State v. Jordan

• Decision Date: 06 September 1978
• Docket Number: No. C,C
• Citation: 583 P.2d 1161,36 Or.App. 45
• Parties: STATE of Oregon, Respondent, v. Nadine JORDAN, also known as Juanita Adams, Appellant. 77 01 00736; CA 8349.
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals

Page 1161

583 P.2d 1161

36 Or.App. 45

STATE of Oregon, Respondent, v. Nadine JORDAN, also known as Juanita Adams, Appellant.

No. C 77 01 00736; CA 8349.

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Argued and Submitted April 25, 1978.

Decided Sept. 6, 1978.

James E. Mountain, Jr., Deputy Public Defender, Salem, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the brief was Gary D. Babcock, Public Defender, Salem.

W. Benny Won, Asst. Atty. Gen., Salem, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were James A. Redden, Atty. Gen., and Al J. Laue, Sol. Gen., Salem.

Before SCHWAB, C. J., and THORNTON, TANZER and BUTTLER, JJ.

TANZER, Judge.

Defendant appeals from her conviction of the crime of hindering prosecution. ORS 162.325. She assigns as error the trial court's denial of her motion to suppress evidence of a search of her residence that resulted in the discovery of the person whom defendant was charged with concealing.

Portland Police Officer Ault learned from a confidential reliable informant that one Sandra Jordan or Pennington was living at a certain house in northeast Portland and using a yellow Pinto automobile. Ault knew that Jordan was subject to an outstanding arrest warrant for failure to appear on a robbery charge. He and three other officers went to the house to execute the arrest warrant. Upon seeing a yellow Pinto parked outside, Ault and another officer approached the front door while the other two officers covered the rear of the house. The defendant and another woman answered the door. The officers stated their purpose and asked the women for their names and some identification. Defendant identified herself as Juanita Adams but would not produce any identification. The women refused to let the officers search the residence. The policemen returned to their vehicles and Officer Ault ran a records check on Juanita Adams. The name was reported as an alias for Sandra Jordan. Not knowing whether defendant was or was not Jordan, the officers returned to the house and took her into custody on the robbery charge with the intention of establishing her identity through fingerprints at the station.

After observing a mug shot of Sandra Jordan, but still unsure that he had the right person, Officer Ault ordered the other officers to go back up to the house to see if there was another person in the house who was actually Sandra Jordan. ¹ He again compared the mug shot with the defendant and noted a physical resemblance, but some discrepancy in the physical description. The defendant admitted to Ault that she was Nadine Jordan, but he did not communicate this information to the searching officers at that time.

The officers who conducted the search also were not certain that they had Sandra Jordan in custody. One officer testified:

"Q Now, when you went back what factors led you to have some suspicion that the suspect Sandra Jordan might still be in that apartment when you re-entered it after placing the defendant, Nadine Jordan, in custody?

"A She gave us the name Juanita Adams when we first walked up on the porch and they opened the door. That came back as an alias for Sandra Jordan. So since we had been lied to, we were unsure who she was, and when we went back up on the porch after she had been placed in custody, we went in to see if Sandra Jordan was there or if we, in fact, had Sandra Jordan."

The officers entered the house over the objection of the other woman and discovered the real Sandra Jordan hiding in the attic.

There is no dispute that, based upon the informant's report and the sighting of the Pinto in front of the house, the officers had probable cause to believe that Sandra Jordan could be found within the house. The issue is whether, as defendant contends, the arrest of the defendant dissipated that probable cause so that the subsequent search for Sandra Jordan was not legally justified.

The underlying assumption of defendant's theory is that probable cause is finite and, if it is expended on one suspect, there cannot be enough left for another suspect. That theory is no more tenable than would be its opposite: that with probable cause, as with love, there is always plenty for everybody. The statement of principle most harmonious with the fundamental predicate of the Fourth Amendment, reasonableness, fits between those two extremes.

Probable cause may justify the arrest of more than one person. If, for example, a policeman sees A and B bending over a dead man and each accuses the other of killing the victim, there is probable cause for the arrest of either or both and the arrest of A does not preclude the arrest of B. Similarly, if A is found one block north of a recently robbed bank and matches the description of the robber, the arrest of A does not preclude the subsequent arrest of B who also matches the description and is found one block south of the bank. ²

In either case, it would be reasonable for the police to arrest both A and B on probable cause even though they believe that only one of them committed the crime. The purpose of the arrest, however, is not the traditional and statutory purpose of an arrest: to charge the arrestee with crime. ³ Rather, it is to initiate a short-term process of sorting out, usually on the scene, to determine which person should be charged with crime, I. e., arrested in the full sense of the word. Thus the initial "arrest" is really in the nature of a stop or detention ⁴ rather than a true arrest.

Although multiple arrests may be reasonable in certain circumstances, the law does not allow dragnet arrests of many suspects for investigation of each. Factors to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable have been well stated elsewhere:

"Other factors may be important in determining the validity of multiple arrests in a given situation. The degree of certainty that the actual offender is within the group would seem relevant, along with the size of the group. The seriousness of the offense may affect the result. Also of importance is the need for immediate action, as where two persons of unknown identity are running from the scene of a crime. The available means of postarrest selection may also be a deciding factor. For example, the arrest of three suspects to enable a witness to view them in a lineup may be less objectionable than the arrest of the same number for interrogation. * * * " (Footnotes omitted.) W. LaFave, Arrest, 262 (1975).

In this case there clearly was probable cause to believe that Sandra Jordan was in the house. The officers had legal authority to enter to arrest Sandra Jordan in execution of the arrest warrant. ORS 133.235(5) provides:

"In...