No. 701 July 30, 2025 367
This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion
pursuant to ORAP 10.30 and may not be cited
except as provided in ORAP 10.30(1).
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
TARA ELIZABETH JOHNSON,
aka Tara Johnson,
Defendant-Appellant.
Coos County Circuit Court
23CR12676; A182425
Andrew E. Combs, Judge.
Submitted May 9, 2025.
Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate
Section, and Joel Duran, Deputy Public Defender, Oregon
Public Defense Commission, filed the brief for appellant.
Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Elise Josephson, Assistant Attorney
General, filed the brief for respondent.
Before Ortega, Presiding Judge, Hellman, Judge, and
O’Connor, Judge.
O’CONNOR, J.
Affirmed.
368 State v. Johnson
O’CONNOR, J.
Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for
driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII), ORS
813.010. She assigns error to the trial court’s denial of her
motion to suppress evidence. After that motion was denied,
she entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving her right
to challenge the motion to suppress ruling on appeal. We
affirm.
As she argued below, on appeal defendant contends
that, at the time the deputy stopped the van in which defendant was riding, the deputy lacked reasonable suspicion
that defendant had committed DUII. The deputy relied on
information from two named informants. There are three
factors that bear on whether information received from an
informant can form the basis for an officer’s reasonable
suspicion: (1) whether the informants gave their names,
(2) whether the informant reports were based on personal
observations, and (3) “whether the officer’s own observations
corroborated the informant’s information.” State v. Villegas-Varela, 132 Or App 112, 115,
887 P2d 809 (1994).
Here, the first two factors clearly weigh in favor of
the reliability of the reports and defendant focuses on only
the third factor: “whether the officer’s own observations
corroborated the informant’s information.” Id. “In order to
corroborate an informant’s report, an officer must either
observe the illegal activity or find the person, the vehicle,
and the location substantially as described by the informant.” State v. Hames,
223 Or App 624, 635,
196 P3d 88
(2008). Defendant argues that the deputy’s observations
did not sufficiently corroborate the information that he had
received from the informants.
We review the denial of a motion to suppress for
legal error, and we are bound by the trial court’s findings
of fact if the evidence in the record is sufficient to support
those findings. State v. Ehly, 317 Or 66, 75,
854 P2d 421
(1993). We describe the facts consistent with that standard
of review.
The trial court’s findings are sufficient for it to
conclude that the deputy had reasonable suspicion that
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 342 Or App 367 (2025) 369
defendant had been driving while intoxicated. Specifically,
the trial court found that at the point when the officer turned
on his lights to stop the van, he had the following information from two named informants. On a night in August,
the first named informant, a bartender in Bandon, called
to report that a woman who was intoxicated had left the
bar, gotten into a car, and driven away. The bartender’s call
was routed to a sheriff’s deputy on patrol who spoke to her
directly; the deputy was called as a witness at the motion to
suppress hearing.
The bartender told the deputy that an intoxicated
woman who could barely stand was driving a silver sedan
with an emblem that was a “round circle with other little circles” in it headed toward Coquille from Bandon. Based on
that information, the deputy headed toward Highway 42.
From a second named informant, he learned that there was
a car in the ditch on Riverside Drive, at a point about a mile
from the tavern that the intoxicated woman had just left. The
second informant, who was still near the car in the ditch, told
the deputy that the driver of the car had just gotten into a
van that was pulling away as the officer arrived at the scene.
In addition, from his own knowledge and experience the deputy knew that Highway 42 and Riverside Drive
were both roads that lead from Bandon to Coquille. Of the
two, Riverside Drive was known to the deputy to be used by
intoxicated drivers to “bypass the city.”
Thus, the deputy found “the person, the vehicle, and
the location substantially as described by the informants.”
Hames, 223 Or App at 635. At the time that the deputy initiated the stop, he had seen that there was a metallic sedan
of a color consistent with the bartender’s description,1 the
car was in a ditch on a road that can be used to get from
Bandon to Coquille, the location of the car was close to the
1
Defendant argues that the car in the ditch was not of a color consistent
with the bartender’s description. The bartender described the car as “silver” and
“metallic” in color and the deputy described the car in the ditch as a “goldish-colored Toyota[.]” The trial court watched the deputy’s dashboard camera video of
the car in the ditch and found that it was a metallic color, consistent with the bartender’s report. We have also reviewed the dashboard camera video. That video
would allow a factfinder to find that the car appears “metallic” in color—and that
it appears to be a shade of silver or a shade of gold.
370 State v. Johnson
bar that the bartender had called from, and the timing was
consistent with a car having left the bar around the time of
the first call and having reached the location where it had
gone off the road by the time of the second call. There was
a van, as the second caller had described, just pulling away
from the car in the ditch.
Having examined the record, including the transcript of the suppression hearing and the exhibits admitted,
we conclude that the trial court did not err when it denied
defendant’s motion to suppress. We therefore affirm.
Affirmed.
