No. 86 February 12, 2025 715
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
MICHAEL ADAM HUMPHREY,
Defendant-Appellant.
Lane County Circuit Court
21CR50460; A179475
Kamala H. Shugar, Judge.
Argued and submitted April 29, 2024.
David Sherbo-Huggins, 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.
Peenesh Shah, Assistant Attorney General, argued
the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F.
Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General.
Before Shorr, Presiding Judge, Mooney, Judge, and
Pagán, Judge.
PAGÁN, J.
Affirmed.
716 State v. Humphrey
PAGÁN, J.
Defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him
of second-degree assault, ORS 163.175 (Count 1); unlawful
use of a weapon, ORS 166.220 (Counts 3 and 5); and menacing, ORS 163.190 (Counts 4 and 6). Defendant’s sole assignment of error is to the denial of a motion to suppress evidence gathered during a police encounter with defendant
shortly after the assault occurred. Defendant argues that
he was stopped when the officers turned their lights on,
and that the stop was not based on reasonable suspicion.
We conclude that defendant was stopped when the first officer parked her car and turned the emergency lights on, and
that she had reasonable suspicion to stop defendant based
on the description she heard and defendant’s proximity to
the crime shortly after it happened. We thus affirm.
We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress for errors of law. State v. Ehly, 317 Or 66, 75,
854 P2d
421 (1993). “We are bound by the trial court’s factual findings if there is constitutionally adequate evidence to support
them.” State v. Edwards,
319 Or App 60, 62,
509 P3d 177,
rev den,
370 Or 212 (2022) (citing Ehly,
317 Or at 75). If the
trial court did not make express findings of fact on all pertinent issues, we “presume that the facts were decided in a
manner consistent with the court’s ultimate conclusion,” but
only if the evidence allows for application of that presumption. Ehly,
317 Or at 75.
We state the relevant facts in light of the standard
of review. Officers Mueth and Kroeker of the Eugene police
responded—in separate cars—to “vague” 9-1-1 calls that two
people had been hit by an assailant with a stick. Kroeker testified it only took “a couple minutes” to reach the scene after
being dispatched. Upon arriving on the scene, the officers
remained in their vehicles, but rolled down their windows to
talk to a group of victims and bystanders. Mueth was told
that the suspect was a 45- to 50-year-old Black male, along
with the direction that he ran. The entire interaction happened in less than 20 seconds before the officers departed in
the direction indicated. Mueth was in the lead car, and saw
defendant less than a minute later, sitting alone at a bus stop.
Cite as 337 Or App 715 (2025) 717
Kroeker was not sure exactly how far the officers
travelled from the victims, initially suggesting that the bus
stop had been three blocks away, but then remembered that
she could still see the lights of the firetruck that had come to
help the victims and reasoned that it must have been about a
block away.
Mueth put her emergency lights on, parked her
car in a canted position in the street, and exited the car.
Kroeker drove slightly past Mueth, parked, and exited her
vehicle. Mueth was the primary officer. She told defendant
the following upon approaching him:
“Police, so you know our contact is being recorded, so the
reason for the stop tonight is we got a call that somebody
was beating somebody with a baseball bat and you match
the description for the guy involved.”
Defendant then acknowledged that he had been in an altercation. Mueth read defendant his Miranda rights, and defendant made further incriminating statements about using a
piece of bamboo to hit one of the victims.
Pretrial, defendant moved to suppress all evidence
obtained from the stop. The court denied the motion to suppress defendant’s incriminating statements, concluding
that the stop was both subjectively and objectively reasonable. The court concluded that both Kroeker and Mueth had
reasonable suspicion to stop defendant based on the totality
of the circumstances. A jury found defendant guilty on five
counts related to the assaults. Defendant timely appealed.
On appeal, defendant challenges whether there was
reasonable suspicion for the stop. As an initial matter, we
must determine when the stop began. The state conceded
at the pretrial hearing that the encounter became a stop
at some point. Defendant argues that the stop began at
the moment Mueth turned her emergency lights on. The
state argues that the stop did not begin until the officers
approached defendant on foot.
Under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution,
a person is seized:
718 State v. Humphrey
“(a) if a law enforcement officer intentionally and significantly restricts, interferes with, or otherwise deprives
an individual of that individual’s liberty or freedom of movement; or (b) if a reasonable person under the totality of the
circumstances would believe that (a) above has occurred.”
State v. Ashbaugh, 349 Or 297, 316,
244 P3d 360 (2010). “[A]n
officer stops a person when the officer explicitly or implicitly
conveys to the person, either by word, action, or both, that
the person is not free to terminate the encounter or otherwise go about his or her ordinary affairs.” State v. Jackson,
268 Or App 139, 145,
342 P3d 119 (2014) (internal quotation
marks omitted). “Whether an officer’s conduct amounts to a
stop is a fact-specific question” resolved by an examination
of the totality of the circumstances.
Id.
Here, defendant was stopped when Mueth turned
her emergency lights on, pointed the car at defendant, and
parked her car close to defendant—with defendant illuminated by the lights. See State v. Levias, 242 Or App 264, 267,
255 P3d 611 (2011) (use of lights indicated a stop); State v.
Kuehne,
300 Or App 698, 704,
454 P3d 797 (2019), rev den,
366
Or 493 (2020) (concluding that the defendant was not stopped
when the officer’s emergency lights were on, but not pointed
at or near the defendant, and the defendant was 150 feet from
the police car). With no one else around,1 and no other obvious
targets of a stop, a reasonable person would believe that they
were not free to leave upon the arrival of a police car with its
emergency lights on that parked pointed towards them.
We now must determine whether Mueth had reasonable suspicion at the moment that she parked the car and
turned her emergency lights on. State v. Worthington, 265 Or
App 368, 371,
335 P3d 348 (2014), rev den,
356 Or 837;
357
Or 300 (2015) (only facts available before the stop are considered to evaluate reasonable suspicion). Reasonable suspicion
exists “when an officer can point to specific and articulable
facts that give rise to a reasonable inference that the defendant committed or was about to commit a specific crime or
type of crime.” State v. Maciel-Figueroa,
361 Or 163, 165,
389
P3d 1121 (2017). The officer must subjectively believe that the
1
Although some bystanders watched or walked by during later points of the
encounter, the area was empty at the time of the stop.
Cite as 337 Or App 715 (2025) 719
person stopped has committed a crime and that belief must
be objectively reasonable considering the totality of the circumstances. State v. Mitchele,
240 Or App 86, 90,
251 P3d
760 (2010). The proximity of a suspect to the scene of a crime
within a few minutes after the occurrence of a crime is a fact
that supports reasonable suspicion. State v. Brown,
298 Or
App 771, 780,
446 P3d 568, rev den,
365 Or 819 (2019); State
v. Blackstone,
289 Or App 421, 433,
410 P3d 354 (2017).
By the time of the suppression hearing, Mueth had
moved out of state and was unavailable to testify, but the state
entered her bodycam footage into evidence. Defendant conceded at oral argument that Mueth’s bodycam could be used
to prove her subjective intent. Mueth’s statements recorded on
the video upon encountering defendant indicated that she was
stopping him because she had received reports of an assault
with a weapon and that he matched the description of the suspect. The evidence was sufficient for the trial court to conclude
that Mueth had the subjective belief that defendant had committed a crime.
Turning to objective reasonableness, Mueth knew
that the suspect was a Black male, aged 45 to 50, that the
crime had occurred just minutes earlier, and that the suspect
had fled on foot in a particular direction. She came upon defendant less than a minute away from the scene, and only a few
minutes after the crime had occurred, in the direction that
witnesses had indicated, and defendant matched the information she had. Based on that information, Mueth’s belief that
defendant had committed the crime was objectively reasonable. See State v. Nguyen, 176 Or App 258, 260,
31 P3d 489
(2001) (reasonable suspicion existed when the officer arrived
two minutes after a 9-1-1 call; knew the suspects’ direction of
travel, their age, their gender, and that they had dark hair;
and the officer saw that the suspects were the only people on
the road).
We conclude that the trial court did not err when it
determined, based on the totality of the circumstances, that
Mueth had reasonable suspicion to believe that defendant
had committed a crime. The trial court did not err by denying defendant’s motion to suppress.
Affirmed.
