State v. McHaffie

350 P.3d 600, 271 Or. App. 379, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 655
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMay 28, 2015
Docket10CR2523FE; A152112
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 350 P.3d 600 (State v. McHaffie) 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. McHaffie, 350 P.3d 600, 271 Or. App. 379, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 655 (Or. Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

SERCOMBE, P. J.

Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for unlawful possession of methamphetamine in violation of ORS 475.894. He assigns error to the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence discovered after he complied with an officer’s request to empty his pockets during the stop of a vehicle in which he was a passenger. Specifically, defendant asserts that, before the evidence was discovered, the officer had unlawfully seized him without reasonable suspicion in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. We conclude that the officer’s stop of defendant was supported by reasonable suspicion and, therefore, we affirm.

We review the trial court’s denial of a motion to suppress for legal error and “are bound by the trial court’s findings of historical fact that are supported by evidence in the record.” State v. Holdorf, 355 Or 812, 814, 333 P3d 982 (2014). In light of that standard, we describe the facts consistently with the trial court’s undisputed factual findings.

At 11:30 p.m., Tilley, a patrol sergeant with the Douglas County Sheriffs Office, was posted at an intersection in Yoncalla when he observed a Nissan truck turn without signaling. He also observed that one of the tail lights on the truck was broken. Tilley ran a computer check and determined that the registered owner of the truck, Meza, was on felony probation for delivery of methamphetamine. Tilley then initiated a traffic stop.

After the overhead lights on the patrol car were activated, Meza, who was driving the truck, turned his vehicle across the center line of the road and parked on the opposite side of the street. Once the Nissan had stopped, Meza and defendant, who was a passenger in the truck, quickly got out of the vehicle. Tilley had not asked them to do so, and it was unusual for people he stopped to behave in that manner. In Tilley’s experience, people who do so are attempting to put distance between themselves and the contents of the vehicle. Both Meza and defendant appeared “extremely nervous.”

After getting out of the truck, defendant approached Tilley and Meza, who were on the driver’s side of the vehicle, [381]*381and asked why Tilley had stopped them. Tilley, who was working alone at that point, had one man on each side of him and was concerned for his safety. However, the tone of the conversation between defendant and Tilley was cordial. Tilley told defendant he looked familiar and asked his name. After defendant told Tilley his name, Tilley disclosed that he had worked for a time as a corrections officer and asked defendant whether he had been in jail. Defendant affirmed that he had been in jail several times and that he had been arrested for possession of methamphetamine.

During that time, defendant was engaged in a behavior that Tilley called “indexing.” Specifically, defendant repeatedly touched his front right pants pocket and several times placed his hand inside that pocket and then pulled it back out without removing anything from inside. Tilley had been an officer with the Douglas County Sheriffs office for more than 10 years, part of it as a narcotics detective, and had participated in “in depth training on apprehension, investigation and identification of controlled substances” and conducted many arrests relating to controlled substances in that time. In Tilley’s training and experience, people who possess drugs often engage in those behaviors, which serve to “verify the location of the narcotics.” Indeed, Tilley had conducted arrests of individuals engaged in that behavior on previous occasions and had located contraband in the area indicated by the “indexing” behavior.

Tilley then asked defendant for his identification. When defendant handed him the identification, Tilley noticed that defendant’s movements were exaggerated and that his hands were shaking. The exaggerated movements led Tilley to believe that defendant was under the “influence of something or had recently used.”

After receiving defendant’s identification, Tilley asked defendant if he had anything illegal on him, and defendant responded that he did not. Tilley then asked defendant if he would be willing to empty his pockets and defendant agreed to do so. As defendant was emptying his pockets, Tilley noticed that he reached into his front right pants pocket several times but did not take anything out of it. Tilley then asked defendant if he had anything in his coin [382]*382pocket. Defendant put his fingers inside the coin pocket and then “quickly cuffed something in the palm of his hand.”

Based on his training and experience, Tilley believed that defendant was attempting to hide contraband in his hand. He grabbed defendant’s hand and asked what he had in it. Defendant responded that he had a “rinse bag” — that is, a small plastic bag with drug residue — that he had forgotten was in his pocket. He then slowly opened his hand to reveal a clear plastic baggie with a white crystal substance that Tilley suspected to be methamphetamine. Tilley then arrested defendant and, subsequently, obtained additional incriminating evidence.

After being charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence obtained as a result of his interaction with Tilley. Defendant contended that Tilley had stopped him without reasonable suspicion when Tilley obtained his identification. In defendant’s view, because the evidence of controlled substances was obtained as a result of that unlawful seizure, the court was required to suppress the evidence. After a hearing, the trial court concluded that defendant was stopped when the officer grabbed his hand, but, in light of all the surrounding circumstances, the stop was lawful. Because it concluded that the seizure was lawful in this case, the trial court denied defendant’s motion to suppress. Defendant then waived his right to a jury trial and, following a stipulated facts trial, the court found defendant guilty of unlawful possession of methamphetamine.

On appeal, defendant asserts that he was seized either when Tilley took his identification card or, at the latest, when Tilley grabbed his hand. According to defendant, in either case, Tilley did not have reasonable suspicion to support the seizure. The state responds that the stop occurred when Tilley “grabbed defendant’s hand.” The state further asserts that, when Tilley stopped defendant, “he had reasonable suspicion that defendant possessed drugs.” As explained below, we conclude that, before Tilley received defendant’s identification, he had reasonable suspicion of drug possession and, therefore, the trial court properly denied defendant’s motion to suppress.

[383]*383Article I, section 9, protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons * * * against unreasonable search, or seizure.” “[E]ncounters between law enforcement officers and citizens are of an infinite variety.” State v. Backstrand, 354 Or 392, 398, 313 P3d 1084 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Of that infinite variety, only some implicate the prohibition in Article I, section 9, against unreasonable seizures.” Id. at 398-99 (internal quotation marks omitted).

“Analytically, police-citizen encounters typically fall into one of three categories that correlate the degree of intrusiveness on a citizen’s liberty with the degree of justification required for the intrusion.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
350 P.3d 600, 271 Or. App. 379, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 655, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mchaffie-orctapp-2015.