Dyson v. State Personnel Bd.

• Decision Date: 30 August 1989
• Docket Number: No. C003975,C003975
• Citation: Dyson v. State Personnel Bd., 262 Cal.Rptr. 112, 213 Cal.App.3d 711 (Cal. App. 1989)
• Court: California Court of Appeals
• Parties: Monroe DYSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. CALIFORNIA STATE PERSONNEL BOARD et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Page 112

262 Cal.Rptr. 112

213 Cal.App.3d 711

Monroe DYSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v.CALIFORNIA STATE PERSONNEL BOARD et al., Defendants and Respondents.

No. C003975.

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Aug. 30, 1989.

Review Denied Nov. 16, 1989.

Loretta H. Hellen, Sacramento, for plaintiff and appellant.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., N. Eugene Hill, Asst. Atty. Gen., Linda Cabatic and Robert L. Mukai, Deputy Attys.Gen., for defendants and respondents.

BLEASE, Acting Presiding Justice.

In this appeal Monroe Dyson challenges the affirmance of his dismissal as a youth counselor with the Department of Youth Authority's Preston School of Industry (Preston or the agency) by the State Personnel Board(Board).The dismissal is predicated solely upon the admission in the administrative disciplinary proceeding of evidence seized by the agency from Dyson's home, consisting of nine T-shirts and two intercoms belonging to Preston.The question we resolve is whether this evidence should have been excluded from the administrative proceedings.

The items were seized from Dyson's home and held by the agency pursuant to a search for evidence that Dyson had committed the crime of theft.The search was initiated, directed and participated in by Thomas Gold, the Preston Chief of Security, acting under his authority as a peace officer.The evidence was turned over by the agency to police authorities for use in a criminal proceeding initiated on the complaint of the agency.The evidence was there excluded and the criminal prosecution dismissed on grounds that the search violated Dyson's constitutional rights to privacy.

We will conclude that the Board is collaterally estopped to deny the constitutional invalidity of the search, as determined in the criminal proceeding.In the circumstances of this case the unconstitutionally seized evidence should have been excluded in the succeeding administrative proceeding conducted by the Board.

Facts And Procedural Background

Dyson was afforded a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge appointed by the Board.He made a timely objection to the introduction of the evidence seized in the search of his home.The following facts, read most favorably to the agency, are taken from the record of the administrative hearing.However, the facts presented here do not bear on the issue of consent to search Dyson's home, an issue resolved adversely to the agency in the criminal proceeding which preceded the administrative disciplinary proceeding.Rather the facts bear on the question whether the agency was so involved in the search as to justify an exclusionary remedy to deter agency invasion of its employees' constitutional rights.

Mr. Dyson was dismissed from his employment as a youth counselor with the Preston School of Industry.The principal actor in the search was Tom Gold, Preston's Chief Security Officer.Gold was present in the office of Preston Superintendent Richard Colsey on June 12, 1984, when Renate Dyson, Dyson's estranged wife, called to report that Dyson had been stealing items from Preston.Colsey testified that Renate told him that "her husband was bringing things home she thought were State property and she thought he was stealing" and that the subject matters were "video materials, clothing, a telephone, and some other electronic equipment."Colsey assigned Gold to investigate the report.

Gold is a peace officer and pursued the investigation and search acting under that authority.In his view his jurisdiction extends "beyond the Walls of Preston when ... on duty."(SeePen.Code, § 830.5, subd. (b).)He understood his peace officer status to "include[ ] any activity in the service of the Youth Authority outside the walls of Preston."During the investigation and search of Dyson's house he was acting in that capacity.

Gold "contacted [Renate] that same afternoon that she had talked to Mr. Colsey and informed [her] I would be the one coming down to talk with her, and I asked her if the following day would be okay.And she said yes, it would."Before going to Mrs. Dyson's house on the 12th, Gold "made prior arrangements on the 11th [more likely the 12th] with the Sheriff's Department asking if I needed some assistance if they'd help me out and they said they would...."It thus appears that Gold planned to search the Dyson house before he interviewed Renate.Gold then went to Renate's house on Miranda drive.Her children were present.By Gold's account, she told him that Dyson was stealing things from Preston.He then called the sheriff's officers again "from [Mrs. Dyson's] house to get the officers to go help me on [Mr. Dyson's] house."Gold said that he called them "and asked them if they would back [him] up if [he] needed it."Apparently he told them nothing about Renate's separation from Dyson and her separate living arrangements.He told the sheriff's officers "that I had permission from the wife to enter the home and that they would--we'd meet them at the address...."Gold knew that Dyson was at work on the day of the search.He knew that Mrs. Dyson had moved out of the Dyson house on Craft but believed that Renate Dyson owned it and had some of her things in it.

After calling and arranging for the sheriff's officers to meet him at the Dyson house on Craft drive, Gold went there with Mrs. Dyson, a trip of some miles.When asked why he called in the sheriff's office, Gold said: "I just wanted an assistant in going into the house as I don't have the necessary papers for someone to go in to search a house, which they said they would have her sign the day prior.If they got the consent they would have her sign the papers to search the home,....I don't know really how far my Peace Officer's jurisdiction really does go as to what I can do with it...."

On getting into the house Gold testified:

"Q: How did you get into the house?

"A.One of the Officers asked Renate if she had a key.She said no ... and she says that the window was broke out and there was a door over the window by the doorknob.He asked if he could push it open.She said yes, he did open the door on the inside, and on entry said, 'Its a Sac SO.Is anyone home?'And upon no answer, we entered the house."

According to Gold, inside the house Renate led Gold through the house, identifying things as taken from Preston.Gold made notes of identification and seized the items.He took one of the intercoms "just sitting on the nightstand" in the master bedroom and the other was found in the second bedroom.The T-shirts were found by Gold in the closet of the master bedroom where he seized them.

Gold "gathered the material or the property belonging to Preston" and put "it in the trunk of my car" and then dropped Renate off at her house and "then came back to the institution and talked with our Superintendent Richard Colsey."Thereafter (the following day), pursuant to his superior's directions, he took it to the Ione Police department and logged it in.

The administrative law judge rendered a decision concluding that the nine T-shirts and two intercoms seized at Dyson's house were the property of the Preston School.The judge found that it could not be established that the 11 video tapes were similarly the property of the school.He also found that although a book given Mrs. Dyson by Dyson was the property of the school that Dyson intended to return it and other Preston books to the school.The judge concluded Dyson "did steal State property", to wit the items seized from Dyson's house.

The findings of fact and proposed decision of the administrative law judge were adopted by the Board.It is that decision which we are asked to review.

Discussion

The evidence necessary to support the discipline imposed on Dyson is that seized during the search of his house.The search was initiated and directed by the agency; the evidence was seized and held by the agency, turned over by it to a prosecutorial authority for use in a criminal action, retrieved following its suppression by the court in that proceeding, and introduced in evidence in Dyson's administrative disciplinary hearing.

The dispositive issue is the admissibility of the evidence in the administrative proceeding.That turns, first, on the applicability of an exclusionary rule to the administrative proceeding and, second, on the collateral effect to be given the exclusion of the evidence in the criminal proceeding.We consider these issues seriatim.

I

The decision adopted by the Board provides: "At the criminal hearing, the Judge held that the search of [Dyson's] house was illegal because the wife no longer lived there.The property seized at [the] house was excluded as evidence and the criminal charges were dismissed.[Dyson] argues that the property should also be excluded as evidence in this administrative hearing.The argument is rejected.The exclusionary rules were designed to protect the public from overzealous peace officers.Such rules cannot be used against the public.Exclusionary rules are not available to protect the jobs of dishonest peace officers.(Emslie v. State Bar, 11 Cal.3d 210[113 Cal.Rptr. 175, 520 P.2d 991].)"

The decision of the Board is predicated upon Emslie v. State Bar(1974)11 Cal.3d 210, 113 Cal.Rptr. 175, 520 P.2d 991, and that case is the starting point for our discussion of the applicability of an exclusionary rule in the circumstances of this case.In Emslie evidence seized by Nevada police was used in a California State Bar Association disciplinary proceeding.Notwithstanding that the Nevada evidence was lawfully seized the court volunteered the dictum "that the exclusionary rules are not part of administrative due process in State Bar disciplinary proceedings...."In saying this the court cautioned that "we do not intimate that circumstances could not be presented under which the constitutional demands of due process could not countenance use of evidence obtained by unlawful means in a...