State v. Brown

This case, as usual, has been briefed exclusively as an application of the federal fourth amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court’s opinion decides nothing other than its best estimate of what a majority of that court most likely would hold on the facts before us. Nowhere in the briefs or in the opinions of the Court of Appeals in this case is there any reference either to the source and scope in Oregon law of a police officer’s legal authority to open closed containers taken from a person in custody on a traffic charge, or to the limits imposed on a…