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Oregon Supreme Court 08-12-10

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by: Abassos • August 11, 2010 • no comments

Read the full article for details about the following new cases:

  • Stop - Post-Miranda search still a product of the bad stop

When Miranda warnings follow a bad stop, the evidence found after Miranda isn't necessarily attenuated from the pre-Miranda stop. In other words, evidence discovered (and statements made) after Miranda warnings can still be the product of the illegal stop. Here, Defendant was a passenger in a car pulled over for violations. Because Defendant was suspiciously "over-friendly", the officer asked for his license, checked it, found nothing, and kept the license while he got Defendant out of the car, patted him down and obtained consent to search. Meth was found and Defendant was arrested and Mirandized. After Miranda, Defendant's backpack was found, consent to search given and more meth was found. The Court rules that the search of the backpack was a product of the initial illegal stop (where defendant was checked and patted down for being friendly). The fact that Miranda warnings were given is a relevant but not sufficient fact by itself to attenuate the backpack search from the illegal stop.

The State also argued that that there was no minimal factual nexus between defendant's initial seizure (when his license was taken) and his decision to consent to the backpack search because defendant wasn't going to leave the scene anyway. The Court dispenses with this argument, pointing out that the illegal seizure was ongoing at the time of the consent:

A defendant gains nothing from having a constitutional right not to be seized if the police can seize him and - by definition - use the circumstance of that seizure as a guarantee of an opportunity to ask him to further surrender his liberty.

State v. Ayles