People v. Ammons, Cr. 19103

• Decision Date: 04 March 1980
• Docket Number: Cr. 19103
• Citation: 162 Cal.Rptr. 772,103 Cal.App.3d 20
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Harriet Josephine AMMONS, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 772

162 Cal.Rptr. 772

103 Cal.App.3d 20

PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Harriet Josephine AMMONS, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 19103.

Court of Appeal, First District, Division 2, California.

March 4, 1980.

Moran, Urich & Evans, a Professional Corp., Robert L. Moran, David O. Ledbetter, J. Brian McCauley, William F. Urich, San Francisco, for defendant and appellant.

George Deukmejian, Atty. Gen., Robert H. Philibosian, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Crim. Div., Edward R. O'Brien, Asst. Atty. Gen., Ronald E. Niver, Martin S. Kaye, Deputy Attys. Gen., San Francisco, for plaintiff and respondent.

TAYLOR, Presiding Justice.

Defendant, Harriet Josephine Ammons, appeals ¹ from a judgment finding her guilty of voluntary manslaughter (Pen.Code, § 192) and not guilty by reason of insanity, and committing her to Napa State Hospital (Pen.Code, § 1026) for four years, pursuant to In re Moye, 22 Cal.3d 457, 149 Cal.Rptr. 491, 584 P.2d 1097. She contends that: 1) the warrantless entry and search of her home were unlawful; 2) the evidence and information obtained as the result of the unlawful entry were fruits of the poisonous tree, and in any event, the court erred in ruling that they were properly admitted under the inevitable discovery rule; 3) her confession to her family physician was inadmissible; 4) the search warrant subsequently obtained was invalid as it was based on illegally obtained evidence; and 5) she was deprived of due process by the destruction of certain tape recordings. For the reasons set forth below, we have concluded that the judgment must be affirmed.

The record reveals the following pertinent facts: About 9:30 a. m. on Monday, July 11, 1977, Officer Joseph Ramos was dispatched to check on the welfare of one Joseph Ammons. Ernest Moya, Ammons' supervisor at Mare Island, had called the Napa police, as Ammons was several hours late for work. Ammons was a very punctual and conscientious employee who usually called in when he expected to be late and was rarely absent. Moya had called the Ammons home but received no response.

Ramos proceeded to the Ammons' home, rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. The only response was a barking dog. He then stepped off the front porch, walked across the front yard and stepped over some shrubbery to look through the uncurtained front window. Ramos knocked on the window; only the dog responded. From the front window, Ramos saw a very neat house except for dog feces on the living room floor. The inside of the house, but not the floor, could have been observed through this window from the sidewalk on the street.

Ramos proceeded to the east side of the house, through a gate to the rear patio, which was enclosed by a six-foot fence. Ramos could not remember whether the gate was open or closed. At the rear of the house, Ramos opened the unlocked garage door and observed a Cadillac. He knocked on a locked rear door that provided entry from the garage into the house; again the barking dog was the only response. Ramos then proceeded to the master bedroom window but could not see anything as it was covered by drapes. He knocked on the bedroom window and once again only the dog responded. Ramos then went to the west side of the house and knocked on two windows through which he could see nothing unusual. After again receiving no response, he proceeded to the home of the neighbor on the east side, Robert Cleveland.

Cleveland stated that he had not seen the Ammons since Saturday morning and that the neighbor across the street, Mrs. Barbara Stoer, was a good friend of the Ammons. Ramos and Cleveland went across the street to talk to her. Mrs. Stoer also last saw the Ammons on the preceding Saturday. As the Stoers had seen no lights in the Ammons house on Sunday night, the Stoers concluded that no one was home. Mrs. Stoer also indicated that defendant was usually home on Monday mornings, and that the car parked in front of the Ammons home was defendant's; Mr. Ammons drove the Cadillac. Stoer was concerned as defendant had a heart condition for which she took medication; also, Mrs. Stoer usually "dog sat" for the Ammons when they were gone and they usually told her when they planned to be away.

The Stoers provided Ramos with the work telephone number of Ammons' daughter. Ramos telephoned, without success, as she was on vacation. Mrs. Stoer also told Ramos that the Ammons' son worked at Mare Island but she doubted if he would know of their whereabouts, as that family relationship was strained.

After checking with the neighbor on the west side of the Ammons home, Ramos returned to the Ammons home with Cleveland. They rang the doorbell and knocked on the front door. The barking dog was the only response. Again they checked all of the other house windows which were locked and the check revealed nothing was astray.

Based on all of the above information, about 15-25 minutes after his initial arrival, Ramos concluded that someone in the house might be in great danger and he decided to enter. He later testified that this decision was based upon a "strong feeling."

With a piece of wire from the garage, Ramos slipped open the already half-latched bedroom window. He pulled the drapes aside and saw the Ammons lying side-by-side in the bed. Mr. Ammons was dead; defendant's breathing was shallow and labored. An ambulance was requested. The items seized that were admitted into evidence at trial were the murder weapon, a .38, the fatal bullet, a live bullet from the murder weapon, and an empty pill bottle found in the kitchen. Four photographs of the scene taken that morning were also admitted into evidence at trial.

Defendant was taken to the Queen of the Valley Hospital and did not regain consciousness until July 13. Dr. Roger Sward, a hospital physician and also the Ammons family doctor, spoke to her and asked her what happened. Although defendant was in intensive care in critical condition, she was lucid. Defendant indicated that she was angry at being alive and wanted her life support systems disconnected. She had taken a massive dose of meprobamate (milltowne). She told Dr. Sward, "I killed him. No other woman could have loved him as much as I." Dr. Sward was not acting as a police agent. Defendant admitted the homicide and relied on defenses of diminished capacity and insanity.

On July 12, 1977, Ramos and other Napa police entered the Ammons home to locate the telephone number of the Ammons daughter and to better enable Ramos to describe the scene as he found it. The house was under coroner's seal; the officers had no warrant. They took nothing but copied some telephone numbers.

On July 13, 1977, an officer entered the house with a search warrant based on Ramos' observations after the July 11 entry and defendant's statement to Dr. Sward. The evidence seized at this time was not admitted at trial. On July 14, 1977, a Napa police officer telephoned Mare Island and asked if he needed a warrant to search the victim's desk. The Navy indicated that the desk was government property and seized some evidence. All the searches were upheld except the one of the victim's desk.

At the suppression hearing, the trial court found that Ramos' entry on July 11 without a warrant was reasonable and, therefore, lawful, on the basis of the totality of the circumstances.

We turn first to Ramos' entry into the Ammons home. The Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution and article I, section 13 of the state Constitution guarantee " 'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects' against unreasonable searches and seizures." (Cleaver v. Superior Court, 24 Cal.3d 297, 302, 155 Cal.Rptr. 559, 561, 594 P.2d 984, 986.) A "search" within the meaning of these constitutional provisions occurs whenever a person's reasonable expectation of privacy is violated by governmental intrusion (People v. Edwards, 71 Cal.2d 1096, 1100-1104, 80 Cal.Rptr. 633, 458 P.2d 713).

The record indicates that at the suppression hearing, the trial court did not rule on the legality of Ramos' conduct prior to the entry through the bedroom window. As indicated above, after knocking on the front door the first time, Ramos walked through some shrubbery and looked in a front window. He then proceeded to the back where he walked through a gate, opened the unlocked garage door, and observed the Cadillac automobile. He then knocked on and looked through two windows on the side of the house. The People argue that each instance was a mere "attempt to contact" Ammons and, at most, a technical trespass, not subject to constitutional scrutiny.

A "search," as that term is used in the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution and in our own Constitution, implies some exploratory investigation or an invasion and a quest, a looking for or seeking out (Bielicki v. Superior Court, 57 Cal.2d 602, 605, 21 Cal.Rptr. 552, 371 P.2d 288). The general rule is that if observations are made from a place to which the public is not expressly or implicitly invited, a search has begun (Lorenzana v. Superior Court, 9 Cal.3d 626, 634, 638, 108 Cal.Rptr. 585, 511 P.2d 33; Mann v. Superior Court, 3 Cal.3d 1, 88 Cal.Rptr. 380, 472 P.2d 468). Thus, Ramos began to "search" when he left the front porch and began to look through the windows as defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect thereto. (Lorenzana, supra, at p. 634, fn. 5, 108 Cal.Rptr. 585, 511 P.2d 33.) Our Supreme Court in Lorenzana, relying on Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, said at 9 Cal.3d page 638, 108 Cal.Rptr. at page 594, 511 P.2d at page 42: "(T)he generic Katz rule permits the resident of a house to rely justifiably upon the privacy of the surrounding areas as a protection from the peering of the officer unless such residence is 'exposed' to that intrusion by the existence of public pathways or other invitations to the public to enter upon the property. This...