State v. Montiel-Delvalle

304 Or.App. 699

468 P.3d 995

STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.Mitchell E. MONTIEL-DELVALLE, aka Mitchell E. Montiel-Del Valle, Defendant-Appellant.

A165347

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Argued and submitted June 26, 2019.

June 17, 2020

Morgen E. Daniels, 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.

E. Nani Apo, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General.

Before Aoyagi, Presiding Judge, and Egan, Chief Judge, and Mooney, Judge.^*

AOYAGI, P. J.

After fleeing the scene of a car accident, defendant was convicted of failure to perform the duties of a driver to injured persons, ORS 811.705, and failure to perform the duties of a driver when property is damaged, ORS 811.700. On appeal, he challenges the trial court's denial of his motions to suppress (1) evidence derived from a police officer's search of his car at the accident scene, and (2) statements that he made to the same police officer following his arrest. We conclude that the trial court did not err in denying defendant's first motion because defendant had abandoned his car in the constitutional sense before the officer searched it. We conclude that the trial court did not err in denying the second motion because the officer's post-arrest questions fell within the booking question exception to Miranda ’s protections. Accordingly, we affirm.

FACTS

"Determination of the legality of searches and seizures depends largely on the facts of each case." State v. Ehly , 317 Or. 66, 74, 854 P.2d 421 (1993). "Our function is to decide whether the trial court applied legal principles correctly to those facts." Id . at 75, 854 P.2d 421. In reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we are bound by the trial court's findings of historical fact if there is constitutionally sufficient evidence to support them. Id. "If findings of historical fact are not made on all pertinent issues and there is evidence from which such facts could be decided more than one way, we will presume that the facts were decided in a manner consistent with the court's ultimate conclusion." Id . We state the facts in accordance with the foregoing standard.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m., a gold Toyota Camry and a black Dodge Charger crashed in an intersection in Washington County. Officer Ganci responded to the scene. Both cars were heavily damaged, if not totaled. A bystander was helping the Camry's driver, who was injured, out of his car. The Charger was in the intersection with no one in it; it had massive front-end damage, and the driver and passenger air bags had deployed. According to a witness, the Charger's driver ran a "solid red light" and "T-boned" the Camry, after which a "Hispanic" man and woman took off on foot from the Charger, and at least one of them was limping. The condition of the cars was consistent with the occupants sustaining injuries. Both cars had to be towed away, and the Camry's driver was taken to the hospital.

Ganci looked inside the Charger to try to identify its former occupants. Ganci removed a wallet and a cell phone from the center console area, because the car was going to be towed and "we don't allow valuables to go to the tow companies." Ganci found defendant's driver's license in the wallet. He also found a registration slip with defendant's name in the car, and he found paystubs from Chevy's Mexican Restaurant with defendant's name and home address on them in multiple locations in the car (the glove box, the door pockets, and the pockets of some Chevy's aprons).

When Ganci went off shift at 6:00 a.m., his initial efforts to locate defendant had proved unsuccessful. Ganci returned to work at 8:00 p.m. (14 hours later) and resumed his efforts to locate defendant. Using the information that he had found in the Charger, Ganci went to Chevy's, where he talked to multiple people, including defendant's uncle. Several of defendant's coworkers mentioned that defendant had been in a crash the previous night, one said that defendant had asked his help in making an insurance claim, and another told Ganci that defendant had gone with some coworkers to a bar called Malone's the previous night. Ganci went to Malone's, where a bouncer told him that a "Hispanic" male and female had left the bar around 1:00 a.m. in a black Charger.

Defendant was arrested at his home in Portland shortly before midnight (about 22 hours after the accident) and taken to a Portland police station, where Ganci took custody of him. The first question that Ganci asked defendant was whether he was injured in any way. Defendant said that he was sore all over his body, legs, and shoulders, and, "My head hurts pretty bad." Ganci asked why his head hurt, to which defendant responded, "I hit it on the steering wheel during a crash." Ganci asked defendant if he needed medical attention, and defendant said, "No." Ganci asked defendant if his shoulders were so badly injured that Ganci needed to use two sets of handcuffs, to make them a bit more comfortable, and defendant said no. At that point, Ganci handcuffed defendant and gave him Miranda warnings. Defendant invoked his right to counsel.

As defendant walked to the patrol car, a distance of about 100 feet, Ganci noticed him limping.¹ Ganci placed defendant in his patrol car and drove him to the Washington County Jail, which was about a 50-minute drive. About midway through the drive, Ganci turned down the radio and asked, "Hey, you still doing okay back there?" Ganci asked because it was a long drive, in handcuffs, and he wanted to make sure that defendant was medically okay. Defendant responded, "My head just hurts really bad from hitting it on the steering wheel. I hit it really hard." Ganci asked defendant if he needed to go to the doctor, and defendant said no. Ganci told him that he would have the nurse at the jail check him out when they got there.

When they arrived at the jail, Ganci lent his phone to defendant to make a private call to his father. While placing the call, defendant spontaneously told Ganci that his ankle hurt, and Ganci asked why or what was wrong with it.² Defendant said that "it got messed up in the pedals during the crash, but it was also a reoccurring injury." Ganci told defendant that "he was not inquiring about the crash and only his medical needs."

During booking, defendant was photographed without his shirt to document his existing injuries and protect against a later claim that he had injuries that required going to the hospital and was denied going to the hospital. While defendant was being photographed, Ganci could see swelling on his body, and he could tell that defendant was in pain. Ganci asked defendant "if he was still doing okay." Defendant responded that "he had pain all over his right side of his body from the crash," described the movement of his body in the crash, and said that he "felt sore all day" and that his right hand must have hit something because it was swollen. Ganci reminded defendant that he had requested a lawyer and told him that "talking about parts of the crash would be unwise." Ganci asked defendant what his pain was on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain he had ever felt, and defendant responded that it was a 6.

A grand jury indicted defendant on one count of failure to perform the duties of a driver to injured persons and one count of failure to perform the duties of a driver when property is damaged. Defendant moved to suppress all evidence derived from the warrantless search of the Charger—including statements by defendant's coworkers, evidence regarding an insurance claim related to the accident, and defendant's statements to Ganci—as derivative of an unlawful search. Defendant separately moved to suppress his statements to Ganci, both before he received Miranda warnings and after he invoked his right to counsel, as violating his rights against self-incrimination.

The trial court held a hearing on defendant's motions to suppress. In addition to the testimony reflected in the facts already described, Ganci testified that he always asks medical questions before booking people into jail. The jail will not take custody of someone who is in substantial pain or needs medical care. There is also the risk of someone dying in transport. The "last thing" that Ganci wanted was for defendant to "go sit in a jail while he's, you know, bleeding out * * * internally from the day and didn't even notice it. So we always ask medical questions." Given the seriousness of the car crash and defendant's visible limp, Ganci would have asked defendant about his medical condition regardless of any statements that defendant made. Ganci believed that he had a duty to ascertain whether defendant was injured, and, by asking questions, he was assessing whether defendant needed to go to the hospital instead of the jail. Ganci also intended to relay—and did relay—the information to the jail's nurse. Ganci expressly denied that he was asking questions to try to elicit information about the crash. Instead, he testified, he was "just try[ing] to figure out [defendant's] medical needs in case we needed to go to the hospital before jail, or *** if he was even suited to go to the jail."

As for the one or two "why" questions that Ganci asked defendant, Ganci testified that he asks clarifying questions like "why" to obtain further information about the person's medical condition: "Because usually if someone tells me their head hurts, you say, ‘Why?’ They're like, ‘I have a headache.’ Not, is it why it hurt or how it got hurt." When Ganci asked defendant why his head hurt, he was inquiring about the reason that it hurt, not how he injured it, and did not intend to elicit an incriminating response—he asks that question "for everybody" and "never ever really get[s] an...