People v. Coulon

• Decision Date: 20 May 1969
• Docket Number: Cr. 5105
• Citation: 273 Cal.App.2d 148,78 Cal.Rptr. 95
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Robinson Whiting COULON and Patricia Ann Gooley, Defendants and Respondents.
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 95

78 Cal.Rptr. 95

273 Cal.App.2d 148

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Robinson Whiting COULON and Patricia Ann Gooley, Defendants and Respondents.

Cr. 5105.

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

May 20, 1969.

Rehearing Granted June 17, 1969.

Hearing Denied July 16, 1969.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., by Jack R. Winkler and Michael Fabian, Deputy Attys. Gen., Sacramento, for plaintiff-appellant.

James E. Kleaver, Public Defender, Yreka, for defendants-respondents.

FRIEDMAN, Associate Justice.

Defendants were charged with possession of two marijuana cigarettes. At their preliminary examination and again by a motion to set aside the information, they claimed invalidity of the search warrant which produced the cigarettes, urging unconstitutional vagueness of the warrant and supporting affidavits. The superior court granted the motion to set aside the information and the People appeal.

One of the two affidavits, that of a Siskiyou County deputy sheriff, reported information received by another police department from an informant who said that during the early morning hours of July 5, 1968, he had driven with four persons to a 'hippy [sic] ranch' somewhere in the Iron Gate Dam area; that these persons delivered six kilos of marijuana, plus methedrine, 'smack,' mescaline and LSD to 'some hippies who took it into the house on the ranch;' that darkness prevented the informer from describing the location in more detail.

The next day, July 6, another deputy sheriff executed an affidavit stating that he was familiar with all the ranches in the northeastern portion of Siskiyou County; that in January 1968 he had been at the 'Old Quadros Ranch' assisting in a narcotics arrest. The affidavit continued: '[T]he Old Quadros Ranch * * * is the only ranch in the northeast portion of the county which is regularly occupied by hippies. The owner of the ranch is absent, and the premises are leased or otherwise occupied with the consent of the owner by hippies. When I was on the premises in January, 1968, there were ten adults and two children who claimed to be living in the house. At that time the smell of marijuana was very strong in the house, but none was observed.

'The premises consist of 640 acres, approximately, upon which there is a house barn, and two outbuildings. I have today [i. e., July 6, 1968] observed, in addition, 1 tepee and 5 campsites on the premises and seven adults who appeared to be at home on the place, some in typical hippy [sic] garb, some naked, doing gardening, carrying water, and other household chores.'

On the basis of these affidavits a magistrate issued a search warrant commanding search of 'the house, outbuildings, tepees, and campsites at the Old Quadros Ranch in Siskiyou County, as well as the persons in residence there for the following: Marijuana, methedrine, heroin, morphine, mescaline, and LSD. * * *'

Armed with a search warrant, a group of peace officers raided the Old Quadros Ranch at about 5:30 a. m. the next day, July 7. Defendant Coulon and his codefendant, Miss Gooley, were living in a camp near a creek on the ranch. A deputy sheriff came up the creek to the camp. They were in bed when he arrived. He told them why he was there and proceeded to search the area of their camp. Miss Gooley asked to make a pot of coffee. As she was doing so, the deputy saw her reach into a brown jar and withdraw two items. He asked her for them and she gave him two marijuana cigarettes, saying 'I guess you've got us.'

In addition to the house and outbuildings, there were five campsites on the Old Quadros Ranch, three of which were occupied. The creekside camp of defendants was 300 yards upstream from the nearest campsite. No other inhabited place could be seen from defendants' camp. One officer estimated the number of ranch inhabitants at 18 to 20, but another observed only 7 or 8 adults and two children.

Constitutional concepts condemn 'general' search warrants with little or no restriction on the area of search; both the affidavit upon which it is based and the warrant itself must describe the place of search with particularity; the requirement of particularity is met if the description is such that the searching officers can, with reasonable effort, ascertain and identify the place intended. ¹ In the case of dwellings, the 'place' is usually a single living unit, that is, the residence of one person or family; a warrant directing a search of an apartment house or dwelling place containing multiple living units is void unless issued on probable cause for searching each separate living unit or believing that the entire place is a single living unit; a group of adults, nevertheless, may share a single dwelling unit as a common residence, and a warrant describing that unit as the 'place' to be searched is constitutionally adequate. ²

In support of the warrant, the People argue that the activities of the hippies on the ranch 'indicate a back-to-nature type of communal living,' which qualified the entire ranch as a single living unit or household. We apply several criteria to this contention. The first is the general standard voiced by the federal Supreme Court for testing and interpreting search affidavits: 'If the teachings of the Court's cases are to be followed and the constitutional policy served, affidavits for search warrants, such as the one involved here, must be tested and interpreted by magistrates and courts in a commonsense and realistic fashion. They are normally drafted by nonlawyers in the midst and haste of a criminal investigation. Technical requirements of elaborate specificity once exacted under common law pleadings have no proper place in this area. A grudging or negative attitude by reviewing courts toward warrants will tend to discourage police officers from submitting their evidence to a judicial officer before acting.

'* * * where * * * circumstances are detailed, where reason for crediting the source of the information is given, and when a magistrate has found probable cause, the courts should not invalidate the warrant by interpreting the affidavit in a hypertechnical, rather than a commonsense, manner.' (United States v. Ventresca (1965) 380 U.S. 102, 108-109, 85 S.Ct. 741, 746, 13 L.Ed.2d 684.)

A parallel notion is expressed in California rules which view issuance of a search warrant as a judicial act of the magistrate (Dunn v. Municipal Court (1963) 220 Cal.App.2d 858, 869, 34 Cal.Rptr. 251) and enjoin a reviewing court to upset a warrant only if it fails as a matter of law. (People v. Govea, supra, 235 Cal.App.2d at p. 297, 45 Cal.Rptr. 253.)

Another criterion is the California doctrine of judicial notice. A court may recognize facts 'of generalized knowledge that are so universally known that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute.' (Evid.Code, § 451, subd. (f).)

Viewed by these criteria, the term 'hippies' has a limited (but only a limited) significance here. 'Hippie' has wide currency as a description of a contemporary social phenomenon. The term denotes an unconventional young person in rebellion against competitive middle-class values, who usually consorts with his own kind and tends to symbolize his rebellion through hirsuteness and picturesque garb. ³ As a group description, it signifies persons sharing a limited set of common characteristics. In college communities many students adopt the external appearance of hippies, making the term dubious as a physical identification. In a rural area such as Siskiyou County common sense and judicial notice combine to permit recognition of the term as a generalized description of external appearance, adequate for the purpose of group identification.

In the trial court defendants urged that the informant had been able to identify only the general location of the narcotics delivery point; that the deputies had no probable cause to pinpoint the Old Quadros Ranch as the location of contraband; hence that the search warrant failed. The informant had provided the officers with two clues to the delivery point: first, that it was a ranch somewhere in the Iron Gate Dam area; second, that persons whom he described as hippies took the narcotics into the ranch house. The officers had several pieces of preexisting information: one, that Old Quadros Ranch was in the same general area; two, that this was the only ranch in the area regularly occupied by persons described as hippies; three, that the ranch house had once been redolent of marijuana. Since persons physically described as hippies were identified at the ranch where the narcotics were received and at the Old Quadros Ranch as well and since the latter had a past association with narcotics, the officers could reasonably entertain an honest and strong suspicion that the ranch visited by the informant had been the Old Quadros Ranch, a suspicion which the magistrate could appropriately accept as probable cause for accepting the latter as the contraband's location.

At that point the term 'hippie' exhausts its value. To view the appellation as evidence of specific behavior at a specific time and place bursts the boundary of judicial notice. As an individual, the magistrate could reasonably suppose that some hippies live communally. (See fn. 3, supra.) Acting judicially, he could not accept that supposition as evidence that the particular hippies inhabiting the Old Quadros Ranch were living in a single communal establishment. Since no inference of communal living may be drawn from the term 'hippies,' the warrant's sufficiency must rest upon other factors.

In determining the validity of the search warrant, the primary question is 'whether the affiant had reasonable grounds at the time of his affidavit and the issuance of the warrant for the belief that the law was being violated on the premises to be searched * * *.' ⁴ In brief, the warrant's validity depends upon the showing before the magistrate at the time it...