People v. McInnis

• Decision Date: 23 March 1972
• Docket Number: Cr. 15620
• Citation: 6 Cal.3d 821,100 Cal.Rptr. 618,494 P.2d 690
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 494 P.2d 690 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. James McINNIS, Defendant and Appellant. In Bank

Page 618

100 Cal.Rptr. 618

6 Cal.3d 821, 494 P.2d 690

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. James McINNIS, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 15620.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

March 23, 1972.

Rehearing Denied April 19, 1972.

Edward J. Horowitz, Los Angeles, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.

Evelle J. Younger and Thomas C. Lynch, Attys. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Geoffrey S. Cantrell, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

MOSK, Justice.

Defendant was charged by information with robbery (Pen.Code, § 211), and pleaded not guilty. Following a hearing, defendant's motion to suppress certain evidence as the fruit of an illegal arrest (Pen.Code, § 1538.5) was granted in part and denied in part. A jury found defendant guilty of robbery in the first degree, and a motion for new trial was denied. He appeals from the judgment of conviction, seeking to review the partial denial of his motion to suppress. We conclude the ruling on the motion was correct and the judgment should be affirmed.

The following facts are undisputed: At approximately 8:30 p.m. on October 28, 1968, a man entered a Pasadena liquor store and asked for two bottles of liquor. Jack Michel, the clerk, after reaching under the counter for a bag, straightened up to face a gun in the hand of the supposed customer. The man motioned Michel to the back of the store where the hands of the latter were bound behind his back and he was ordered to sit and face the wall. It is estimated that the victim saw the robber's face for approximately one minute.

The robber managed, with some difficulty, to open the cash register, and then departed. Two or three minutes later, Michel freed himself and immediately called the police. Missing were a radio kept near the cash register and $100 which had been in the till.

About this time Frederick Alford, a regular customer of the liquor store, drove into the nearby parking lot. As he left his car he saw a man coming around the front corner of the liquor shop, walking at a leisurely pace and holding an object which appeared to be the radio regularly kept in the store. Because he recognized the radio, Alford was curious and tried to 'get a good look' at the man as they passed on the street. Alford saw him for a maximum of five seconds before crossing the street and proceeding to the liquor store to purchase a newspaper as was his nightly custom.

The police arrived about three minutes later. Both Michel and Alford described what they had seen, and Alford then returned to his place of employment. Shortly thereafter Michel was shown a stack of several hundred photographs, but could not find a picture of the robber among them. Forty-five minutes after the robbery a large collection of photographs was shown to Alford, who selected two photographs of men similar in appearance to the man he saw leaving the store.

One month later, Michel examined another group of old photographs and identified none of them. On November 29, a policeman brought five photographs for viewing by Michel who noticed that these appeared newer and larger than the earlier photos he had been shown, and he believed it significant that the police brought only a small number of pictures. He selected defendant's photograph out of the group. The date of November 25, 1968, was printed on the front of defendant's likeness, but Michel testified that he did not notice it at the time of his identification. One other photo in the group of five had a date on the front. When shown the five photographs at the trial, Michel recalled defendant's and the other dated picture as among those which had been shown to him on November 29. He could not remember having seen the other three.

A few days after November 29, Alford was in the liquor store and was told by Michel that the district attorney was looking for him because the robber had been found. Alford drove to the police station where he was shown five photographs. He conceded that he expected to discover the robber's picture in the group because of his earlier conversation with Michel. Alford selected defendant's photograph; he was certain he had not noticed the date on it prior to his selection.

Michel identified defendant at the trial. He testified that the identification was based both on his observations on the night of the robbery and on the photograph. Alford testified his identification of defendant at trial was based on having seen defendant on the night of the robbery, not on the photograph.

Defendant challenges the admissibility of the photograph as evidence, contending that it is fruit of an illegal arrest. He had been arrested on November 25, 1968, for violation of the Dangerous Weapons' Control Law (Pen.Code, § 12000 et seq.) after a cursory search revealed a .32 caliber automatic on his person. The photograph in issue was taken during the ensuing booking process. The court in the case at bar found the previous arrest to have been illegal and suppressed the gun, but refused to suppress the photograph, finding it was not 'incriminating in itself.' The People stipulated that for purposes of the section 1538.5 hearing the photograph 'was a result of (an) illegal arrest.'

Defendant contends that the use of the photograph to identify him was unlawful, and that the in-court identifications made by the witnesses were tainted by this use. The People maintain that exhibiting the picture to the witnesses and the testimony relating to the identification of the photograph by them were sufficiently remote and distinct from defendant's illegal arrest so as not to be tainted thereby.

In Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 487--488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 417, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, the United States Supreme

Court stated: 'We need not hold that all evidence is 'fruit of the poisonous tree' simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in such a case is 'whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.' (Citation.)' The court indicated (at p. 487, 83 S.Ct. at p. 417) that where 'the connection between the lawless conduct of the police and the discovery of the challenged evidence' is so attenuated as to dissipate the taint, such evidence is admissible.

This court, in accord with the foregoing principle decided Lockridge v. Superior Court (1970) 3 Cal.3d 166, 89 Cal.Rptr. 731, 474 P.2d 683. In that case, also involving a robbery, witnesses against the defendants became available as the result of tracing serial numbers on an illegally seized gun. The trial court suppressed the admission of the gun but allowed the testimony of the witnesses. There was no evidence that without the lead supplied by the gun, the police investigation would have connected the defendants with the robbery. 'Nevertheless,' we stated, 'we do not believe that the police connection of petitioners to the Pesce robbery through the illegal discovery of the gun is sufficient to characterize the Pesces' testimony as 'come at by exploitation of that illegality. '' (Lockridge v. Superior Court (1970) 3 Cal.3d at p. 170, 89 Cal.Rptr. at p. 734, 474 P.2d at p. 686.) The witnesses were already known to the police as the victims of an unsolved robbery, and the gun was found during the course of an investigation of totally unrelated crimes. We held it was 'pure happenstance' that defendants were connected with the robbery. ¹

In the present case we are confronted with circumstances comparable to Lockridge. It is not disputed that the identification of a photograph of defendant originally taken as a result of an illegal arrest led to his connection with the current robbery. As in Lockridge, however, the illegal arrest was in no way related to the crime with which defendant was ultimately charged. Indeed, two independent agencies were involved: the robbery was being investigated by Pasadena policemen, while Los Angeles authorities made the previous illegal arrest. The fact that a tenuous link was forged between the illegal arrest and the robbery is more clearly 'pure happenstance' in the case at bar than in Lockridge.

The taking of a photograph during the booking process is standard police procedure (Pen.Code, § 7, subd. 21), bearing no relationship to the purpose or validity of the arrest or detention. Commonly known as 'mug shots,' the photos are kept in permanent files regardless of the eventual disposition of the case; indeed, thousands of persons ultimately found to be entirely innocent undoubtedly have their photographs, as well as fingerprints, on record with law enforcement agencies. (See Newman, Retention and Dissemination of Arrest Records: Judicial Response (1971) 38 U.Chi.L.Rev. 850, 854; Herschel v. Dyra (7th Cir. 1966) 365 F.2d 17, 20, cert. den. 385 U.S. 973, 87 S.Ct. 513, 17 L.Ed.2d 436; Sterling v. City of Oakland (1962) 208 Cal.App.2d 1, 24 Cal.Rptr. 696.)

To hold that all such pictures resulting from illegal arrests are inadmissible forever because they are 'fruits of the poisonous tree' would not merely permit the criminal 'to go free because the constable has blundered' (Cardozo, J., in People v. Defore (1926) 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587) but would allow the criminal immunity because another constable in another jurisdiction in another case had blundered. It would in effect be giving a crime insurance policy in perpetuity to all persons once illegally arrested: if the photograph of a person obtained because of such an arrest becomes instrumental in the identification of that person for a crime committed many years later, it could be urged that But for the old illegal arrest the criminal would not have been identified. Rationally, however, a 'but for' relationship alone is insufficient to...