State v. Harvey
State v. Harvey
Opinion of the Court
Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for possession of methamphetamine, ORS 475.894, assigning error to the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress. Defendant’s car was stopped by two Gilliam County Sheriffs deputies because defendant failed to signal a lane change. While one of the deputies processed defendant’s citation, the other walked a drug-detection dog around defendant’s car. The dog alerted to the car, indicating the presence of illegal drugs inside. The deputies then conducted a warrantless search of the car, during which they discovered substances that tested positive for methamphetamine and heroin.
Defendant was indicted for possession of methamphetamine and heroin. He moved to suppress the evidence of those crimes discovered during the warrantless search of his car, contending that the evidence was inadmissible under the automobile exception to the warrant requirement and that no other exception applied. See State v. Brown, 301 Or 268, 277, 721 P2d 1357 (1986) (“[P]robable cause to believe that a lawfully stopped automobile which was mobile at the time of the stop contains contraband or crime evidence justifies an immediate warrantless search of the entire automobile for the object of the search, despite the absence of any additional exigent circumstances.”). The trial court denied the motion, concluding that the evidence was admissible under the automobile exception.
Defendant conditionally pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine, reserving the right to challenge the denial of his motion to suppress on appeal. The court entered a judgment of conviction for that offense and dismissed the possession of heroin charge.
On appeal, defendant argues, as he did in the trial court, that “the automobile exception did not justify the war-rantless search of defendant’s car because the deputies did not encounter defendant’s moving car in connection with a crime, but only in connection with a traffic violation.” We rejected that argument in State v. Bliss, 283 Or App 833, 842, 390 P3d 1099 (2017), holding that “the Oregon automobile exception adopted in Brown applies where, as here,
Affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.