State v. Lira ( 2021 )

237
Argued and submitted August 23, 2019, reversed and remanded March 31, 2021
STATE OF OREGON,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
JUAQUIN LIRA,
Defendant-Appellant.
Jackson County Circuit Court
16CR24560; A167063
484 P3d 1090
In this criminal appeal, defendant challenges his conviction for unlawful
possession of a firearm. He contends that he was unlawfully seized by officers
who were looking for a witness to a murder committed several days earlier, in
which the suspect already had been apprehended. Although officers learned
during the encounter that defendant was not the witness for whom they were
searching, the officers removed a gun from defendant’s pocket, which served as
the basis for charges against him. The trial court denied defendant’s motion to
suppress evidence obtained from the seizure. Defendant assigns error to that
denial. He argues that the trial court improperly concluded that the material-
witness exception to the warrant requirement embodied in Article I, section 9,
of the Oregon Constitution that the Supreme Court recognized in State v. Fair,
353 Or 588, 302 P3d 417 (2013), justified the police seizing him. Held: The Court
of Appeals concluded that the conditions in Fair for temporary, “on-the-scene”
detention of “a likely material witness” without a warrant were not met, because
the detention was not “reasonably necessary to obtain or verify the identity of a
likely witness,” or to “obtain an account of the crime.”
Reversed and remanded.
Lisa C. Greif, Judge.
Brett J. Allin, 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.
Jamie K. Contreras, Assistant Attorney General, argued
the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F.
Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General.
Before Armstrong, Presiding Judge, and Tookey, Judge,
and Aoyagi, Judge.
238 State v. Lira
ARMSTRONG, P. J.
Reversed and remanded.
Cite as 310 Or App 237 (2021) 239
ARMSTRONG, P. J.
In this criminal appeal, defendant challenges his
conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm. He contends
that he was unlawfully seized by officers who were looking
for a man believed to be a witness to a murder committed
several days earlier, in which the suspect already had been
apprehended. Although officers learned during the encoun-
ter with defendant that defendant was not the witness for
whom they were searching, the officers removed a gun from
defendant’s pocket, which served as the basis for charges
against him. The trial court denied defendant’s motion to
suppress evidence obtained from the seizure of defendant,
and defendant assigns error to that denial. He argues that
the trial court improperly concluded that the material-
witness exception to the warrant requirement embodied
in Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution that the
Supreme Court recognized in State v. Fair, 353 Or 588, 302
P3d 417 (2013), justified the police seizing him. We conclude
that the conditions in Fair for temporary, “on-the-scene”
detention of “a likely material witness” without a warrant
were not met here, because the detention was not “reason-
ably necessary to obtain or verify the identity of a likely wit-
ness” when officers already knew the name of the witness
whom they wished to interview. Neither was the seizure rea-
sonably necessary “to obtain an account of the crime,” when,
unlike the urgent need to assess the active crime scene in
Fair, the key circumstances of the crime that the police were
investigating had been determined. Accordingly, we reverse
and remand.
We review a trial court’s denial of a suppression
motion for legal error and are bound by the court’s factual
findings if there is constitutionally sufficient evidence in
the record to support them. State v. Maciel-Figueroa, 361 Or
163, 165-66, 389 P3d 1121 (2017). If the trial court did not
make express findings and there is evidence from which the
trial court could have found a fact in more than one way, we
will presume that the trial court decided the facts consis-
tently with the trial court’s ultimate conclusion. Id.The Medford Area Drug and Gang Enforcement
team (MADGE) began investigating a murder that occurred
240 State v. Lira
on April 1, 2016. Police had arrested the man known to have
shot the victim; he was in custody awaiting pretrial hear-
ing. In searching for a witness to the murder, MADGE offi-
cers had obtained information that a man named Adrian
Rodriguez had been at the scene of the crime. Officers had
acquired photographs of Rodriguez and had located the
address of Rodriguez’s mother’s home, where he was known
to stay.
On April 5, 2016, a confidential informant told
Detective Shopp, a MADGE team member, that Rodriguez
was “commonly seen” in a white Cadillac. MADGE officers
obtained a vehicle description and license plate number
for the Cadillac. In two separate cars, officers patrolled a
neighborhood looking for the Cadillac. Spotting it, officers
saw an open driver’s side door and four men they described
as Hispanic sitting in the car, but they could not determine
whether one of the men was Rodriguez. The officers parked
both of their patrol cars behind the Cadillac, got out of their
cars, and split into two groups with two officers approaching
each side of the car. At least one officer drew his gun. They
identified themselves as police officers and told the occu-
pants of the Cadillac to show their hands.
Once the men had complied with that order, the offi-
cers asked whether any of them had weapons. Defendant
responded that he had a gun in his pocket. One officer took
control of defendant’s hands1 and retrieved a gun from
defendant’s jacket pocket. During that time, all four occu-
pants of the vehicle remained completely cooperative. After
the gun had been removed from defendant’s pocket, officers
obtained the identity of the four men, ultimately learning
that Rodriguez was not among them. The state subsequently
charged defendant with unlawful possession of a firearm,
ORS 166.250, for the gun retrieved from his pocket.
Defendant moved to suppress evidence of the fire-
arm, arguing that the officers had seized him without proba-
ble cause or a warrant and under circumstances in which no
exception to the warrant requirement in Article I, section 9,
1
One officer testified that Detective Pomeroy had placed defendant in hand-
cuffs, but Pomeroy could not recall whether he had done that.
Cite as 310 Or App 237 (2021) 241
applied.2 Specifically, defendant contended that, when offi-
cers seized him in their search for Rodriguez, the material-
witness exception to the warrant requirement recognized in
Fair did not justify his seizure.
As we will discuss in detail below, Fair held that, in
appropriate circumstances, where officers do not suspect the
person of committing a crime, Article I, section 9, permits
officers “to stop and detain someone for on-the-scene ques-
tioning whom they reasonably suspect can provide material
information about a crime’s commission.” 353 Or at 608.
Defendant argued that the “appropriate circumstances”
that justified the seizure in Fair did not exist in his case. He
contended that officers did not detain him “on the scene” of
the crime, and that the detention was not “reasonably nec-
essary” to identify a material witness or obtain an account
of the crime. In its written response, the state conceded that
the officers had seized defendant but argued that they had
properly detained him in an attempt to discover whether
Rodriguez, the man whom officers reasonably believed to be
a material witness, was in the vehicle.
The court held a hearing on defendant’s motion, and
the state presented testimony from the officers involved. The
court later ruled that, as the state had conceded, defendant
was seized. Further, relying only on Fair for its conclusion,
the trial court determined that the seizure was lawful. The
court explained that, even though defendant had been seized
several days after and up to ten miles away from the crime
scene, and that such facts did not “fit exactly into the cookie
cutter of [Fair],” officers, nevertheless, could “stop and tem-
porarily detain a person for questioning if they believe that
person is a material witness to a crime.” The court deter-
mined that, under the circumstances, the officers “had a rea-
sonable belief” that Rodriguez was a material witness and
that the officers were acting on information that Rodriguez
might be in the Cadillac. After the court denied his motion,
defendant executed a conditional guilty plea to the charge,
2
Article I, section 9, provides that “[n]o law shall violate the right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unrea-
sonable search, or seizure; and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause,
supported by oath, or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the person or thing to be seized.”
242 State v. Lira
reserving in writing his right to challenge the court’s ruling
on the motion. Defendant appealed.
On appeal, the parties reprise the arguments that
they made below. Defendant asks us to resolve whether Fair
applies to justify the officers’ warrantless seizure, and if so,
whether the seizure was reasonably necessary. The parties
agree that the encounter was a seizure. The narrow ques-
tion before us then is whether each element of the material-
witness rule was satisfied, justifying the seizure.
Under Article I, section 9, a person is temporarily
seized if “a law enforcement officer intentionally and signifi-
cantly restricts, interferes with, or otherwise deprives” that
person of “liberty or freedom of movement;” or “if a reason-
able person under the totality of the circumstances” would
believe their liberty to be so restricted. State v. Ashbaugh,
349 Or 297, 316, 244 P3d 360 (2010). Law enforcement offi-
cers normally must have a constitutional justification for
temporarily seizing or stopping a person to investigate that
person, and the officer’s activities must be reasonably related
to that investigation and reasonably necessary to effectu-
ate it. State v. Watson, 353 Or 768, 781, 305 P3d 94 (2013).
Where, as here, officers impose a temporary restraint of a
person’s liberty for the purpose of criminal investigation,
such a detention “must be justified by a reasonable suspicion
of criminal activity.” State v. Rodgers, 347 Or 610, 621, 227
P3d 695 (2010).
In Fair, the Oregon Supreme Court recognized
another justification for a warrantless seizure of a person.
The question in Fair was whether it was lawful for police
to detain someone—not based on reasonable suspicion of a
crime—but to question them as a potential witness to, or
victim of, a crime. 353 Or at 605. Resolving that question
in the affirmative, the court enumerated the conditions
that must be satisfied for such a detention to be constitu-
tionally permissible. The facts before the court were that
police had responded to a suspected domestic violence inci-
dent after receiving an incomplete emergency 9-1-1 call in
which a woman was heard saying “stop it” and “get off me”
while a man yelled in the background. Id. at 590. When
officers arrived at the house from which the 9-1-1 call had
Cite as 310 Or App 237 (2021) 243
been placed, the woman and her husband answered the door
together. The woman had a large swollen area over one eye,
while her husband showed no signs of injury. Id. at 591. The
officers separated the woman from her husband, and ques-
tioned the woman on the porch while her husband yelled at
her from the yard not to say anything. Id. The officers asked
the woman for identification and about the circumstances of
the aborted 9-1-1 call. Id. During the questioning, a syringe
cap fell out of the woman’s pant leg, which ultimately led to
her being arrested and charged for drug possession. Id. at
592.
In her motion to suppress, which the trial court
denied, the woman had argued that, in the absence of a sub-
poena, a material witness order, or an exigency, any seizure
to question her as a witness was unreasonable and in con-
travention of Article I, section 9. Id. at 603-04.
On review of the denial of her motion, the Supreme
Court determined that the seizure was lawful, holding that
“officers constitutionally may, in appropriate circumstances,
stop and temporarily detain for questioning a person whom
they reasonably believe is a potential material witness to a
crime.” Id. at 609. The court announced a basic test, hold-
ing that the stop and temporary on-the-scene detention of a
likely material witness will be constitutional if each of the
following three conditions are satisfied:
“(1) the officer reasonably believes that an offense involv-
ing danger of forcible injury to a person recently has been
committed nearby; (2) the officer reasonably believes that
the person has knowledge that may aid in the investigation
of the suspected crime; and (3) the detention is reasonably
necessary to obtain or verify the identity of the person, or
to obtain an account of the crime.”
Id. The court explained that the rule “allows an officer com-
ing upon the scene of a recently committed crime to ‘freeze’
the situation and obtain identifications and an account of
the circumstances from the persons present.” Fair, 353 Or
at 606 n 9 (quoting American Law Institute, A Model Code
of Pre-Arraignment Procedure at 9-10 (1975) (Model Code).
Moreover, the court explained that “it would be ‘irrational’
not to authorize officers responding to ‘confused, emergency
244 State v. Lira
situations’ to ‘freeze the situation for a short time, so that
[they] may make inquiry and arrive at a considered judg-
ment about further action to be taken.’ ” Fair, 353 Or at 607(quoting Model Code § 110.2 at 272) (brackets in Fair).
We address defendant’s argument that the third
prong of the rule—whether the detention was “reasonably
necessary” to identify Rodriguez or to “obtain an account
of the crime”—is not satisfied.3 In defendant’s view, because
police already knew the identities of the suspect, the vic-
tim, and a likely witness—Rodriguez—the exigency created
by the need to “freeze” a situation to obtain that informa-
tion had long since dissipated. Additionally, in defendant’s
view, the necessity to locate Rodriguez was not as great as
it would have been had the suspect remained unidentified
and at large. Because officers knew Rodriguez’s identifying
information, and because the material details concerning
who had committed the crime had been resolved, it was not
reasonably necessary to resort to seizing defendant and
three other men who had no relationship to the crime.
The state does not directly respond to defendant’s
argument that the officers’ conduct failed to satisfy the
third prong in Fair. Although the trial court expressly relied
on the rule in Fair to justify its conclusion that the seizure
of defendant was lawful, the state asks us in its answering
brief to consider a different test, one recognized in Illinois
v. Lidster, 540 US 419, 124 S Ct 885, 61 L Ed 2d 357 (2004).
That test weighs “the gravity of the public concerns served
by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances
the public interest, and the severity of the interference with
individual liberty.” Lidster, 540 US at 427. The state con-
tends that, because murder is a matter of grave public con-
cern, and because defendant’s detention was not lengthy,
the seizure was reasonable and justified. However, the
state does not discuss the “public interest” factor that the
court recognized in Lidster, which, in that case, involved the
urgent need to identify and locate a hit-and-run driver who
had fled the scene of a fatal crash involving a cyclist. The
3
Because we conclude that the state failed to establish that the third prong
of the rule in Fair was satisfied, we do not reach defendant’s argument that the
first prong of the rule also was not satisfied, where defendant contends that his
detention was neither near the scene of the crime nor made soon after the crime.
Cite as 310 Or App 237 (2021) 245
suspect in Lidster remained unidentified and at large, and
the crime completely unresolved. Here, the suspect had been
apprehended and the identities of the people involved had
been determined. We conclude that the individual circum-
stances in Lidster are not appropriate for comparison in this
case.
Concerning whether detaining defendant was rea-
sonably necessary to “obtain an account of the crime,” the
state’s argument centers on the importance to MADGE offi-
cers to learn the extent to which the crime may have been
gang related. Both the state and defendant agree that the
key to the analysis concerning what police conduct is reason-
ably necessary is directly related to the exigency of the sit-
uation at hand—that is, the immediacy of the officers’ need
to address the situation with which they are confronted.
Supporting its determination that the seizure was
reasonably necessary, the Fair court explained that the
circumstances of the aborted 9-1-1 call “created a patent
exigency excusing a warrant.” 353 Or at 610. That is, the
context animating the court’s decision in Fair entailed an
immediate need for the police to discover—in the spur-of-
the-moment—whether or how the assault had occurred, and
who had been involved. Id. at 611 (“exigent circumstances
justified ordering the defendant and her husband onto the
porch, for purposes of taking control of the unpredictable
and potentially violent situation”).
As defendant notes, however, the circumstances
here did not create the sort of “patent exigency” that the
Supreme Court concluded would excuse a warrant. MADGE
officers did not detain defendant in response to an emer-
gency 9-1-1 call—or any emergency situation at all. Nor were
the officers faced with circumstances in which it was crucial
to prevent further harm by the suspect to the victim, or to
assess the facts concerning which person was the suspect
and which was the victim. Officers here were not respond-
ing to an ongoing crime, arriving in the middle of a confus-
ing scene, or intervening to prevent a suspect from evading
arrest. With respect to what was reasonably necessary to
obtain an account of the crime in Fair, it was that context
involving the pressures of an emergency that prompted the
246 State v. Lira
police to order the woman to remain on the porch so that
they could assess the dispute.
In contrast, no such spontaneous investigation was
necessary here. MADGE became involved after the suspect
was in custody, upon information that murder might be
gang related. The officers’ conduct here—seizing defendant
in the Cadillac days after the shooting—was not essential
to take control of an “unpredictable and potentially violent
situation” or to assess the immediate circumstances of the
crime, like it was for the officers in Fair.
The state urges us to consider that an exigency
existed here because officers “had not yet determined
whether the shooting was gang-related.” In the state’s view,
it was reasonable for officers to detain defendant in their
search for Rodriguez, because they believed that Rodriguez
“may have been attempting to evade police,” based on the
fact that he “had not come forward” on his own accord. Thus,
according to the state, the exigency here involved the officers’
need to speak to Rodriguez “without further delay,” and to
“investigate all possible methods of contacting Rodriguez.”
Those possible methods included seizing defendant, who was
sitting in a car that happened reportedly to be “associated
with” Rodriguez.
We disagree. That the murder may have been gang
related does not bring the circumstances here within the
scope of the type of exigency that justified the detention of a
likely material witness in Fair. Obtaining the account of a
witness to discover the extent to which a shooting was gang
related, if that information is indeed material to the charged
crime, is the type of investigative effort suitably accom-
plished through normal investigative means, for exam-
ple, by subpoena or issuance of a material witness order.
Concerning the former, ORS 136.557 to 136.570 provides for
issuance of subpoenas to compel attendance of witnesses at
preliminary hearings, grand jury proceedings, and trial.
As to the latter, in circumstances in which it is the
sworn “reasonable belief” of a district attorney that a wit-
ness who possesses “information material to the determi-
nation of the action against the defendant” will not appear,
ORS 136.608 authorizes the district attorney to apply to the
Cite as 310 Or App 237 (2021) 247
court for a material witness order. Application for such an
order may be sought when an indictment has been filed and
is pending; a grand jury proceeding has been commenced;
or a complainant’s or a district attorney’s information alleg-
ing the commission of a felony has been filed and is pend-
ing. ORS 136.608(1) - (2). The effect of applying for such an
order is that, if the court determines that the application is
well founded, the court “shall enter an order directing the
prospective witness to appear before the court” or “issue a
warrant of arrest directing the sheriff to take the person
into custody.” ORS 136.611(1)(a) - (b).
Here, MADGE officers were assisting in the inves-
tigation of a murder, in which case the prime suspect was
in custody. It is likely in such a case that an indictment
would soon follow. Instead of seizing Lira in search for
Rodriguez—the reported witness to the murder—officers
could have brought to the district attorney’s attention infor-
mation concerning Rodriguez’s importance as a witness to
the murder. If the district attorney “reasonabl[y] belie[ved]”
that Rodriguez “possess[ed] information material to the
determination of the action” against the suspect defendant,
and that Rodriguez would not appear on his own accord, a
material witness order could have been sought. At that point
it would be up to the court to order Rodriguez to appear, or
to order his arrest to secure his appearance. Thus, the legis-
lature took care to provide the above-described mechanisms
to obtain witness testimony, and, under the circumstances
here, where no exigency existed, those mechanisms would
have been a reasonable path to pursue.
As to whether detaining defendant was “reason-
ably necessary to obtain or verify the identity of the per-
son,” in focusing its analysis on Lidster, the state does not
address why it was necessary to seize defendant and the
other people in the Cadillac to do that. At the time that the
officers seized defendant, they knew of Rodriguez’s identify-
ing information, a local address, and his usual whereabouts.
Hence, there was no need to stop anyone to obtain, in the
first instance, Rodriguez’s identity. Nor was there a need to
verify defendant’s identity. That was particularly true given
the lack of any exigency.
248 State v. Lira
In sum, we conclude that the essential rationale of
Fair that makes the stop of a likely witness constitutionally
permissible is grounded in the exigent circumstances that
arise in the context of an emergency response by officers
to an apparent incident involving danger of forcible injury.
Here, the state failed to establish that the third prong of
the material-witness rule of Fair was satisfied. The sei-
zure in this case was not reasonably necessary to verify or
obtain the identity of a material witness, nor was the sei-
zure reasonably necessary to obtain an account of the crime.
We therefore conclude that the trial court erred in denying
defendant’s suppression motion.
Reversed and remanded.