People v. Gauthier

• Decision Date: 03 July 1962
• Docket Number: Cr. 7999
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Floyd Eugene GAUTHIER, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 888

22 Cal.Rptr. 888

205 Cal.App.2d 419

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Floyd Eugene GAUTHIER, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 7999.

District Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 3, California.

July 3, 1962.

Rehearing Denied July 31, 1962.

Hearing Denied Aug. 29, 1962.

James R. Christiansen, under appointment by the District Court of Appeal, Santa Barbara, for appellant.

Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., William E. James and Gilbert F. Nelson, Assty. Attys. Gen., for respondent.

FORD, Justice.

By an information the defendant was accused of the crime of violation of section 11500 of the Health and Safety Code. It was alleged that on or about May 12, 1961, he 'did wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously have in his possession a narcotic, to wit, methadone, also known as amidone.' (Cf. People v. Ballard, 145 Cal.App.2d 94, 98, 302 P.2d 89.) In a trial by jury, he was found guilty. His appeal is from the judgment ¹ and from the order denying his motion for a new trial.

Two contentions are made by the defendant. The first is that his arrest in his home was unlawful because the officers did not comply with the provisions of section 844 of the Penal Code ² and that, consequently, the evidence seized in his home as a result of the search thereof should not have been admitted at the trial. His other contention is that evidence of statements made by him should have been excluded because at the time thereof he was being unlawfully detained.

With respect to the issues presented on this appeal there was evidence of the following facts. On May 12, 1961, at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon Tony T. Martinez, an agent of the State Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, met a man named Sandoval at Main and Broadway in Santa Maria. Sandoval offered to obtain a narcotic for him and said that he knew a woman who was 'holding.' He did not mention the defendant's name. Sandoval directed the officer to Lakeview and Hillview Boulevard. After the two men arrived there in the officer's automobile, the officer gave Sandoval $50 in bills that had been treated with fluorescent powder. Sandoval left the car, which was parked on Lakeview at the southwest corner of the intersection, and 'trotted' southerly down Hillview in the direction of the defendant's house. After Sandoval turned away from the street and passed a tree, the officer lost sight of him. Officer Martinez waited some time and then moved from his parking place and drove in a southerly direction on Hillview. When the officer was returning in a northerly direction on that street, he again observed Sandoval who was then approximately ten feet from the defendant's house. The officer saw him 'trot back to where the State vehicle was supposed to be parked.' ³ He drove up to Sandoval. Sandoval entered the automobile and handed the officer five paper bindles (which, as expressed in the opinion of a chemist given at the trial, contained the narcotic amidone). Sandoval did not mention the name of the person from whom he had obtained the packets but indicated that the person was a woman. He said that he had received a narcotic injection at the residence. Officer Martinez then drove the vehicle to the next street where Agents Shoemaker and Mannin were waiting. Sandoval was placed under arrest.

After Officer Martinez informed Officers Shoemaker and Mannin that he had given Sandoval $50 and Sandoval had returned with the five paper bindles, Officers Shoemaker and Mannin entered the defendant's house where he and a woman named Vivian Gonzales lived. ⁴ Officer Shoemaker's testimony was in part as follows:

'Q. Did you see anyone inside the house before entering? A. No, sir.

I believe there was a front window, but the blinds were pulled. * * *

'Q. Was the door closed? A. Yes, sir, it was.

'Q. Did you knock on the door? A. No, sir, I did not.

'Q. Was the door hooked? A. As best as I can recall, I entered the house, and the screen door was latched.

'Q. And how did you open the streen [screen] door? A. I pulled on the street door--the handle.

'Q. And the latch broke? A. Broke or bent, I don't know which. It opened.

'Q. You used some force on it? A. Yes, sir.

'Q. You then entered the house? A. Yes, sir.

'Q. Did you or did you not hear anyone say anything before entering into the house? A. No, sir, I did not.

'Q. Did you hear anything before entering the house? A. No, sir.

'Q. What was the first thing that you said after entering into the house? A. I don't believe I said anything when I entered the house.'

He further testified that he did not knock or state his purpose before entering the house.

When the officers entered, there were five or six persons in the front room, including the defendant and Vivian Gonzales. Mrs. Gonzales ran for the bathroom. Two officers seized her. From her hand was wrested a bindle and from the right front pocket of her 'pedal-pushers' was taken the marked bills in the amount of $50. At the time Officer Shoemaker believed that the various bindles or packets contained heroin, but he later learned, after a chemical analysis had been made, that the substance was amidone.

The defendant admitted that a bathrobe hanging in the bedroom was his, but said that both he and Vivian Gonzales wore it; in each of two pockets was found a hypodermic kit. On the top of the dresser was a knife with an open blade; a finger stall was alongside the knife. On the tip of the blade was a whitish powder (which, as expressed in the opinion of a chemist given at the trial, was amidone). The defendant said that the knife was his, but he denied knowledge of the traces of white powder on it. He said that he was familiar with one of the hypodermic kits found in the bathrobe and that it belonged to him.

Evidence was received with respect to information which the officers had obtained prior to May 12, 1961. About February 1961, Officer Martinez approached a man named Ralph and told him he was looking for heroin. Sandoval joined them. They drove to the defendant's house and Sandoval went to the door. He returned to the automobile and said that the 'old man' did not have any 'to deal,' but that they were 'shooting' in the house with what they had. Officer Martinez informed Officers Shoemaker and Mannin about the incident. Officer Shoemaker testified that he had heard about the activities of Vivian Gonzales for at least four years. He further testified in part as follows: 'The first definite information I received was approximately a year and half ago in Fresno, from a reliable informant, that had made at least four or five other cases for us. This informant told us that Vivian was making periodic trips to Fresno to score for Heroin--that she was living with what was described as an old white man who was keeping her and furnishing her some of the money to come to Fresno, and this person had been to the house of Vivian and the defendant, and she described it in general terms, its location. That was the extent of the information. Then I also received the information from the informant that, on that incident that Agent Mannin testified to, that she was in Fresno to score for Heroin.

'Q. In the fall of 1960, did you receive information from a reliable informant in regard to further activities of selling by Mrs. Gonzales or Mr. Gauthier? A. Yes, I did. I contacted an informant in Santa Maria who had made three cases for us in San Luis Obispo, and he stated that Vivian and the defendant [Gauthier] were living at this house and engaged in selling and using and, in the possession of narcotics, and he drove me by the house and pointed it out.

'Q. Is this the same house that's been described before the jury and Court? A. Yes, sir.'

In the late fall of 1960 Officer Shoemaker had the house under observation for three or four hours early one morning.

At the trial, Mrs. Gonzales was called as a witness by the People. On May 12, 1961, she was 33 years old. She and the defendant were living in the house which the officers entered. She had returned there about four days before, after having been in the hospital. The defendant paid the rent and the household expenses. On May 12, 1961, she knew Officer Shoemaker, having seen him before. During the trial it was stipulated that the defendant was 58 years old.

The defendant's attack upon the validity of the search and seizure and of his arrest is based solely upon the claim that the manner of the entry of the officers into the house was illegal and in violation of his constitutional rights. At the trial he did not assert that there was a lack of probable cause for the arrest without a warrant of the person in the house who had apparently sold a narcotic to Sandoval a short time before such entry. ⁵ Such a sale, if made, was a felony. (Health and Safety Code, § 11501.) If the entry and subsequent arrest of Vivian Gonzales were proper, incident to such arrest the officers were entitled to make a reasonable search of the house and to seize the articles to which reference has been made. Moreover, if such conduct of the officers was justified, the arrest of the defendant was proper in view of the reasonableness of the inferences that the knife found on the bedroom dresser was his and that the substance on the blade thereof was a narcotic. (See People v. Ingle, 53 Cal.2d 407, 412-413, 2 Cal.Rptr. 14, 348 P.2d 577.)

In support of his position upon the determinative question of the lawfulness of the entry, the defendant places his reliance primarily on Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301, 78 S.Ct. 1190, 2 L.Ed.2d 1332, and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081. Unless the reasoning of the Supreme Court of the United States in those cases compels a different result, the pertinent precedents in this state require that the trial court's resolution of the problem be upheld. Thus, in a case in which there was a similar factual situation, this court said: 'The appellant cannot complain that the officers entered the house without...