State v. Klaus
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
Date FiledOctober 21, 2026
DocketA183454
JudgeKamins
StatusPublished
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Full Opinion
72 October 21, 2026 No. 1014
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
STEVEN MICHAEL KLAUS,
Defendant-Appellant.
Washington County Circuit Court
20CR35140, 23CR05129, 23CR03966;
A183454 (Control), A183455, A183456
Erik M. Buchér, Judge.
On respondent’s petition for reconsideration filed
September 2, 2026, and appellant’s response filed September
9, 2026. Precedential opinion filed July 29, 2026. 351 Or App
738, ___ P3d ___.
Dan Rayfield, Attorney General, Paul L. Smith, Solicitor
General, and Philip Thoennes, Assistant Attorney General,
for petition.
Lindsey Burrows for response.
Before Tookey, Presiding Judge, Kamins, Judge, and
Jacquot, Judge.
KAMINS, J.
Reconsideration allowed; former opinion modified and
adhered to as modified.
Cite as 354 Or App 72 (2026) 73
KAMINS, J.
The state seeks reconsideration of our opinion in
State v. Klaus, 351 Or App 738, ___ P3d ___ (2026). The
state requests, among other things, that we add in lan-
guage to make it more clear that defendant lacked a privacy
interest in any of the contents of the laptop. See id. at 748
(“[D]efendant had no ‘right to privacy’ in files that were
located on the laptop, because defendant no longer owned
the laptop. Because defendant did not have a ‘right to pri-
vacy’ in those files, no search of those files under Article I,
section 9, occurred.”). In order to make that clarification, we
modify the opinion by adding in the following emphasized
language to footnote 5:
“We emphasize that, unlike the defendant in De Witt
Simons, who retained a privacy right in his internet usage
stored by third parties (and, presumably, in all the content
remaining on his laptop), defendant here retained no pri-
vacy right in communications stored on the laptop itself,
whether or not a given piece of evidence recovered from the
laptop may have also been stored by a third party, because
defendant no longer owned the laptop following the divorce.”
We otherwise adhere to the opinion as written.
Reconsideration allowed; former opinion modified
and adhered to as modified.