People v. Blair

• Decision Date: 09 November 1979
• Docket Number: Cr. 20936
• Citation: 602 P.2d 738,159 Cal.Rptr. 818,25 Cal.3d 640
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 602 P.2d 738 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Robert G. BLAIR, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 818

159 Cal.Rptr. 818

25 Cal.3d 640, 602 P.2d 738

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Robert G. BLAIR, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 20936.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

Nov. 9, 1979.

Quin Denvir, State Public Defender, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, Charles M. Sevilla, Chief Asst. State Public Defender, and Donald L. A. Kerson, Deputy State Public Defender, for defendant and appellant.

Margaret C. Crosby, Alan L. Schlosser, Amitai Schwartz, San Francisco, Fred Okrand, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Terry Smerling and Robert Florey, III, Los Angeles, as amici curiae on behalf of defendant and appellant.

Evelle J. Younger and George Deukmejian, Attys. Gen., Jack R. Winkler, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., S. Clark Moore, Asst. Atty. Gen., William R. Pounders and Michael Nash, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

MOSK, Justice.

We held in Burrows v. Superior Court (1974) 13 Cal.3d 238, 118 Cal.Rptr. 166, 529 P.2d 590, that a depositor's bank statements provided to the police by the bank without the benefit of legal process were obtained as the result of an illegal search and seizure, in violation of article 1, section 13 of the California Constitution. ¹ In this case we are called upon to decide, inter alia, whether the rationale of Burrows applies to copies of bills charged to a credit card used by defendant, to the record of a telephone call made by him from a hotel room in California, and to telephone records of an associate of defendant in Philadelphia, obtained by federal authorities in that city and provided by them to the police in California.

Defendant was convicted of the murders of Alan and Renate Wellman, which occurred at their home in Los Angeles on the night of December 14, 1975. He appeals from the judgment of conviction.

On August 12, 1975, Wellman, a lawyer, appeared before a federal grand jury in Philadelphia regarding a stolen treasury bill. He testified that he had met defendant socially, that defendant had asked him to negotiate a $50,000 treasury bill, and he agreed to do so for a fee of $500. When he attempted to cash the note, the bank notified him that it had been stolen. He advised defendant to protest the bank's claim, but defendant did not do so.

In October 1975, defendant was indicted for selling or receiving the note, and a trial date of November 19, 1975, was set which was continued to January 12, 1976, at the request of defendant's attorney. Wellman had been subpoenaed to appear at the trial.

Defendant had been convicted in 1970 on a charge involving stolen federal securities and was on parole for that conviction at the time of the grand jury proceedings. If convicted on the 1975 charge he could have received a maximum of 10 years in prison in addition to the time remaining to be served on his parole term. One month after the Wellmans were murdered, the United States Attorney in Philadelphia moved to dismiss the case against defendant because Wellman was the only witness to the charge.

The Wellmans lived on Scadlock Lane in Los Angeles. They were found by their daughter on the afternoon of December 15, dressed in their bathrobes, lying face down on the floor, with pillows over their heads. They had been killed some time between 7 and 10 p. m. on the night of December 14 by gunshot wounds from a Colt Cobra .38 handgun, which was in the front room. They had apparently been preparing for bed at the time of the murders; the condition of the house indicated that robbery was not the motive.

On December 14, between 9 and 9:30 p. m., defendant entered the motel office of Rocky Stroud in Encino, and asked directions to Scadlock Lane. ² Stroud pointed the way on a street map in the motel office. A neighbor of the Wellmans, returning home about 11 p. m. on December 14, noticed two black men walking from the front porch of the Wellman house; they drove off in an older model white car. She testified that she was not alarmed because it was commonplace to see blacks entering and leaving the Wellman residence.

Suspicion focused upon defendant almost immediately. Defendant, who sometimes used the name Robert Bartee, ³ maintained a residence in Philadelphia, and an office under the name of Step Ahead Enterprises, which employed one Betty Elaine Vineyard. The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Philadelphia was aware of defendant's connection with Vineyard and Step Ahead Enterprises. The United States Attorney, who was conducting an obstruction of justice investigation in connection with the Wellman murders, obtained permission of the grand jury in Philadelphia to subpoena defendant's telephone records and those of his associates. Although not entirely clear, the investigation was apparently conducted under the auspices of the grand jury. ⁴ An agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was assisting the United States Attorney, sought and received permission from the latter to subpoena the records of calls made to and from Vineyard's telephone. The subpoena, served upon the Bell Telephone Company of Philadelphia, was filled in by an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and made returnable either to the grand jury or to that agency. The records were supplied by the telephone company to the Federal Bureau of Investigation rather than to the grand jury. They indicated that the Vineyard telephone was charged for calls to a certain Oakland number on December 12 and 14 and a Los Angeles number on December 15. ⁵

The authorities in Philadelphia provided Los Angeles police with the California telephone numbers shown on Vineyard's records, and the police determined that the Oakland number was that of the Edgewater Hyatt House Hotel (hereinafter Hyatt House) and the Los Angeles number was the Marriott Hotel. They examined the registers of these hotels and found that a Robert Bartee and two others had checked into two rooms at the Hyatt House on December 11, 1975, and departed on December 14, and that Bartee and his party were at the Marriott on the night of December 14, checking out early in the morning of December 15. At the request of the police, an employee of the Hyatt House showed the police a list of telephone calls charged to Bartee's account by the hotel. Among them was one at 4:17 p. m. on December 14 to the Wellman home in Los Angeles.

Credit cards had been issued to Robert Bartee by Diner's Club, American Express, and Carte Blanche. The police, by informal inquiries and without obtaining search warrants or subpoenas, requested and received from American Express a copy of Bartee's credit card application, and from Carte Blanche information as to the amount he owed. An employee of Diner's Club informed the police that a TWA airline ticket had been charged to the card, and gave them the ticket number, but declined to provide further information without a subpoena. Subpoenas were issued to the credit card companies for information regarding Bartee's accounts, returnable at the preliminary hearing on June 14, 1976. ⁶ Diner's Club, instead of waiting to offer the documents at the preliminary hearing, turned them over to the prosecution on June 11. Among them was "a listing of the establishments at which the card was used." ⁷ The information revealed that the Bartee card was used to pay for lodging and other expenses at the Hyatt House in Oakland between December 11 and December 14, 1975 and at the Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of December 14, as well as for three tickets on a flight from Los Angeles to Baltimore on December 15.

When a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent conducted an interview on December 19 in Philadelphia, defendant denied that he knew the Wellmans. On December 23, defendant, without having been summoned, visited his parole officer in Philadelphia, denied that he was involved in the Wellman murders, and displayed to the officer a letter purporting to set forth in detail his whereabouts in the Philadelphia area on the weekend of the murders. Defendant retained the letter. Thereafter, in a search of the Vineyard residence for narcotics made under the authority of a warrant, a Philadelphia homicide officer assigned to investigate the Wellman murders found the letter in Vineyard's bureau drawer in which a quantity of narcotics was also discovered.

Defendant testified at the trial, offering an alibi as his primary defense. He testified as follows: he is a narcotics dealer and made frequent trips to Oakland and Los Angeles for the purpose of purchasing narcotics. Between December 11 and 14 he was in Oakland with two associates to buy heroin, and after they successfully completed the purchase, they left for Los Angeles on December 14.

His supplier of cocaine was Wellman from whom he had bought cocaine in the past. On December 14, he called Wellman from Oakland for the purpose of arranging a purchase of cocaine. When he arrived in Los Angeles, he rented a Ford Thunderbird from Avis. He then called Wellman from a pay telephone about 8:30 p. m. and arranged to meet Renate Wellman on the corner of Sepulveda and Valley Vista streets at 9:15 p. m. He did not stop at the Stroud motel on the way to the meeting place. Shortly after defendant arrived at Sepulveda and Valley Vista, Renate Wellman drove up in a red Volkswagen with a Rolls Royce grille. He gave her $10,000 in cash for a half pound of cocaine. The rented Thunderbird failed to start after the transaction, and she drove him back to the Marriott Hotel, dropping him off there about 10:20 p. m. He denied that he had murdered the Wellmans, and testified that he bore no grudge against Wellman for his testimony before the grand jury.

The Department of Motor Vehicles had no record of a red Volkswagen registered to the Wellmans, and no report of a mechanical failure had been filed with Avis regarding the Ford Thunderbird. There was evidence that Wellman used cocaine and that he had said shortly before the murders that he "was coming into a large sum of money the...