People v. Lawrence
| Decision Date | 27 April 1972 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 6338 |
| Citation | 25 Cal.App.3d 213,101 Cal.Rptr. 671 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ronald Albert LAWRENCE, Defendant and Appellant. |
Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., by Herbert L. Ashby, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., Eddie T. Keller and Carol Hunter, Deputy Attys. Gen., Sacramento, for plaintiff-respondent.
Marsha B. Shanle, Santa Cruza, for defendant-appellant.
Defendant appeals from the judgment on jury verdicts convicting him of selling, furnishing, and giving away a restricted dangerous drug, amphetamine (Count 1), and possessing a restricted dangerous drug, amphetamine, for sale (Count 2). (Health & Saf.Code, §§ 11911, 11912.)
Early in the evening of December 29, 1970, state narcotic agent Joseph Lindsay and a reliable informant, Jerry Ramirez, drove together to an apartment rented by defendant in the City of Sacramento. Lindsay had previously used Ramirez as an undercover buyer, and they planned that Ramirez would attempt to purchase drugs from defendant that evening.
Before proceeding to the apartment with Lindsay, Ramirez had been subjected to a 'skin search' at Lindsay's office to make sure that he was not carrying contraband. Ramirez was given $500 in recorded state funds, and a radio transmitter was concealed by Lindsay on the informer's person.
At approximately 6:25 p.m., Ramirez entered the apartment. Lindsay waited in an adjacent washroom; four other agents and officers were in the area. None of them had a search warrant.
Although static interfered with reception over a radio receiver he was carrying, Lindsay heard on it parts of a conversation between Ramirez and another man, whose voice Lindsay could not identify. At trial, for the limited purpose of showing probable cause, Lindsay was allowed to testify that he initially heard over the radio a conversation inside the apartment 'having to do with reds'--a street term used for seconal, a barbiturate. Then he heard Ramirez say that 'an individual . . . had given Ramirez $500,' and shortly thereafter he heard Ramirez say, 'Okay, here is the $500.' From what he heard, Lindsay testified, he formed an opinion 'as to whether or not a sale had been made. . . .'
Ramirez remained in the apartment about five minutes. When the door to the apartment opened, Lindsay saw the informer standing just inside the threshold. Lindsay approached him and observed protruding out of the informer's coat pocket the ends of several plastic bags which Lindsay could see contained miniature white amphetamine tablets. The door was still open. Lindsay did not knock, but in a loud voice announced 'Police officers' several times and then entered the apartment. Another officer stayed behind and frisked Ramirez at the doorway, finding in the informer's pockets ten plastic bags each containing one thousand amphetamine tablets.
Lindsay proceeded from the doorway twenty feet to the kitchen. There he saw defendant sitting eating dinner at the kitchen table, accompanied by a woman named Adeline Ciannella, whom the evidence showed to be a co-lessee of the apartment. The $500 which had been given to Ramirez was on the table an inch or two from defendant's plate and directly in front of where he was sitting.
Lindsay observed three small plastic bags on the kitchen table. On the kitchen drainboard, an arm's length from where defendant was sitting, there was an open brown paper bag inside of which eight more plastic bags were visible. Seven additional small plastic bags were found in a kitchen cabinet drawer after defendant was arrested at the apartment.
Like the ten bags found on the informer's person, all of the plastic bags found in the kitchen contained miniature white, cross-marked, amphetamine tablets commonly known as 'double-scored mini-Bennies'. Each of the larger plastic bags contained ten smaller bags, in each of which were one hundred tablets. In Lindsay's opinion as an experienced investigator, this method of packaging indicated that the tablets were packaged not only for sale but also for resale in smaller quantities. Approximately 19,000 amphetamine tablets were confiscated at the apartment.
The informer, Ramirez, testified 1 that he had been in contact with defendant during the month preceding the arrest; that defendant had rented the apartment to store 'narcotics' there; that defendant had brought the amphetamine tablets into the apartment; and that, on the night before the arrest, he (Ramirez) had helped defendant and Adeline Ciannella package the tablets there. Ramirez further testified that, when he entered the apartment kitchen on December 29, he told defendant that a customer wanted ten thousand tablets at $60 per thousand; that the customer had given him $500; and that he (Ramirez) was going to take the tablets and receive the $100 balance upon delivery. According to Ramirez, defendant replied that 'it was okay' and said, 'We're finally getting going . . ..' Ramirez then got the brown paper bag out of the kitchen drawer, took out ten plastic bags of tablets
and placed them in his coat pocket, put the $500 on the table, and left the paper bag on top of the sink.
Adeline Ciannella--who was the only other person in the apartment with defendant and Ramirez at the time of the alleged sale--testified that Ramirez had a key to the apartment (a fact which Ramirez and agent Lindsay admitted); that Ramirez had been there with her on December 28; that, while she and defendant were having supper on December 29, Ramirez came into the kitchen, placed '(s)ome money' on the table, and asked their permission to leave the money there so that it would not be stolen while he was walking the streets; that they gave their consent; and that, before he left, Ramirez put 'something' in his pocket after taking it out of a bag which was in the cupboard by the drainboard.
Defendant took the stand and denied knowing that the amphetamines were in the apartment prior to his arrest. He testified that Ramirez was a trafficker in narcotics and drugs 2; that, on December 26 at the home of Ramirez's mother, he saw Ramirez and Adeline Ciannella counting 'a large amount of amphetamines' and packaging them in the same plastic bags which were seized at the apartment on December 29; that, when Ramirez had finished counting the amphetamines, the informer put the plastic bags into a brown paper bag; and that Ramirez had moved into the apartment on December 28. Like Ciannella, defendant claimed that on December 29 Ramirez told them he did not want to carry the $500 with him outside the apartment; that Ramirez left the money on the kitchen table after obtaining defendant's permission to do so; and that, before he left, Ramirez 'spent some time at the cupboard.'
During the prosecution's case-in-chief, evidence was introduced that in Oakland on July 18, 1970, defendant had attempted to sell to an undercover agent marijuana and, at $65 per bag, two plastic bags of white, double-scored mini-Bennies. Such evidence showed that the two bags each contained one thousand amphetamine tablets, and that defendant carried the plastic bags in a brown paper bag. There was also evidence that, in Oakland on the same July date, a search of defendant's truck turned up a large quantity of marijuana and six other plastic bags each containing one thousand double-scored mini-Bennies, that those six bags were also stored in a brown paper bag, and that a small plastic bag containing one hundred such tablets was found in defendant's coat in the truck. Defendant was arrested in Oakland at the time, but had not been convicted of the Oakland charges when he came to trial on the matters at bench.
The court properly instructed the jury as to the limited purposes for which the jury could consider evidence of a crime committed by defendant other than the one for which he was on trial. (CALJIC (3d ed.) 2.50.)
Insofar as it related to amphetamines, the Oakland evidence was offered by the prosecutor 'to show the defendant's knowledge, his modus operandi, his intent, and also for the purpose of showing the absence of any mistake or accident on his part in entering into the transaction now before the Court.' Defendant's objection to the offer of proof was overruled. Although the prosecutor's offer mentioned only 'amphetamines,' and not marijuana, defendant's attorney did not move to strike the later testimony concerning marijuana; indeed, defense counsel stipulated that the marijuana seized in Oakland totaled 2.3 kilograms. Similarly, on this appeal, defendant does not complain that the prosecutor's offer of Defendant's brief acknowledges that 'Evidence of prior sales has been allowed to show modus operandi (citations), to show knowledge of the narcotic nature of the substance (citations), and to show general criminal intent (citations).' (See, People v. Hernandez (1971) 19 Cal.App.3d 411, 418--419, 96 Cal.Rptr. 854; Evid. Code, § 1101, subd. (b).) He contends, however, that the evidence was inadequate to show modus operandi, and that it was improper for the alleged Oakland events to be introduced during the People's case-in-chief inasmuch as his plea of not guilty did not by itself raise 'genuinely controverted' issues as to knowledge and intent.
proof was of narrower scope than the evidence actually introduced.
The contentions fail. (People v. Sam (1969) 71 Cal.2d 194, 204, 77 Cal.Rptr. 804, 809, 454 P.2d...
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