OR: Consent to search a car didn’t include a fannypack

Consent to search a car did not include containers. “A reasonable person would not have understood the scope of the deputies’ interest in the car to extend to the contents of the zipped fanny pack found under the passenger’s seat from the open-ended and vague question Robeson asked defendant, namely, whether there was ‘anything in the vehicle that we should be concerned about.’ Defendant responded ‘no,’ and said that ‘if [the deputies] wanted to search the vehicle, [they] could.’ The only location of the search specified was the car itself.” Search of a fannypack exceeded the scope of consent. State v. Delong, 275 Ore. App. 295, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 1453 (Dec. 9, 2015). [Remember, this is Oregon. Other state courts would not be so kind to the defense.]

Defendant wrecked his bike and ended up in the hospital. A police officer met him there and smelled marijuana on him. Defendant consented to a search of his backpack but not his cell phone which was search incident to his arrest. Defendant’s motion to suppress was denied, and he appealed. After oral argument in April 2014, Riley was decided. The parties supplemented their briefs. Riley applies and the search of the cell phone is suppressed. Harmless error review is not possible on conditional pleas, so reversed. (The original case date appears to be 2011.) State v. Lowell, 275 Ore. App. 365, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 1490 (Dec. 9, 2015).