State v. Ashbaugh

When uniformed police officers have no reasonable suspicion that a citizen is engaged in criminal activity, do those officers violate Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution when they approach that citizen and, after obtaining her identification and checking for warrants, question her about whether she is committing a crime and whether they can search her purse for evidence of that crime?

*321I conclude that officers who engage in that conduct seize the citizen in violation of the Oregon Constitution because a reasonable citizen subjected to that inquiry could conclude that the officers’…