State v. Powell

Defendant was charged with aggravated first-degree theft. ORS 164.057. The state appeals from a pretrial order suppressing defendant’s self-incriminating statements and the physical evidence obtained as a result of those statements. See ORS 138.060(l)(c) (allowing state appeal from an “order made prior to trial suppressing evidence”). Defendant made two confessions, first to private investigators and then to the police, in the course of successive interviews. The issue on appeal is whether those confessions can be given in evidence in light of ORS 136.425(1), which provides for exclusion of…