NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Oregon high court changes course on vehicle searches
By PETER WONG
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — The Oregon Supreme
Court has dropped its 35-year blan-
ket exception for motor vehicles in
requiring court-issued warrants
before police can conduct most
searches for criminal evidence.
The court ruling, which makes it
harder for police to search vehicles
without a warrant, came on the final
business day of 2021. The 51-page
opinion, penned by Justice Rebecca
Duncan, said the 1986 exception
carved out by the court was meant to
be temporary.
“Notably, the court did not intend
the automobile exception to be
permanent,” Duncan wrote. “The
exception was based on the length of
time it generally took to get warrants,
which the court expected would be
reduced in the ‘near future’ because
of advances in technology.”
The decision still allows police to
conduct warrantless searches if there
are “exigent circumstances,” defined
by the court as those “that require the
police to act swiftly to prevent danger
to life or serious damage to property,
or to forestall a suspect’s escape or
the destruction of evidence.”
The decision was made by six
justices plus senior judge Jack
Landau, who retired from the court
at the end of 2017. Justice Thomas
Balmer, a former No. 2 official at the
Oregon Department of Justice, did
not participate.
The Oregon Constitution bars
East Oregonian, File
Oregon State Police troopers in July 2016 take the driver of a black Mitsubishi Eclipse into custody after he led
police on a chase though Pendleton. The Oregon Supreme Court on Dec. 31, 2021, issued a ruling that makes it
harder for police to search vehicles without a warrant.
“unreasonable” searches and
seizures, and court warrants for
police to conduct them must be based
on “probable cause” and specify the
place to be searched and the person or
thing to be seized. But like its federal
counterpart in the Fourth Amend-
ment, the state guarantee has been the
subject of numerous interpretations.
The court upheld a 2017 ruling by
Judge Lindsay Partridge in Marion
County Circuit Court to exclude the
seizure by Salem police of evidence
from a lawfully parked and unoccu-
pied truck about a mile east of the
Marion County Courthouse.
A warrantless search on Nov.
28, 2016, uncovered heroin, a scale
and drug paraphernalia — and led
to charges of possession and deliv-
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ery of heroin against Charles Steven
McCarthy, who had been the subject
of an earlier police investigation.
A detective testified in circuit
court that police based the search on
the “automobile exception,” which
the Oregon Supreme Court decided
on a split vote in 1986 was not subject
to the usual requirement for warrants
under two conditions: “The car was
mobile at the time it was stopped
by the police, and the police had
probable cause to believe that the
car contained contraband or crime
evidence.”
Two justices, Hans Linde and
Berkeley “Bud” Lent, dissented in
the 1986 decision written by Justice
Robert E. Jones.
The Salem detective said police
did not choose to obtain a warrant
because they believed the truck was
“mobile,” and that it was not the prac-
tice of police in Marion County to
seek warrants by telephone.
But Partridge wrote: “The state
fails to address why one of the offi-
cers could not avail themselves of
an existing process under Oregon
law, make a call on a cellphone to the
courthouse, lay out the facts under
oath to a judicial officer and have the
judicial officer determine if probable
cause existed. The answer seems to
be that ‘we just don’t do it that way.’”
The judge noted the incident
occurred on a Monday afternoon,
when the court was conducting
normal business.
The Court of Appeals reversed
Partridge. It ruled in 2020 the truck
was presumed to be mobile and
police had probable cause to stop it,
regardless of whether there was an
“actual exigency” that did not allow
time for police to obtain a warrant.
But the Supreme Court decided
otherwise last month and dropped
its own blanket exception it created
for motor vehicles from warrant
searches.
Easterday sentencing pushed to June
sentencing already had been
postponed twice to give him
time to sell farms and equip-
YAKIMA — An Eastern ment through bankruptcy
Washington federal judge court.
Thursday, Jan. 6, postponed
Over the objection of the
sentencing Cody Easterday Justice Department, Bastian
to June 13, giving the ex-cat- granted the motion by Easter-
tleman six more months of day’s attorney, Carl Oreskov-
freedom to settle his
ich, for a third delay,
contentious bank-
pushing sentencing
ruptcy case.
back from Jan. 24.
U.S. District Judge
B a s t i a n c it e d
Stanley Bastian
ongoing litigation in
bankruptcy court. A
described the ongo-
ing dispute between
trial to allocate more
Easterday, his cred-
than $200 million
Easterday
itors and his fraud
from the liquidation
victim, Tyson Fresh
of Easterday Farms
Meats, as a “mess.”
and Easterday Ranches will
“I can’t find a better word,” begin April 18.
he said.
Tyson and other credi-
Easterday, 50, pleaded tors are seeking the entire
guilty March 31 to defraud- pot. Easterday and his wife,
ing Tyson out of $233 million. Debby, and mother, Karen,
Easterday supplied Tyson with claim they are entitled to a
cattle from his feedlot near share.
Pasco. Over several years, he
The trial will sort out
billed Tyson for about 200,000 ownership of more than 80
head of cattle that didn’t exist. parcels of land acquired over
Easterday faces up to 20 three decades by Cody East-
years in prison for wire fraud erday and his late father, Gale.
and must make restitution. His
Only Cody Easterday has
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
A thick cloud cover
Cloudy and not
as cool
44° 38°
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Mostly cloudy with
a few showers
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chilly
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PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
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Pullman
Yakima 32/29
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Portland
Hermiston
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The Dalles 40/33
Salem
Corvallis
55/43
Yesterday
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Records
La Grande
37/32
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
57/43
52/42
44/34
Ontario
31/21
Caldwell
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38°
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Albany
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through 3 p.m. yest.
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Pendleton 38/31
57/47
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
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HERMISTON
Enterprise
44/38
41/35
37°
24°
42°
28°
59° (2006) -21° (1909)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
51/49
Aberdeen
37/35
30/27
Tacoma
Yesterday
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Spokane
Wenatchee
51/48
Today
Medford
54/36
Wed.
SSE 4-8
SSE 6-12
Boardman
Pendleton
N 4-8
SE 6-12
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
46/25
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2022
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
Full
7:34 a.m.
4:32 p.m.
12:18 p.m.
1:57 a.m.
Last
New
First
NATIONAL EXTREMES
Oregon man who defrauded COVID-19
relief programs gets 4 years in prison
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 85° in Key West, Fla. Low -34° in Badoura, Minn.
Jan 17
Jan 25
Jan 31
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E AST O REGONIAN
— Founded Oct. 16, 1875 —
70s
East Oregonian (USPS 164-980) is published Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday,
by the EO Media Group, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801. Periodicals
postage paid at Pendleton, OR. Postmaster: send address changes to
East Oregonian, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801.
Copyright © 2021, EO Media Group
90s
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warm front stationary front
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high low
PORTLAN D — A n
Oregon man who created
several hundred employees
out of thin air and then fraud-
ulently obtained $3.4 million
in COVID-19 relief funds has
been sentenced to four years
in prison.
Andrew Aaron Lloyd
invested his ill-gotten gains
and won big — eventually
purchasing more than 15,000
shares of Tesla stock and 25
rental properties in Oregon
and California, valued at a
combined $18 million.
Lloyd, a 51-year-old
Lebanon resident, has been
ordered to pay $4 million
in restitution, give up the
real estate assets and forfeit
his stock in the electric car
manufacturer.
His sentencing marks
Oregon’s largest closed case
Circulation Dept.
For mail delivery, online access, vacation stops
or delivery concerns call 800-781-3214
of COVID-19 relief fraud,
according to a U.S. Attor-
ney’s Office spokesperson.
West Linn dentist Salwan
W. Adjaj was charged with
bilking nearly $8 million in
December, per court records,
and remains in custody on a
pretrial release violation.
In a sentencing memo
calling for a harsher
65-month sentence, federal
prosecutors called Lloyd an
“opportunistic fraudster”
who got lucky as a day trader.
“The seriousness of the
offense is not diminished
by sheer dumb luck,” Assis-
tant U.S. Attorney Gavin W.
Bruce wrote. “Lloyd did not
return these funds volun-
tarily; law enforcement
recovered the funds before
he could spend them or lose
them.”
Cour t records show
Lloyd transferred a $1.8
million slice of his Paycheck
Protection Program funds
to a brokerage account,
which grew to $13 million
as Tesla stock soared. Lloyd
also obtained a fraudulent
$160,000 Economic Injury
Disaster loan from the U.S.
Small Business Administra-
tion.
Over 60 days, Lloyd
submitted more than a dozen
phony applications for home
care, shopping and construc-
tion businesses, often dupli-
cating the same list of 56
“fictitious” employees while
claiming millions of dollars
in phony payroll expenses,
court documents say.
He closely tracked the
various rounds of Paycheck
Protection Program fund-
ing, at one point assur-
ing an accomplice that the
ruse would work because
Congress would add “another
[$]300 billion very soon,” the
documents say.
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the knowledge to help family
attorneys prepare, Oreskovich
argued. “It’s a monumental
amount of work that is neces-
sary,” he said.
Bastian agreed to delay
sentencing until after the trial.
“Mr. Easterday is doing
what he promised to do when
he pled guilty in this court-
room to try to help clean this
mess up,” the judge said.
Bastian said he also
wanted to sentence Easter-
day in person, not by video
conference, and it’s unlikely
courtroom hearings will
resume this month because of
COVID-19 restrictions.
He also noted if Easter-
day had insisted on a trial, the
trial would not have started
yet because of normal delays.
The case is still ahead of most
criminal cases, he said.
“And that’s because Mr.
Easterday pled guilty and has
taken the initial steps to accept
responsibility for the mess that
he created,” Bastian said.
Along with the Justice
Department, Tyson opposed
postponing sentencing.
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