducted a search as that term is understood under both the state and federal constitutions. Following our typi- cal methodology, we begin with Article I, section 9. Sterling v. Cupp, 290 Or 611, 614, 625 P2d 123 (1981) (articulating the “first things first” doctrine). Because we conclude that use of the pole camera was not a search under that provi- sion, we then consider that same question, but under the Fourth Amendment. We reach the same conclusion under that provision and therefore affirm the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress. B. Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution Article I, section 9, protects the right of people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search[.]” The parties agree that the single issue that we must decide is whether the pole camera surveillance constituted a search. We begin with some basic, undisputed principles. A search occurs under Article I, section 9, when the govern- ment “invades a protected privacy interest.” State v. Brown, 348 Or 293, 297, 232 P3d 962 (2010). But a police officer is not engaged in a search when they make unaided observa- tions from a lawful vantage point or from a public place. See State v. Ainsworth, 310 Or 613, 621, 801 P2d 749 (1990) (“[A] police officer’s unaided observation, purposive or not, from a lawful vantage point is not a search under Article I, Cite as 347 Or App 229 (2026) 233

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Bluebook (online)
347 Or. App. 229, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lane-orctapp-2026.