State v. Cable

No. 12              January 7, 2026                  467

   This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion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.
                JAMES PAUL CABLE,
                 Defendant-Appellant.
               Lane County Circuit Court
                 21CR56718; A182118

  Clara L. Rigmaiden, Judge.
  Submitted November 13, 2025.
  Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender, Criminal Appellate
Section, and Anne K. Munsey, Deputy Public Defender,
Oregon Public Defense Commission, filed the brief for
appellant.
   Dan Rayfield, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Christopher A. Perdue, Assistant
Attorney General, filed the brief for respondent.
  Before Aoyagi, Presiding Judge, Egan, Judge, and Pagán,
Judge.
  AOYAGI, P. J.
  Affirmed.
468                                             State v. Cable

        AOYAGI, P. J.
          Defendant appeals a judgment of conviction for
second-degree murder, ORS 163.115, and assaulting a public safety officer, ORS 163.208. He raises four assignments
of error, all relating to suppression of evidence regarding the
murder. We review for legal error, relying on the trial court’s
express and implied factual findings from the suppression
hearing. State v. Maciel-Figueroa, 

, 

 (2017). We state the facts in accordance with the
standard of review and, for the reasons explained below,
affirm the convictions.
         Facts. Late one night, in response to a phone call
from defendant, Owen went to defendant’s home and saw a
man lying on the kitchen floor, mostly covered by a blanket.
There was what looked like blood in the kitchen. Defendant
told Owen that he had killed his roommate in self-defense
when the roommate came at him with a knife. Defendant
“didn’t seem like he was in his right mind.” Owen did not
check and did not know whether the man on the floor was
dead. Owen left and called 9-1-1. Shortly thereafter, around
1:00 a.m., Officer Stropko met with Owen. In addition to giving a statement, Owen expressed concern for CB, a second
roommate who still lived at the home as far as Owen knew
and whom Owen had been unable to reach by phone.
         At the same time, around 1:00 a.m., a group of officers led by Sergeant Williams arrived at defendant’s home.
While they were still outside, Stropko called Williams and
told him that there was an urgent need to enter the home to
determine the welfare of the occupants, as Owen appeared
to be making a credible report of a possible homicide. It
had been about an hour since Owen had been in the home.
Stropko believed that there was a “good chance” that the
person Owen had seen on the floor was dead, but he did not
know if he was dead, and, in his experience, when people
call to report that someone looks lifeless and may be dead,
“more often than not, they’re not dead” and they need medical assistance. Williams similarly had the experience of
people being reported dead who were not actually dead and
needed medical assistance.
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 

 (2026)           469

         Williams noticed the front door was ajar. He called
out and received no answer. Upon entering through the front
door, the officers saw someone dart through the hallway, followed him, and found defendant in a back bedroom trying
to leave through a sliding glass door. He had visible blood on
his person and his clothing. The officers detained defendant
and went to look for anyone else in the home. Williams found
a man on the kitchen floor under a blanket and immediately
called for paramedics. Upon closer examination, however,
he saw that the man—later determined to be defendant’s
roommate, DP—had head injuries that no one could survive
and cancelled the call. The officers did not find anyone else
in need of assistance, so they vacated the home and secured
it from outside until a search warrant could be obtained.
         Meanwhile, defendant was brought to the police
station and placed in a holding cell. Detective Sites was
briefed on what Owen had said and what Williams saw at
defendant’s home. Sites met with defendant, who made irrational statements. Sites could see obvious bloodstains on
the front of defendant’s jeans, including smears and spatter.
Defendant had some scratches and a cut on his hand, but
the quantity and pattern of blood on the jeans was consistent with a violent event and looked to be from an impact,
not a scratch or cut. By that time, Sites believed that he
had probable cause to arrest defendant for second-degree
murder. Sites wanted to preserve the visible blood evidence,
so he instructed defendant to remove his jeans, provided a
change of clothes, and took the jeans. The blood was later
tested and confirmed to be DP’s.
         Defendant was charged with second-degree murder
for the death of DP and with assaulting a public safety officer. Before trial, he unsuccessfully moved to suppress some
of the evidence against him. Defendant waived his jury
right, and the charges were tried to the court, which found
him guilty on both counts.
         Warrantless Entry. In his first two assignments of
error, defendant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence from the warrantless
entry into his home and in denying a related motion to
470                                             State v. Cable

controvert a search warrant affidavit containing information from the warrantless entry.
          Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Warrantless
entry into a person’s home is per se unreasonable unless
“ ‘one of the few specifically established and carefully delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement’ ” applies. State
v. Sullivan, 

, 

 (2014) (quoting
State v. Bridewell, 

, 

 (1988)).
It is the state’s burden to prove that an exception applies.
ORS 133.693(4). In this case, the state successfully argued
the emergency aid exception. That exception applies “when
police 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). Objective reasonableness depends on the totality of the
circumstances. State v. Clay, 

, 

, rev den, 

 (2018).
        Defendant argues that it was not objectively reasonable for the police to believe that anyone in defendant’s
home needed emergency aid or assistance. In his view, based
on the information that the police had, defendant was not
seriously injured, the person on the kitchen floor was “likely
dead,” and there was no reason to believe that CB was even
present in the home.
         We conclude that the trial court did not err in applying the emergency aid exception. On this record, the police
reasonably believed that DP could still be alive and in need
of immediate medical assistance. The possibility that he
was already dead did not make it objectively unreasonable
to enter to try to provide aid. Put another way, the police
were not required to assume that DP was already dead and
thus leave him to die if that assumption was wrong. See
State v. Miller, 

, 

 (1985), cert
den, 

 (1986) (as relevant to the emergency-aid
exception, “the police are not required to accept a lay person’s determination of death,” as the officer “might be able to
Nonprecedential Memo Op: 

 (2026)            471

render lifesaving medical assistance to the victim”). Because
it was objectively reasonable to enter the home to provide
aid to DP, the emergency-aid exception applies, regardless
of whether it was also objectively reasonable to enter to provide aid to defendant or CB. We affirm the denial of the
motion to suppress evidence from the warrantless entry into
defendant’s home and, by extension, the denial of the motion
to controvert.
         Defendant’s Jeans. In his third assignment of error,
defendant challenges the denial of his motion to suppress
the jeans evidence. The trial court ruled that the warrantless seizure of defendant’s jeans was justified by both the
search-incident-to-arrest exception and the plain-view doctrine. We affirm based on the plain-view doctrine.
         “Under the plain-view doctrine, an officer may seize
an item if the officer can do so from a position where that
officer is entitled to be and the incriminating character
of the item to be seized is immediately apparent.” State v.
Currin, 

, 

 (2013) (internal
quotation marks omitted). Even “normally benign objects”
are seizable under the plain-view doctrine if the officer who
sees them has probable cause to believe that they are evidence of a crime. State v. Wise-Welsh, 

, 147-
48, 

, rev den, 

 (2022). Here, the trial
court found that Sites saw defendant’s bloody jeans “from a
lawful vantage point” and concluded that Sites had probable
cause to believe that they were evidence of a crime.
         Defendant argues that the bloody jeans were not
“obvious evidence of a crime,” because it was not necessarily
DP’s blood, and so the plain-view doctrine does not apply.
See State v. Sagner, 

, 

 (1973)
(assessing whether the items found in plain view “were obvious evidence of crime”; “[t]hat is, assuming that the items
were legitimately encountered, was it evident that they were
stolen goods?”). We disagree. Based on what he knew, Sites
had probable cause to believe that the blood on the jeans
belonged to the man on the kitchen floor and was evidence
of a crime. Absolute certainty was not required, only probable cause. The trial court correctly denied the motion to
suppress based on the plain-view doctrine, so we need not
472                                              State v. Cable

address search incident to arrest, which was an alternative
ground for denial.
         Blood Testing Results. After seizing defendant’s
jeans, the state sent the blood for testing, and it was confirmed to be DP’s. The state concedes that it needed a warrant for that testing and that it was therefore error to deny
suppression of the blood-testing evidence. The state argues
that the error was harmless, however, and therefore is not
a basis for reversal. See State v. Davis, 

, 

 (2003) (an error is harmless if there is little likelihood that it affected the verdict, in which case it cannot be
the basis for reversal of a criminal conviction). Defendant
disagrees.
         Having reviewed the trial record, we conclude that
the error was harmless. Defendant admitted to causing DP’s
death, both in opening statement and in his trial testimony,
but claimed not to remember the actual event. His defense
theory was that he was high on ketamine and nitrous oxide
and extremely sleep deprived and therefore lacked the requisite culpable mental state for second-degree murder. Given
that it was undisputed that defendant killed DP, and given
the extensive circumstantial evidence that the blood on the
jeans was DP’s, the blood-testing evidence was of minimal
value to the state’s case, even taking into account that it was
direct evidence of the source of the blood. There is little likelihood that the error in admitting the test results affected
the court’s verdict.
         Affirmed.