Lead Opinion
Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII). ORS 813.010. He assigns error to the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence discovered as a result of what he contends was an unlawful seizure under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In particular, defendant argues that he was unlawfully stopped when an officer knocked on the door of his residence, asked him to come outside and talk, accompanied him to a place outside to conduct field sobriety tests, read him his Miranda rights, and then asked for his consent to a patdown search. The state responds that, under the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable person would have understood that he or she was free to leave and, therefore, defendant was not stopped under either the state or federal constitution. We agree with defendant that the circumstances in this case amounted to a stop under Article I, section 9. Accordingly, we reverse and remand.
We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress for legal error and are bound by the court’s findings of historical fact if there is evidence to support them. State v. Hall,
Just before 8:00 p.m. on April 10, 2010, Groom, a deputy with the Jackson County Sheriffs Department, received a call about a vehicle stuck in a ditch in front of a residence on Butte Falls Highway. Approximately 15 minutes later, Groom pulled into defendant’s driveway in a marked patrol car and saw a pickup truck with its front end stuck in a large ditch on the side of the road, near the driveway. The truck was registered to defendant.
It appeared to Groom that the driver of the truck had taken too wide a turn when attempting to enter the driveway. Groom believed that the circumstances indicated that the person who had been driving the truck may have been impaired and, with that in mind, he “went to look for an impaired driver at the residence.” Groom, who was in uniform, knocked on the door of the residence, and it was answered by defendant’s wife. She told Groom that she had been driving the truck and had gotten stuck in the
While he was talking with defendant’s wife, Groom saw defendant, who appeared to be very intoxicated, “staggering around in the house.” Defendant then sat down on the couch in the view of Groom. Groom asked defendant, who is hard of hearing, to come out and speak with him and, in response, defendant went out on the porch or front landing of the residence. Immediately after defendant went outside, he walked with Groom “into a flat area where [Groom intended] to have [defendant] perform field sobriety tests.” Groom then read defendant his Miranda rights because he was conducting an investigation of a possible DUII or “some kind of crime.” Defendant acknowledged that he understood those rights. Groom then asked defendant for permission to pat him down for weapons — Groom’s “common practice” after giving Miranda warnings — and defendant agreed. While conducting the patdown, Groom located the keys to the truck in defendant’s pocket. Thereafter, defendant made incriminating statements and was subsequently arrested for DUII.
Before trial, defendant filed a motion to suppress, asserting that he had been unlawfully seized before the pat-down search and that evidence obtained as a result must be suppressed under Article I, section 9, and the Fourth Amendment. After holding a hearing, the court denied the motion to suppress.
On appeal, defendant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress, arguing that, under the state and federal constitutions, Groom’s actions in coming to his residence, asking him to come out and talk, reading him Miranda warnings, and asking for consent to pat him down amounted to a stop. Further, he asserts that the stop was not justified by reasonable suspicion. See State v. Ehly,
Thus, the question we must resolve in this case is whether the encounter amounted to a stop. Under Article I, section 9, individuals are guaranteed the right to be “secure in their persons *** against unreasonable search, or seizure.”
“‘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. At one end of the continuum are mere encounters for which no justification is required. At the other end are arrests, which involve protracted custodial restraint and require probable cause. In between are temporary detentions for investigatory purposes, often termed “stops,” which generally require reasonable suspicion. Both stops and arrests are seizures for constitutional purposes, while less restrictive encounters are not.’”
State v. Backstrand,
As the court in Backstrand observed, “the constitutional concern is with police-imposed restraints on citizen liberty, not with limiting contacts between police and citizens.” Id. at 400. Therefore, police may “‘approach persons on the street or in public places, seek their cooperation or assistance, request or impart information, or question them.’” Id. (quoting State v. Holmes,
Thus, the concept of a “show of authority,” in this context, refers to “a reasonable perception that an officer is exercising his or her official authority to restrain,” id. at 401; that is, “[e]xplicitly or implicitly, an officer must convey to the person with whom he is dealing, either by word, action, or both, that the person is not free to terminate the encounter or otherwise go about his or her ordinary affairs,” id. at 400-01. A constitutionally significant “show of authority” can be inferred from “the content of the questions [asked by a police officer], the manner of asking them, or other actions that police take (along with the circumstances in which they take them).” Id. at 412. Under those principles, for example, a “mere request for identification made by an officer in the course of an otherwise lawful police-citizen encounter does not, in and of itself, result in a seizure.” Id. at 410; cf. State v. Rodriguez-Perez,
In this case, were we to look at each piece of the encounter between defendant and the officer independently, we would not necessarily conclude that any one piece, standing alone, amounted to a stop. For example, an officer may, generally, approach a citizen’s front door and knock on it without effecting a seizure. See State v. Portrey,
We note that the state appears to be of the view that the officer’s giving of Miranda warnings should not be a consideration in whether defendant was stopped. It cites the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Ayles,
That, of course, is not the issue in this case. Rather, here, we must evaluate the totality of the circumstances before the patdown to determine whether a reasonable person, in those circumstances, would have believed that the officer had significantly deprived him or her of his or her liberty or freedom of movement. In our view, the officer’s giving of Miranda warnings is a factor to be considered in determining whether the officer’s actions conveyed a restraint on defendant’s liberty.
In Miranda v. Arizona,
The reasoning of the Florida Supreme Court in Caldwell v. State, 41 So 3d 188, 201-02 (2010), is instructive. There, discussing the reading of Miranda warnings in determining whether a defendant was stopped under the Fourth Amendment, the court noted:
“Miranda warnings are a formality of arrest and are required only at the time of an arrest or prior to custodial interrogation. Further, the warnings are associated in the public mind with the spectacle of an individual being placed under arrest. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to conclude that an individual who is given Miranda warnings during what begins as a consensual encounter may interpret those warnings as a restraint on his or her freedom. For this reason, courts that have considered the application of Miranda in the context of an on-the-street police encounter have generally found it to be at least a factor in determining whether an individual has been subjected to an illegal investigatory stop under the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., [United States v.] Poitier, 818 F2d [679, 683 (8th Cir 1987)]; United States v. Lara, 638 F2d 892, 898 n 10 (5th Cir 1981) (‘Giving Miranda warnings in a police-citizen encounter which is otherwise a nondetention interrogation may very well elevate such an encounter to a seizure * * * in light of the public’s association of Miranda warnings with an arrest.’); see also United States v. Montgomery, 377 F2d 582, 587 (6th Cir 2004) (noting that the district court listed the reading of Miranda rights as one factor indicating that a reasonable person in the defendant’s position would not have felt free to leave).
“This conclusion on the part of a reasonable person would be further supported by the fact that outside the context of an arrest or custodial interrogation, not all of the stated rights apply. In particular, Miranda requires that suspects be advised that they have the right to an attorney and that if they cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for them. * * * While this advisory warning is true during a custodial interrogation, it is not true during a consensual encounter or investigatory stop.”
(Footnote omitted; emphasis in original.) We have implied much of the same in State v. Cordray,
In this case, we are not called upon to determine whether the giving of Miranda warnings in the course of a police interview, by itself, constitutes a sufficient “show of authority” to create a constitutional seizure. See Caldwell, 41 So 3d at 203 (concluding that there was no stop when officers gave the defendant Miranda warnings and informed him that he was not under arrest but that the officer merely wanted to make sure that the defendant was aware of his rights). Rather, it is the totality of the circumstances here that would have conveyed to a reasonable person that he or she was not free to end the encounter and depart. The officer, accompanied initially by a second officer, approached defendant’s residence in the evening and spoke with defendant’s wife to ask about criminal conduct. At least part of that conversation was in defendant’s presence. Although defendant’s wife gave an explanation for the location of the truck, the officer did not accept that explanation and asked defendant, who was seated inside the house, to come outside and talk. At that point, a reasonable person in defendant’s shoes would have concluded that he or she was the subject of a criminal investigation. Once defendant was outside on the porch, the officer then walked defendant to a flat area so that he could conduct field sobriety tests. By then, defendant’s course of conduct had been altered twice by the police actions in beckoning him to the porch and then leading him into a flat area for field sobriety tests.
The officer also read defendant his Miranda warnings and asked for consent to conduct a patdown search. Given that Miranda warnings are required only in circumstances where a person is not free to leave (where a person is arrested or in compelling circumstances), a person given those warnings
In short, under all of the circumstances presented here, we conclude that the officer’s actions constituted a show of authority such that a reasonable person would have believed that the officer had intentionally and significantly restricted, interfered with, or otherwise deprived the individual of his or her liberty or freedom of movement. Accordingly, the encounter in the case was a stop, and the trial court erred in denying the motion to suppress.
Reversed and remanded.
Notes
We begin by considering defendant’s contentions under state law. See State v. Juarez-Godinez,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
This case began when a deputy sheriff responded to a report about a vehicle that was stuck in a ditch in front of a house. After going to the house and speaking to defendant’s wife, who gave an explanation for the stuck vehicle that the deputy disbelieved, the deputy noticed defendant “staggering around in the house,” apparently intoxicated. After defendant sat down on a couch inside the house, the deputy asked defendant “if [the deputy could] speak with him,” and defendant went outside.
The majority concludes, based on the totality of the circumstances, that defendant had been “stopped” by the time that the deputy patted him down and that (in the absence of any claim by the state that the stop was justified by reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or a safety threat) the trial court should have suppressed evidence that the deputy discovered as a result of that stop. The majority focuses on two aspects of the encounter: the giving of Miranda warnings and what it characterizes as two alterations in “defendant’s course of conduct *** by the police actions in beckoning him to the porch and then leading him into a flat area for field sobriety tests.”
As the Supreme Court recently explained in State v. Backstrand,
First, the deputy’s requests of defendant — that he come outside to speak with the deputy and that he allow the deputy to perform a patdown search (as well, perhaps, as an implicit request that defendant walk with the deputy to the “flat area”) — would not, standing alone, constitute a stop. In that regard, it is worth emphasizing that the deputy did not, at any point in the encounter, order defendant to move in a particular direction or otherwise change his physical location. The deputy repeatedly denied having ordered defendant out of his house, and the trial court found that the deputy merely asked defendant to come outside. Moreover, nothing in the record suggests that the deputy directed defendant to follow him to the “flat area” where he intended to administer field sobriety tests. Accordingly, I do not find the same significance that the majority does in defendant’s movement from inside the house to the flat area outside.
Because the deputy’s requests were just that— requests — they did not, alone, constitute a stop. “Rather, something more than just asking a question, requesting information, or seeking an individual’s cooperation is required” before an officer can be said to have made “a ‘threatening or coercive’ show of authority requiring compliance with the officer’s request.” Id. at 403 (quoting State v. Ashbaugh,
The majority’s conclusion that the circumstances described above amounted to a stop is implicitly based on the notion that a law enforcement officer seizes a person if the officer’s words or actions convey to the person that he or she is the subject of a criminal investigation. That conclusion is consistent with much of our pre-Backstrand case law. See, e.g., State v. Dierks,
The Supreme Court emphasized that point in other cases that it decided on the same day as Backstrand. In State v. Anderson,
On review, the Supreme Court addressed whether the officers seized the defendant before they asked him to get out of the car. The court held that no seizure occurred before that point, even though the officers’ explanation of what they were doing at the apartment complex “objectively conveyed possible suspicion that [the defendant and his companion] could be involved in criminal activity related to the apartment” and “equally conveyed that the officers were interested in whatever information the two might be able to provide.” Id. at 453. “In all events,” the court explained, “by those brief verbal exchanges and inquiries alone, the officers did not communicate an exercise of authority of the kind required for a seizure — i.e., authority to restrain.” Id. The court found significant that the uniformed officers “took no physical action other than to approach the parked car” and “requested no physical action from defendant and the driver at that point.” Id. at 453-54. Even though there was one more officer present than there were people in the car, the circumstances “would not cause a reasonable person seated in the car to believe that the officers were significantly restricting his or her liberty.” Id. at 454. The court went on to conclude that the defendant was seized later in the encounter, after an officer “expressed disbelief in defendant’s identification of himself’ and made “requests” that the defendant and his companion exit their car in a way that, under the circumstances, a reasonable person would have understood as “directives” that significantly restrained the defendant’s liberty. Id. That later seizure, however, was justified, because once the defendant gave a false name to the officers, they had reasonable
Dissenting justices disagreed with the Anderson majority’s analysis of when a seizure of the defendant occurred, focusing on whether the defendant would have believed that he was the subject of a criminal investigation:
“When considered in combination, the facts that the officers were in the process of conducting a drug investigation, that the officers indicated that they considered defendant a potential suspect in that investigation, and that the officers asserted physical authority over defendant by surrounding the car in which he was seated, add up to a show of authority that would have conveyed to a reasonable person that he was the subject of a criminal investigation and therefore was not free to leave or go about his ordinary business until the immediate investigation was completed.”
Id. at 457 (Walters, J., dissenting). Again, the majority of the court rejected that focus on whether the defendant would have believed the officers were investigating him for possible criminal activity, focusing instead on whether a reasonable person would understand that the officers had engaged “in a ‘show of authority’ that, explicitly or implicitly, reasonably conveys to the person a significant restriction on the person’s freedom to terminate the encounter or otherwise go about his or her ordinary affairs.” Id. at 450.
Similarly, in State v. Highley,
As in Anderson and Backstrand, a separate opinion in Highley focused on whether a police officer’s inquiries would lead “a reasonable person [to] believe that he or she is being subjected to a criminal investigation and therefore must stop, respond, and remain until the immediate investigation is complete.” Id. at 486 (Walters, J., dissenting). In such circumstances, the Highley dissent would have held, “the officer effects a seizure under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.” Id. (Walters, J., dissenting). But that was the dissenting view.
Considering the majority, dissenting, and concurring opinions in Backstrand, Anderson, and Highley, I derive the general principle that a police officer does not stop a person merely by making inquiries or by seeking information from the person in a way that reasonably could suggest that the person is the subject of a criminal investigation. Rather, the officer must say or do “something more” that “would reasonably be construed as a ‘threatening or coercive’ show of authority requiring compliance with the officer’s request.” Backstrand,
Applying that principle here, I would hold that, although standard Miranda warnings
For similar reasons, I would conclude that defendant was not seized for purposes of the analysis under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. “A person is seized by the police and thus entitled to challenge the government’s action under the Fourth Amendment when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, terminates or restrains his freedom of movement.” Brendlin v. California,
In short, defendant had not been stopped at the time he consented to the patdown search, and the trial court therefore correctly denied defendant’s motion to suppress evidence discovered as a result of that search. I respectfully dissent.
The deputy first testified that he “ask[ed] ” defendant if he could speak with him, and responded affirmatively when questioned whether he had “ask[ed] the defendant out of the house.” In addition, the deputy specifically denied having ordered defendant to leave the house. However, when the deputy was cross-examined about the sequence of events, he responded, “Yeah,” when asked whether he had told defendant to come out of the house. But the deputy subsequently clarified that he had not ordered defendant to come to the door, and reiterated that he had only asked defendant to do so. The trial court found that the deputy “asked [defendant] to step outside.”
The deputy did not explain exactly what he said when he read defendant his “Miranda rights.” Accordingly, I, like the majority, presume that the deputy read defendant the standard advice of rights under Miranda, including the right to counsel. See State v. Acremant,
Despite her disagreement with the Backstrand court’s determination that no stop had occurred, Justice Walters concurred in the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision that the officer had not unlawfully stopped the defendant because, she concluded, the stop “was constitutionally justified.”
Toward the end of that “game of ‘cat and mouse,’” another officer saw a small baggie in the defendant’s fist, and subsequent events led to the discovery of baggies that contained methamphetamine. Id. at 465, 470. The defendant did not dispute the trial court’s conclusion that the officer who spotted the baggie then had sufficient cause to force the defendant’s hand open to reveal the drugs that the officer believed he possessed. Id. at 473.