People v. Butler

• Decision Date: 11 July 1966
• Docket Number: Cr. 9733
• Citation: 64 Cal.2d 842,52 Cal.Rptr. 4,415 P.2d 819
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 415 P.2d 819 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Edward M. BUTLER and Peggy Butler, Defendants and Appellants. In Bank

Page 4

52 Cal.Rptr. 4

64 Cal.2d 842, 415 P.2d 819

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Edward M. BUTLER and Peggy Butler, Defendants and Appellants.

Cr. 9733.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

July 11, 1966.

Alton I. Leib, Los Angeles, for defendants and appellants.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and William L. Zessar, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

TRAYNOR, Chief Justice.

Defendants appeal from orders granting them probation after they were convicted of possessing marijuana in violation of Health and Safety Code section 11530. They contend that the trial court erred in not permitting them to show that evidence introduced at their trial was obtained by an illegal search and seizure.

On October 25, 1963, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Charles Vaughn obtained a warrant to search defendants' home and automobile. It was issued on the basis of his affidavit that he had information from a reliable confidential informer of the use of narcotics at the described premises. The search uncovered various items of evidence that led to defendants' arrest and subsequent conviction.

At the preliminary hearing, defendants elicited testimony from Deputy Sheriff Vaughn that on three or four occasions he had crawled under their residence and looked through cracks in the floor. He was then asked:

'Q. Now, sir, you are the one who made the application to Judge Farley for the search warrant, is that correct?

'A. Yes, sir.

'Q. And you made that application on the basis of the information you had obtained while underneath the premises at 1788 Orange Grove on those three or four previous occasions prior to January 25, is that correct?

'MR. COURTNEY (Deputy District Attorney): Just a minute Officer. I will object to the question. Apparently Counsel is trying to go behind the search warrant and this is not the proper procedure for it. I will object to the question on those grounds, Your Honor.'

The committing magistrate sustained the objection on the ground that defendants' failure to pursue the remedy provided by Penal Code sections 1539--1540 precluded them from attacking the warrant. At the trial defendants made a motion for a hearing to determine the facts underlying the issuance of the warrant. The trial court denied the motion.

In People v. Berger (1955) 44 Cal.2d 459, 464, 282 P.2d 509, we rejected the federal rule that ordinarily the issue as to whether evidence was illegally obtained must be raised by motion before trial and held that such a motion is not required before an objection can be made at the trial to the introduction of illegally obtained evidence. Several decisions of the District Courts of Appeal, however, have held that the rule of the Berger case does not apply when a search and seizure are made under a search warrant valid on its face and that in such cases the defendant's remedy is to attack the warrant under Penal Code sections 1539--1540. (People v. Marion (1961) 197 Cal.App.2d 835, 838--839, 18 Cal.Rptr. 219; People v. Prieto (1961) 191 Cal.App.2d 62, 66--67, 12 Cal.Rptr. 577; People v. Dosier (1960) 180 Cal.App.2d 436, 439--440, 4 Cal.Rptr. 309; People v. Lepur (1959) 175 Cal.App.2d 798, 802, 346 P.2d 914; People v. Nelson (1959) 171 Cal.App.2d 356, 360, 340 P.2d 718; People v. Phillips (1958) 163 Cal.App.2d 541, 545, 329 P.2d 621; People v. Thornton (1958) 161 Cal.App.2d 718, 721, 327 P.2d 161; Arata v. Superior Court (1957) 153 Cal.App.2d 767, 770, 315 P.2d 473.)

Penal Code sections 1539--1540 ¹ provide that if the grounds for issuance Sections 1539 and 1540 were enacted in 1872, eighty-three years before the exclusionary rule was adopted in People v. Cahan (1955) 44 Cal.2d 434, 282 P.2d 905, 50 A.L.R.2d 513. Accordingly, the Legislature's purpose in enacting those sections was not to regulate the procedure for objecting to the introduction of evidence in criminal trials but to afford the person from whom property was wrongfully seized an expeditious remedy for its recovery. (See Aday v. Superior Court (1961) 55 Cal.2d 789, 800, 13 Cal.Rptr. 415, 362 P.2d 47.)

[415 P.2d 821] of the warrant are controverted, a hearing shall be held, and if the magistrate finds that there is no probable cause for believing the grounds on which the warrant was issued, or if the property taken was not that described in the warrant, the magistrate must restore the property to the person from whom it was taken. In People v. Keener (1961) 55 Cal.2d 714, 719--720, 12 Cal.Rptr. 859, 361 P.2d 587, we held that a magistrate's ruling sustaining a warrant in a proceeding under Penal Code sections 1539--1540 is not final and that the defendant may thereafter renew his attack on the warrant at the preliminary hearing and at the trial. Since the defendants in the Keener case had attacked the warrant under sections 1539 and 1540 before attacking it at the preliminary hearing, it was unnecessary to decide whether a warrant valid on its face must be attacked under those sections before an objection can be made at the preliminary hearing or at the trial to the introduction of evidence obtained under the warrant. We have concluded that sections 1539 and 1540 do not create an exception to the rule of the Berger case and that a defendant may therefore attack the validity of a warrant at the preliminary hearing and at the trial whether or not he [64 Cal.2d 845] attacked it under sections 1539 and 1540. Anything to the contrary in the foregoing decisions of the District Courts of Appeal or in the Keener case is disapproved.

Moreover, the remedy provided by sections 1539 and 1540 would serve the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule fitfully at best. It would not preclude an officer from testifying to what he saw in the course of a search under an invalid warrant or from using information obtained in such a search to secure other evidence. (See People v. Berger, supra, 44 Cal.2d 459, 462, 282 P.2d 509; People v. Roberts (1956) 47 Cal.2d 374, 378--379, 303 P.2d 721.) It would afford no relief to a defendant from whom the property was not taken. (See People v. Martin (1955) 45 Cal.2d 755, 759--761, 290 P.2d 855; Jones v. United States (1960) 362 U.S. 257, 260--267, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697.) It would afford no relief when the property is contraband, which cannot be returned. (See Aday v. Superior Court, supra, 55 Cal.2d 789, 799--800, 13 Cal.Rptr. 415, 362 P.2d 47.) Since the state must afford to 'every defendant a full and fair opportunity to secure an adjudication of all claimed deprivations of his constitutional rights in the securing of the evidence offered against him at the trial' (In re Sterling (1965) 63 Cal.2d 486, 488, 47 Cal.Rptr. 205, 207, 407 P.2d 5, 7; see Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 312--318, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770), a requirement that he must exhaust the remedy under sections 1539--1540 would entail either a broadening of the remedy beyond the statutory terms or the adoption of exceptions when the statutory remedy was inadequate.

Even if sections 1539 and 1540, enacted in 1872, were now invoked to implement the 1955 exclusionary rule of the Cahan case, difficult problems of timing would arise. Thus, if a defendant were excusably ignorant until the trial of facts to controvert 'the grounds on which the warrant was issued' (Pen.Code, § 1539), it would be necessary either to postpone the trial until the validity of the warrant could be determined by the magistrate who issued The rule allowing the defendant to object for the first time at the preliminary hearing or at the trial to the introduction of evidence illegally obtained without a warrant has proved workable. We see no reason to adopt a different rule merely because evidence was obtained under a warrant. As we pointed out in People v. Berger, supra, 44 Cal.2d 459, 464, 282 P.2d 509, 512: 'Ordinarily preliminary questions of fact that govern the admissibility of evidence are determined by the trial court when objection is made to the introduction of the evidence at the trial, and the experience of the federal courts indicates that there are no compelling reasons why an exception to the general rule should be made in the case of illegally obtained evidence. (Citations.) The issues involved will ordinarily be no more time consuming or complicated than those presented to the trial court when it must rule, for example, on the admissibility of confessions, business records, or evidence claimed to be privileged, or on the qualifications of expert or other witnesses. On the other hand, a requirement that a preliminary motion be made to suppress the evidence would inevitably result in delaying the criminal trial while the motion was being noticed, calendared, heard, argued, and determined.'

[415 P.2d 822] it or to waive the requirement [64 Cal.2d 846] that the warrant first be attacked before him. Since any decision the magistrate might reach would be subject to relitigation at the trial (People v. Keener, supra, 55 Cal.2d 714, 719--720, 12 Cal.Rptr. 859, 361 P.2d 587), it would be pointless to delay the trial so that the validity of the warrant could be litigated twice. Even if the defendant knew or should have known of grounds for attacking the warrant at some time before trial, it would be a needless complication to require an adjudication of the time when he could reasonably have been expected to proceed before the magistrate and whether that time was so near the time set for trial that he should be excused from proceeding before the magistrate.

The orders are reversed.

PETERS, TOBRINER, PEEK, and BURKE, JJ., concur.

DISSENTING OPINION

MOSK, Justice.

I dissent.

The majority emphasize that sections 1539 and 1540 were enacted in 1872, eighty-three years before the exclusionary rule was adopted in People v. Cahan (1955) 44 Cal.2d 434, 282 P.2d 905, 50 A.L.R.2d 513. I fail to find that chronology particularly significant.

Arata v. Superior Court (1957) 153 Cal.App.2d 767, 315...