State v. Edwards
| Decision Date | 13 April 2022 |
| Docket Number | A173172 |
| Citation | 319 Or.App. 60,509 P.3d 177 |
| Parties | STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Amber Louise EDWARDS, aka Amber Louise Gillilane, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Oregon Court of Appeals |
Sarah De La Cruz, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant. Also on the brief was Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate Section, Office of Public Defense Services.
Shannon T. Reel, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.
Before Tookey, Presiding Judge, and Aoyagi, Judge, and Sercombe, Senior Judge.
Defendant and her companion were observed stealing items from a Salvation Army donations trailer. That led to an encounter with a sheriff's deputy, during which the deputy searched defendant's companion's truck. The deputy found heroin and drug paraphernalia inside a small metal box located in the truck's cab. Defendant was subsequently convicted of unlawful possession of heroin, ORS 475.854(2)(a) (2017), amended by Or. Laws 2021, ch. 2, § 14; Or. Laws 2021 ch. 591, § 36. On appeal, she contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress, because the evidence was found in an unreasonable search in violation of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. For the following reasons, we affirm.
We review the denial of a motion to suppress for errors of law. State v. Ehly , 317 Or. 66, 75, 854 P.2d 421 (1993). We are bound by the trial court's factual findings if there is constitutionally adequate evidence to support them. Id. We state the facts, which come almost entirely from the deputy's testimony, accordingly.
Around 8:30 p.m. on a summer night, the Washington County Sheriff's Office received two 9-1-1 calls reporting that two or three people were removing items from a Salvation Army donations trailer parked in a grocery store parking lot. At least one report included a vehicle description. A deputy drove to the location, which took about 20 minutes, and found a vehicle parked near the donations trailer that matched the description. The vehicle was an "open bed pickup truck" with "a bunch of stuff in the bed." The bed was covered by a tarp, but "stuff" was "sticking out" from under the tarp. Inside the truck's cab were "a bunch of different things," like "[b]ackpacks and random items." The area
A man named Douglas was sitting in the driver's seat, while defendant was either sitting in the passenger seat or standing by the passenger door. The deputy told them that there had been a report of "a truck matching this description" taking items from the Salvation Army donations trailer. In response, defendant and Douglas were "cooperative" and "fairly forthcoming," talked with the deputy "about the theft," and "started removing items from the back of the pickup truck and agreeing to take them back to the Salvation Army trailer." The deputy does not remember what the items were, but defendant and Douglas removed "various items" of "various sizes" from the truck bed and walked them back to the donations trailer.
At that point, the deputy believed that he had probable cause to arrest defendant and Douglas for theft. The deputy proceeded to search the truck, without a warrant or consent, looking for "additional stuff." From past experience, he knew that "people can drop off whatever they want" at a Salvation Army donation center, from "things as large as furniture down to, you know, Christmas ornaments and little—small electronics and bric-a-brac"; "it's a pretty kind of open concern as far as what gets dropped there." Given the nature of Salvation Army donations, as well as "the kind of random items that were coming out of the bed of the truck," the deputy believed that "anything inside the truck" potentially could have been taken from the donations trailer.
In the truck's cab, behind the driver's seat, the deputy found a small pink-and-purple metal box. The deputy asked who it belonged to. Defendant said that it was hers, and Douglas may have said the same. Believing that the box belonged to defendant1 but that it could contain items stolen from the donations trailer, the deputy opened the box and found needles, small items of drug paraphernalia, and a usable amount of heroin. After Mirandizing her, the deputy asked defendant about the contents of the box, and she admitted that it was her "kit" and that it contained a "teener" of heroin, which the deputy understood to mean $10 worth of heroin.
Defendant was charged with unlawful possession of heroin. She moved to suppress the evidence from the metal box as resulting from an unconstitutional search. The court readily concluded that the search of the truck was justified as a search incident to arrest and otherwise,2 and it asked the parties to focus on the opening of the metal box. The state successfully argued that opening the metal box was permissible as a search incident to arrest for theft, because items stolen from the donations trailer could be any size, including small enough to fit into the metal box. The court denied the motion to suppress, concluding that it was objectively reasonable for the deputy to believe that the metal box could contain items stolen from the donations trailer, because the deputy "was looking for all sizes of items, big, little, and trinkets and Christmas ornaments, they could be evidence of theft, and it could have been found in the box."
Defendant was convicted of heroin possession.
Article I, section 9, guarantees citizens the right to be free from unreasonable searches. Or Const, Art I, § 9 (). A warrantless search is presumptively unreasonable, unless it satisfies one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. State v. Bridewell , 306 Or. 231, 235, 759 P.2d 1054 (1988). It is the state's burden to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that an exception to the warrant requirement applies. State v. Marshall , 254 Or. App. 419, 427, 295 P.3d 128 (2013).
A search incident to arrest is a recognized exception to the warrant requirement.
State v. Caraher , 293 Or. 741, 743, 3 P.2d 942 (1982). However, "under the Oregon Constitution, the fact of arrest does not grant an unqualified right to search an arrestee's person for crime evidence," State v. Owens , 302 Or. 196, 201, 729 P.2d 524 (1986), so certain requirements must be met for the exception to apply. First, the arrest must be lawful, i.e. , supported by a valid warrant or probable cause. Id. at 203, 729 P.2d 524. Second, the purpose of the search must be to protect an officer's safety, to prevent the destruction of evidence, or to discover evidence of the crime of arrest. State v. Mazzola , 356 Or. 804, 811, 345 P.3d 424 (2015). Third, the search must be reasonable in time, scope, and intensity. State v. Gordon , 71 Or. App. 321, 326, 692 P.2d 618 (1984), rev. den. , 298 Or. 705, 695 P.2d 1372 (1985). As to scope and intensity, the search must be limited to "areas where the ‘instrumentalities’ or ‘fruits’ of the crime could reasonably be concealed, not just could possibly be concealed." State v. Ramirez , 305 Or. App. 195, 215, 468 P.3d 1006 (2020) (emphases in original). Closed containers may be opened and searched when "found on or immediately associated with the arrestee, but only when it is reasonable to believe that evidence of a crime for which the person was arrested could be concealed there." Owens , 302 Or. at 202, 729 P.2d 524. "The test is the reasonableness of the search in light of the circumstances of the particular case." Id .
Defendant does not contest that probable cause existed to arrest her for the crime of theft. See id. at 204, 729 P.2d 524 (). Nor does she contest that the purpose of the deputy's search was to look for evidence of theft. Rather, her argument is directed to the scope and intensity of the search, which she contends was unreasonable under the circumstances. Defendant points to the absence of evidence that stolen items were placed in the cab, the absence of evidence that the metal box "would contain evidence of theft," and the deputy's lack of information as to "the particular items, sizes of items, or types of items that were stolen." In short, defendant argues that the fact that potentially anything could have been stolen from the donations trailer did not justify a search of everything in her possession.
The state responds that it was reasonable for the deputy to believe that stolen items could be concealed inside the metal box. The state argues that there was no way to tell what had been taken from the donations trailer and that the general nature of Salvation Army donations meant that virtually anything in the truck could have been stolen, including very small items that would fit in the metal box.
Whether a search incident to arrest is reasonable in scope and intensity is a fact-bound inquiry, dependent on the circumstances of the individual case. Id. at 202, 729 P.2d 524. In many cases in which an officer has been held to have lawfully opened a closed container during a search incident to arrest, there was a situation-specific reason to believe that a fruit or instrumentality of the crime existed and could be concealed in that specific container. For example, in Owens , it was reasonable to search the defendant's purse incident to her arrest for theft, where she had been seen taking small items off the shelves in a drug store and placing them in her purse. Id. at 198, 202, 729 P.2d 524....
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