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OR: Confronting person leaving drug house was a stop without RS

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Officer's statement to the defendant who was coming out of a drug house that if she surrendered the dope she would not be arrested (but cited) was tantamount to an arrest because no reasonable person would feel free to leave. Since there was no reasonable suspicion, the stop was unreasonable. State v. Allen, 2008 Ore. App. LEXIS 1787 (December 24, 2008): This case is akin to Terhear/Goemmel, not Baker. Brown's statements to defendant that he "knew she was coming from a dope house" and "that if she was honest and gave [him] the dope [he] would give her a citation" (emphasis added) are tantamount to the announcement in Terhear/Goemmel that the officer had just seen defendant break the law. Indeed, as Brown candidly acknowledged, his statement implicitly conveyed to defendant that, by surrendering "the dope," she could avoid arrest...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on December 29, 2008 (boomark / email).