Oregon v. Delong
Annotate this CaseDuring a traffic stop, a deputy sheriff placed defendant William Delong in custody and then asked him, without first advising him of his Miranda rights, “if there was anything we should be concerned about” in his car. Defendant “told [the deputy] ‘no,’ and that if we wanted to search the vehicle, we could.” On appeal, the State conceded that the deputy violated Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution when he asked defendant that question without first advising him. However, the State argued that the physical evidence that the deputies later found in defendant’s car did not “derive from” the Miranda violation. The Court of Appeals reversed, reasoning that both defendant’s offer and the resulting evidence derived from the violation. The State appealed, and the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals: "[n]othing that defendant said in the first part of his response to [the deputy's] unwarned question impaired defendant’s ability to make an independent decision to invite the deputies to search his car if they wanted to do so. [. . .] defendant’s invitation to search his car attenuated the taint flowing from [the deputy's] unwarned question. The evidence that the deputy found in defendant’s car did not derive from the preceding Miranda violation."
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