State v. Scofield

190                 February 26, 2025            No. 138

        IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                STATE OF OREGON

                  STATE OF OREGON,
                   Plaintiff-Respondent,
                             v.
              BRYCEN DENNIS SCOFIELD,
                  aka Brycen D. Scofield,
                   Defendant-Appellant.
               Jackson County Circuit Court
                   21CR46817; A182277

  Kelly W. Ravassipour, Judge.
  Argued and submitted January 14, 2025.
   Amy E. Potter argued the cause for appellant. Also on
the briefs was Angeli Law Group, LLC.
   Doug M. Petrina, Assistant Attorney General, argued
the cause for respondent. Also on the brief were Ellen F.
Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General.
   Before Tookey, Presiding Judge, Kamins, Judge, and
Jacquot, Judge.
  KAMINS, J.
  Affirmed.
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 (2025)                             191

        KAMINS, J.
         Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for
second-degree murder, ORS 163.115, following a conditional
guilty plea after the trial court denied his motion to suppress evidence. In response to a 9-1-1 call that reported
defendant assaulted someone with a hammer, police entered
defendant’s apartment pursuant to the emergency aid
exception to the warrant requirement and found the victim
deceased inside a refrigerator. Defendant was then arrested
and charged for the victim’s murder. Defendant moved to
suppress the evidence found in his apartment, arguing that
(1) the emergency aid exception did not apply, (2) the police
lacked probable cause to arrest him, and (3) a subsequent
warrant to search his and others’ phones was invalid. We
affirm.
          “We review a trial court’s denial of a motion to suppress for legal error, and we are bound by the trial court’s
factual findings if there is any constitutionally sufficient
evidence in the record to support them.” State v. Iams, 

, 

 (2024) (citing State v. Maciel-Figueroa, 

, 

 (2017)). In the
absence of express factual findings, we “presume that the
trial court decided the disputed facts in keeping with its
ultimate conclusion.” State v. Garcia, 

,

 (2016). We state the facts, as taken from the
officers’ body camera footage and testimony at the suppression hearing, in accordance with that standard.
         An associate of defendant’s, McLeod, called 9-1-1
to report that he and his brother had witnessed defendant
assault a person in defendant’s apartment with a hammer.
McLeod reported that there was blood “everywhere” and
that the victim might be dead. McLeod provided specific
details about defendant’s apartment, including its location,
outdoor decorations, the car that was parked outside, and a
rifle that his brother left there. McLeod also gave the dispatcher his and his brother’s full names, dates of birth, and
current location, and he said they would be available for officer follow-up. Police arrived at defendant’s apartment and
corroborated the details McLeod had provided. Police also
observed defendant putting up a barrier over his back door
192                                           State v. Scofield

and barricading himself in his residence. After several minutes, police were able to call defendant on his cell phone and
convince him to come outside. When defendant exited his
apartment, police placed him in handcuffs and entered his
home.
          Inside the apartment, police first “cleared” the area
by doing an initial sweep of the downstairs and upstairs.
Police did not observe evidence of a hammer attack in
their initial sweep but did notice a refrigerator lying on
the floor. Once the initial sweep was complete, Lieutenant
Cromwell, the officer in charge, noticed that there was blood
on the refrigerator and on the couch next to the refrigerator.
Cromwell also observed a liquid on the floor that might have
been used for cleaning. Cromwell ordered Officer Jackson,
another police officer involved in the sweep, to open the
refrigerator to “just make sure there’s not somebody stuffed
in it.” Jackson opened the refrigerator, lifted a piece of cardboard that was blocking his view, and found the victim
inside with a bloodied head. Cromwell ordered Jackson to
“close it up,” and Jackson said that they needed to check and
make sure that the victim was not alive. Jackson checked
the victim but could not find a pulse.
         Later, after seizing several phones from defendant
and his home, law enforcement sought and executed a warrant to search the phones. Defendant moved to suppress the
evidence from the search of his apartment, his arrest, and
the search of the phones, arguing that (1) the emergency that
justified the officers’ entry into the apartment had ended
by the time they decided to open the refrigerator, (2) police
lacked probable cause to arrest defendant, and (3) the warrant to search the phones was invalid, because the judge’s
signature was unclear and it did not specify where on the
phones the evidence would be found. After the trial court
denied his motion, defendant entered a conditional guilty
plea and now appeals, raising the same arguments he made
below.
         Emergency aid exception. In his first assignment of
error, defendant contends that the trial court erred in ruling
that the emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement applied and permitted officers to open the refrigerator
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and discover the victim. Defendant concedes that the exception allowed the officers to initially enter his apartment in
search of a person in need of emergency aid, but he argues
that any potential emergency had ended by the time officers
decided to open the refrigerator. We disagree.
         The emergency aid exception to Article I, section 9,
of the Oregon Constitution applies when officers have an
“objectively reasonable belief, based on articulable facts, that
a warrantless entry is necessary to either render immediate
aid to persons, or to assist persons who have suffered, or who
are imminently threatened with suffering, serious physical
injury or harm.” State v. Baker, 

, 

 (2011) (footnotes omitted). “The exception requires both
that an officer hold the subjective belief that there is a need
to provide immediate aid and that the belief be objectively
reasonable.” State v. Schmitz, 

, 174, 

 (2019).
         We are bound by the trial court’s finding that officers held the requisite subjective belief that there was a person inside the refrigerator requiring emergency aid because
they testified as to that belief at the motion to suppress
hearing. Cf. State v. Stanley, 

, 

 (2017) (no subjective belief to give rise to emergency
aid exception when none of the officers “testified to having
an actual belief that the victim was seriously injured and
in need of immediate assistance”); see also Dept. of Human
Services v. M. B., 

, 597, 

 (2024)
(appellate courts generally defer to lower courts’ credibility
findings “because the trial judge is in a better position …
to observe and experience the witness’s nonverbal cues …
[and] body language”).
        That belief was also objectively reasonable: Emergency
dispatch received a 9-1-1 phone call from a named eyewitness to an assault, and police corroborated several details
the witness had provided. At the time the police arrived at
defendant’s apartment, defendant was barricading himself
inside and refused to come out. See State v. Clay, 

, 

, rev den, 

 (2018) (relying on observations of police officers upon arriving at defendant’s home and 9-1-1 call to determine whether officers’
194                                                         State v. Scofield

belief was objectively reasonable in emergency-aid context).
After entering defendant’s home, police had not yet located
the victim when they saw the refrigerator lying on the
floor, as well as blood and cleaning fluid nearby. Cf. State v.
Hamilton, 

, 

 (2017) (emergency aid exception that allowed initial entry to defendant’s
home did not justify continued search after police found person they thought was in need of aid); State v. Bistrika, 

, 

, rev den, 

 (2014),
cert den, 

, reh’g den, 

 (2015) (emergency dissipated once police located named victim who had
supposedly fallen into pond on family property and saw he
was uninjured). Given the information available to police at
the time, they could reasonably believe that there was a victim of a hammer assault inside the refrigerator in need of
their aid.1
         Probable cause. In his second assignment of error,
defendant argues the trial court erred in determining that
officers had probable cause to arrest him. The trial court did
not err. Officers arrested defendant after they corroborated
numerous details from a named citizen’s eyewitness report
and observed defendant barricading himself inside his
apartment. That was sufficient probable cause. See State v.
Pollock, 

, 

 (2003), aff’d, 

, 

 (2004) (“In determining whether information from third persons is sufficiently reliable to establish
probable cause, we look to the totality of the circumstances,
including the citizen’s reliability and basis of knowledge.”).
         Warrant. Finally, defendant challenges the warrant
that was used to find evidence on the phones seized from
him and his home. More specifically, defendant contends
that the judge’s signature on the warrant was illegible and
that the warrant was insufficiently particular because it did
not specify where on the phones police could search for evidence. However, the evidence in the record supports the trial

    1
      Defendant’s federal arguments thus fail as well. See Brigham City, Utah v.
Stuart, 

, 

, 

 (2006) (emergency aid
exception to Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement allows entry when it is
objectively reasonable to believe that entry is needed “to assist persons who are
seriously injured or threatened with such injury,” and does not require officers to
have a subjective belief).
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court’s finding that the signature was legible. See State v.
McKee, 

, 

 (2015) (legibility a
factual issue). And the warrant was sufficiently particular,
notwithstanding any purported lack of specificity on where
to search, because it was reasonably limited to specific times
and communications related to specific crimes, see State v.
Turay, 

, 

 (2023) (looking to dates,
time limitations, and subject matter limitations to determine warrant’s sufficient specificity), and described what
investigating officers believed would be found “with as much
specificity as reasonably possible under the circumstances,”
State v. Mansor, 

, 

 (2018); see
also 

 (warrant for searching an electronic device
may be sufficiently particular without limiting the search to
the “commonly used software programs” where information
might be stored).
        Affirmed.