People v. Ramirez

• Decision Date: 06 September 1983
• Docket Number: Cr. 22489
• Citation: 668 P.2d 761,194 Cal.Rptr. 454,34 Cal.3d 541
• Parties: , 668 P.2d 761 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Raul RAMIREZ, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

Page 454

194 Cal.Rptr. 454

34 Cal.3d 541, 668 P.2d 761

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Raul RAMIREZ, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 22489.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

Sept. 6, 1983.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 6, 1983.

Donald L.A. Kerson, Deputy State Public Defender, Los Angeles, for defendant and appellant.

Timothy E. Cary, Deputy Atty. Gen., Los Angeles, for plaintiff and respondent.

MOSK, Justice.

Defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him of possession of phencyclidine (PCP). He challenges a ruling denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained during a booking search on the grounds that he was first unlawfully detained and subsequently arrested on a warrant that had been recalled. We find the latter contention meritorious, and therefore reverse the judgment.

On May 29, 1980, at 12:45 a.m., Officer Gary Brown of the Montebello Police Department was patrolling a business district in Los Angeles when he saw two men, defendant and his friend, standing in front of a closed tire store. The store was recessed some 50 feet from the sidewalk, with a parking lot in between. Brown was aware there had been numerous burglaries and breaking of windows in the area, and knew that the tire store itself had recently been vandalized.

The officer was suspicious that the two men were "up to something." He approached in his patrol car, got out, and asked what they were doing. They replied they were hungry and were looking for a hamburger stand. Brown told them that the nearest place to eat was about six blocks away. One of the men replied they had just been there but had found the establishment closed; however, Brown believed the stand was open.

Thereupon the officer further questioned the two men and asked them to identify themselves. They complied by giving their names and addresses; they were not asked to produce written identification. Brown also conducted a pat-down frisk for weapons. He found none on either man, nor any rocks or other objects that might be used to break windows or to commit a burglary; nevertheless, he further detained the men while he radioed for a warrant check through the police computer system.

The officer was informed that the computer had revealed an outstanding bench warrant for defendant's arrest for possession of PCP. Although Brown believed the warrant was valid, subsequent inquiry revealed that it had been recalled some six months earlier, in November 1979. He released defendant's companion, arrested defendant on the warrant, and transported him to jail. During a booking search he discovered a tinfoil bindle containing PCP.

Defendant pleaded not guilty and moved to suppress the evidence seized during the booking search. (Pen.Code, § 1538.5.) The motion was denied. He then negotiated a plea of guilty to a misdemeanor violation of section 11377, subdivision (a), of the Health and Safety Code and was placed on three years' probation, the first ninety days to be spent in the county jail. On appeal he challenges the denial of his motion to suppress. (Pen.Code, § 1538.5, subd. (m).)

Defendant first contends that his arrest and subsequent booking search were unlawful because the warrant on which Officer Brown relied had been recalled several months earlier, and because no independent probable cause existed to arrest him. He urges us to reject the People's argument that Brown's good faith reliance on information communicated to him through "official channels" should validate the arrest and search. Because we agree with defendant that his arrest was unlawful, we hold that the fruits of the booking search should have been suppressed.

We begin by examining analagous federal authority. In Whiteley v. Warden (1971) 401 U.S. 560, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306, a Wyoming magistrate issued an arrest warrant based on a complaint that failed to demonstrate probable cause for arrest, but that instead "consis[ted] of nothing more than the complainant's conclusion that the individuals named therein perpetrated the offense described in the complaint." (Id. at p. 565, 91 S.Ct. at p. 1035.) The warrant information was transmitted over a statewide radio network, received by a county sheriff's office, and communicated to a local police department. In reliance on the information in the radio communication, a patrolman arrested Whiteley and in an ensuing search seized several items introduced into evidence at trial.

In the subsequent habeas corpus proceeding the state argued that regardless of the sufficiency of the complaint to support the issuance of a warrant, the arrest and search should be upheld because the patrolman acted in reliance on the radio bulletin and reasonably assumed that whoever authorized the bulletin had probable cause to direct Whiteley's arrest. (Id. at p. 568, 91 S.Ct. at p. 1037.) Recognizing that the field officer had acted in good faith, the United States Supreme Court nonetheless invalidated the arrest and search: "We do not, of course, question that the Laramie police were entitled to act on the strength of the radio bulletin. Certainly police officers called upon to aid other officers in executing arrest warrants are entitled to assume that the officers requesting aid offered the magistrate the information requisite to support an independent judicial assessment of probable cause. Where, however, the contrary turns out to be true, an otherwise illegal arrest cannot be insulated from challenge by the decision of the instigating officer to rely on fellow officers to make the arrest." (Ibid.) Thus "Whiteley teaches that probable cause for arrest is not conclusively established by a police communication asking that the arrest be made, for otherwise such a communication would allow the police to make seizures without the grounds required under the Fourth Amendment." (1 LaFave, Search and Seizure (1978) § 3.5(b), pp. 629-630.)

In United States v. Mackey (D.Nev.1975) 387 F.Supp. 1121, a case factually more akin to the situation before us, the defendant was arrested in Nevada on a California warrant that had been satisfied five months earlier. The search incident thereto produced an unregistered firearm. The federal district court held the arrest and search invalid on due process grounds: "The Court finds that a computer inaccuracy of this nature and duration, even if unintended, amounted to a capricious disregard for the rights of the defendant as a citizen of the United States.... Once the warrant was satisfied, five months before defendant's arrest, there no longer existed any basis for his detention, and the Government may not now profit by its own lack of responsibility." (Id. at p. 1125.) The court stressed that because the erroneous warrant information was recorded in the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) computer network, "defendant was a 'marked man' for the five months prior to his arrest, and, had this particular identification check not occurred, he would have continued in this status into the indefinite future.... Moreover, this could happen anywhere in the United States where law enforcement officers had access to NCIC information. Defendant was subject to being deprived of his liberty at any time and without any legal basis." (Id. at p. 1124.)

In the case at bar defendant's arrest is invalid because it was based on the communication of erroneous information to the arresting officer, albeit through "official channels." The fact that the officer acted in good faith reliance on the communication does not magically resuscitate a recalled warrant and, phoenix-like, recreate a valid outstanding document. At the time defendant was arrested there was in fact no warrant in his name and Officer Brown had no independent cause to detain him; thus the arrest was made without probable cause and cannot be sustained. "The point is not that probable cause [was] lacking because it turned out that the 'facts' upon which the officer acted were actually not true, for quite clearly information sufficient to establish probable cause is not defeated by an after-the-fact showing that this information was false .... Rather, the point is that the police may not rely upon incorrect or incomplete information when they are at fault in permitting the records to remain uncorrected." (LaFave, op. cit. supra, at p. 636, italics in original.)

The People urge that Michigan v. DeFillippo (1979) 443 U.S. 31, 99 S.Ct. 2627, 61 L.Ed.2d 343, dictates a contrary result. There the defendant was arrested under a Detroit vagrancy ordinance that provided, inter alia, that it was unlawful for any person stopped by the police for investigation to refuse to identify himself and produce evidence of his identity. The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress the evidence found in the search; it held the ordinance unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court reversed on the ground that an arrest made in good faith reliance on an ordinance subsequently declared to be unconstitutional is made with probable cause and is valid. (Id. at p. 37, 99 S.Ct. at p. 2632.) The court focused on the obligations of the arresting officer and on the role of the police more generally: "At [the] time [of the arrest], of course, there was no controlling precedent that this ordinance was or was not constitutional, and hence the conduct observed violated a presumptively valid ordinance. A prudent officer ... should not have been required to anticipate that a court would later hold the ordinance unconstitutional. [p] Police are charged to enforce laws until and unless they are declared unconstitutional.... Society would be ill-served if its police officers took it upon themselves to determine which laws are and which are not constitutionally entitled to enforcement." (Id. at pp. 37-38, 99 S.Ct. at p. 2632.)

The case before us is distinguishable. The arrest in DeFillippo, for violation of an ordinance subsequently held to be...