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OR: Telling the defendant a drug dog was coming meant to him he was detained

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Telling the defendant that a drug dog was coming, it was apparent that the defendant would not have felt free to leave, so he was detained. State v. Mathis, 2009 Ore. App. LEXIS 1950 (December 9, 2009): In the totality of those circumstances, after Banks told defendant that a drug dog was on its way, no objectively reasonable person in defendant's position would have believed that she was free to leave pending the drug dog's arrival. See, e.g., Hall, 339 Ore. at 19 (concluding that "it [is] difficult to posit that a reasonable person would think that he or she was free to leave at a time when that person is the investigatory subject of a pending warrant check"). Regardless of the imprecision and uncertainty inherent at the margins of the Holmes formulation, the totality of Banks's conduct so transcended "ordinary social intercourse," Holmes, 311 Ore...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).