State v. Crandall, 340 Or. 645

Summary

The Oregon Supreme Court held that although police unlawfully stopped the defendant without reasonable suspicion, the defendant's unilateral and voluntary act of placing a baggie containing methamphetamine under a parked car sufficiently attenuated the discovery of the evidence from the unlawful stop. The court rejected the Court of Appeals' reliance on abandonment and reversed its decision, affirming the circuit court's denial of the suppression motion.

Holdings

1. The officers did not conduct a search when they observed the baggie under a parked car in a parking lot open to residents and visitors, because Crandall had no privacy interest in an item left where any member of the public could see it.
2. The discovery of the baggie was sufficiently attenuated from the assumed unlawful stop because Crandall's unilateral and voluntary decision to place it under the parked car was an intervening act.
3. The State was not required to prove that Crandall abandoned the baggie. Attenuation is an alternative basis for establishing that evidence discovered after unlawful police conduct did not derive from that conduct.

Questions Presented

1. Whether officers' observation and retrieval of the baggie constituted a search under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.
2. Whether evidence discovered after an assumed unlawful stop must be suppressed when the defendant's unilateral and voluntary act of placing the evidence under a parked car intervened between the unlawful police conduct and the discovery.
3. Whether the State was required to prove abandonment of the baggie to establish that the evidence did not derive from the unlawful stop.

Disposition

reversed