State v. Blair/Vanis
| Decision Date | 22 November 2000 |
| Citation | 171 Or. App. 162,14 P.3d 660 |
| Parties | STATE of Oregon, Appellant, v. Michael Edward BLAIR, Respondent. State of Oregon, Appellant, v. Dale Howard Vanis, Respondent. |
| Court | Oregon Court of Appeals |
Jennifer S. Lloyd, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for appellant. With her on the brief were Hardy Myers, Attorney General, and Michael D. Reynolds, Solicitor General.
Robin A. Jones, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for respondent Dale Howard Vanis. With her on the brief was David E. Groom, Public Defender.
No appearance for respondent Michael Edward Blair. Before LANDAU, Presiding Judge, and LINDER and BREWER, Judges.
Defendants were charged with the manufacture and possession of a controlled substance. ORS 475.992(1)(a) and (4)(a). Before trial, they successfully moved to suppress evidence obtained in a warrantless search of their van, together with statements that they made to the arresting officers. The state appeals, and we reverse and remand.
We review the trial court's legal conclusions for errors of law. State v. Ehly, 317 Or. 66, 74-75, 854 P.2d 421 (1993). Because the trial court did not make specific findings of historical fact, we presume that the court decided the facts consistently with its ultimate conclusion. Id. We summarize the facts based on the testimony of the two officers who testified at the suppression hearing.1
Late at night, Deputies Erichsen and Conroy were on patrol responding to an unrelated call when they noticed a van on the side of a two-lane highway. Traffic at the time was heavy, with a steady flow of vehicles passing by the van. The van was "straddling the white fog line," its hazard lights were flashing, and it was either parked on the side of the road or was slowly rolling forward.2 There was no lighting in the area. Because the van appeared to need assistance, the officers pulled up behind it and turned on their spotlight both to illuminate the area and for officer safety. Officer Erichsen also activated the patrol car's overhead flashing emergency lights to make sure that passing traffic could see them. He then informed dispatch that they were stopping to respond to a "motorist assist." After the officers stopped behind the van, the van either continued or began rolling slowly forward for a short distance and then came to a complete stop. Defendant Blair, the driver of the van, got out and rushed toward the patrol car. Erichsen asked Blair if he was having vehicle problems and informed him that, because he was parked partially in the roadway, he easily could cause a collision with passing traffic. Blair replied that nothing was wrong with the van and that they were just sitting there. While he talked to the officers, Blair was visibly shaking and nervous, he kept looking back at the van, and he kept trying to block the officers' view.
Meanwhile, both officers observed movement inside the van. Conroy approached the van, looked through the rear window with the aid of a flashlight, and saw marijuana plants in the cargo area.3 After advising Erichsen of the marijuana, Conroy told Blair to put his hands on the patrol car. At that point, defendant Vanis, a passenger, got out of the van and walked toward the patrol car. The officers eventually searched the van, discovered several marijuana plants and evidence relating to marijuana cultivation, and arrested defendants. During the course of those events, both defendants made incriminating statements.
Before trial, relying on both statutory and constitutional grounds,4 defendants moved to suppress the evidence obtained in the warrantless search of the van and the statements that defendants made to the arresting officers. Specifically, they contended that the officers unlawfully stopped and detained them without reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed. Defendants urged that, because they were "stopped," once the officers realized that they did not need assistance, the officers were obligated to cease their investigation and allow defendants to leave. At the pretrial hearing on defendants' motions, the state first argued that the officers' conduct in attempting to render assistance to a motorist was not a "stop" for constitutional purposes. Thus, the officers were not under any obligation to cease their investigation when they learned that defendants did not need motorist assistance. Alternatively, the state argued that, even if defendants were stopped, the officers had probable cause to stop them for illegal parking, which would be a traffic infraction under ORS 811.550 and ORS 811.555, and the officers did not exceed the permissible scope of investigating that infraction.
The trial court granted defendants' motions, concluding that, by any reasonable and objective standard, the actions of the officers amounted to a stop of defendants' vehicle. The trial court further reasoned that, once defendant Blair indicated that he did not need motorist assistance, the inquiry should have ended because "the reason for the stop had dissipated." In the trial court's view, the stop became unlawful at that point and therefore "the further search or viewing inside the van was a[n] unlawful search and the evidence will be suppressed with regard to the plants which were seized and the statements taken from [defendants] following the arrest because that was the fruits of the unlawful search."
On appeal, the parties largely renew the arguments that they made below.5 Because we agree with the state's argument that the encounter did not amount to a stop, we do not reach its alternative argument that, even if the encounter was a stop, it was lawfully based on defendants' commission of a traffic infraction.
The threshold issue for our resolution is whether the officers "seized" defendants within the meaning of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.6 The applicable test has both subjective and objective components:
"[A] `seizure' of a person occurs under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution (a) if a law enforcement officer intentionally and significantly restricts, interferes with, or otherwise deprives an individual of that individual's liberty or freedom of movement; or (b) whenever an individual believes that (a), above, has occurred and such belief is objectively reasonable in the circumstances."
State v. Holmes, 311 Or. 400, 409-10, 813 P.2d 28 (1991). See also State v. Juarez-Godinez, 326 Or. 1, 6-7, 942 P.2d 772 (1997). As that test suggests, not all encounters between citizens and police officers are seizures in the constitutional sense. Rather, those encounters potentially fall into one of three general categories: (1) a "mere conversation," which involves no restraint of the citizen and requires no justification; (2) a "stop," which is a temporary restraint that must be justified by reasonable suspicion that the citizen is involved in criminal activity; and (3) an "arrest," which must be justified by probable cause. Holmes, 311 Or. at 407, 813 P.2d 28. Of those categories, only arrests and stops qualify as seizures under Article I, section 9. In any given case, determining which of those three categories a particular police-citizen encounter fits requires "a fact-specific inquiry into the totality of the circumstances." Id. at 408, 813 P.2d 28.
In analyzing whether this police-citizen encounter constituted a "stop," the parties' arguments proceed from different factual starting points. The state asserts that the van "was already stopped when the deputies noticed it" and then it began moving—albeit only a short distance—after the officers had turned on their overhead flashing lights and had illuminated the area with their spotlight. The state emphasizes that the officers did nothing additional when the van began rolling forward to "in any way indicate to the driver of the van that it could not continue to drive off" and that, instead, defendants stopped the van of their own accord after rolling forward about 100 feet. The state thus cites and places particular reliance on cases in which we have concluded that, when an officer approached a citizen and asked questions, the officer's conduct was not a "stop" because either the citizen was already stopped of his or her own volition when the officers approached, or the citizen stopped without any signal or show of authority requiring him or her to do so. See, e.g., State v. Fields, 122 Or.App. 38, 41-42, 857 P.2d 179 (1993) (); State v. Miller, 120 Or.App. 349, 852 P.2d 895 (1993) ().
Defendants, in contrast, insist that, viewed in a light most favorable to the trial court's ruling, the record establishes that the van was moving when the officers first saw it and that it continued moving after the officers activated their lights. Necessarily, then, according to defendants, the officers had activated their overhead lights before the van came to a complete stop and defendants objectively could not have believed that they were free to drive away because to do so would be a crime. See ORS 811.540 (). Defendants are correct in describing how we must view the factual record. Consequently, we must analyze this case with the understanding that the van was rolling slowly forward when the officers first noticed it and that it came to a complete stop at some point shortly after the officers had pulled behind the van, had activated their overhead lights, and had illuminated both the van and the general area with a spotlight. We do not agree,...
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