People v. Superior Court (Stroud)

• Decision Date: 11 March 1974
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of California FOR the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Respondent; Jerry Eugene STROUD and John Robert Walker, Real Parties in Interest. Civ. 43013.

Page 764

112 Cal.Rptr. 764

37 Cal.App.3d 836

The PEOPLE, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of California FOR the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Respondent Jerry Eugene STROUD and John Robert Walker, Real Parties in Interest.

Civ. 43013.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 4, California.

March 11, 1974.

Rehearing Denied March 27, 1974.

Hearing Denied May 8, 1974.

Robert F. Johnson, Van Nuys, for real party in interest, Jerry Eugene stroud.

Richard S. Buckley, Public Defender, Harold E. Shabo, Gerald E. Peterson and Richard A. Curtis, Deputy Public Defenders, for real party in interest John Robert Walker.

Joseph P. Busch, Dist. Atty., Donald J. Kaplan, Deputy Dist. Atty., for petitioner.

No appearance for respondent.

FILES, Presiding Justice.

This original proceeding was brought here to review an order of the superior court suppressing as evidence certain stolen automobile parts and the observations of police officers made from a helicopter and from a neighbor's yard. The superior court accepted the officers' testimony as true, but concluded that their conduct amounted to an unlawful search under the principles discussed in Lorenzana v. Superior Court (1973) 9 Cal.3d 626, 108 Cal.Rptr. 585, 511 P.2d 33, and People v. Sneed (1973) 32 Cal.App.3d 535, 108 Cal.Rptr. 146.

In the early afternoon of January 17, 1973, Los Angeles police officers Johnson and Miller received a report that a stolen automobile had been found in a parking lot in the Canoga Park area in the San Fernando Valley. While they were engaged in impounding that vehicle (a 1963 Chevrolet) they noticed on the street a 1956 Chevrolet which had been stripped of its doors, trunk lid, hood, fenders, grill work and seats. By telephone and radio, they learned that the 1956 Chevrolet had been reported stolen, and that its hood was red and the trunk lid white. The officers concluded that the vehicle could not have been driven far after it had been stripped. By radio, they called a police helicopter which was then patrolling about four miles away, and described the missing trunk lid and hood. The helicopter flew over the area at an altitude of about 500 feet and at a speed of about 30 miles per hour. In the backyard of a home on Loma Verde Street a few blocks from the location of the stripped vehicle Officer Royval, in the helicopter, saw what appeared to be the missing parts. A different 1956 Chevrolet parked in front first brought his attention to that residence. As the helicopter circled the yard on a radius of about 500 feet, Officer Royval looked down with his naked eye and through 20 power gyrostabilized binoculars. He recognized a white hood and a red trunk lid from a 1956 Chevrolet, among other automobile parts in the yard. At no time did the helicopter hover directly over the yard. The area observed was a part of the normal patrol area of this helicopter unit. Officer Royval radioed his observations to the investigating officers on the ground.

Officers Johnson and Miller then proceeded to the Loma Verde address. The rear yard, in which the auto parts had been seen from the air, was surrounded by a five-foot fence which could not be seen through. They walked across the front lawn of the adjacent residence to a point about 30 feet from the street, where they were able to see over the fence and observe the auto body parts there. ¹ Officer Miller is six feet tall. The auto body parts observed included a seat, a front end, a trunk lid, and a hood.

The officers then went to the door of the house where the auto parts were found and questioned the occupants. Defendant Stroud, who was asleep in the house when the officers arrived, stated that he and his wife had been away the previous day and he didn't know anything about the auto parts in the rear yard. After that the officers entered the backyard for a closer inspection of the auto parts.

We have concluded that upon this evidence, there can be no finding that defendants enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy for the storage of stolen auto body parts in this backyard. Lorenzana and Sneed are distinguishable on their facts.

Patrol by police helicopter has been a part of the protection afforded the citizens of the Los Angeles metropolitan area for some time. The observations made from the air in this case must be regarded as routine. An article as conspicuous and readily identifiable as an automobile hood in a residential yard hardly can be regarded as hidden from such a view. Our conclusion here is supported by the reasoning and decision in Dean v. Superior Court (1973) 35 Cal.App.3d 112, 110 Cal.Rptr. 585, upholding an aerial observation of a field of marijuana plants.

People v. Sneed, Supra, 32 Cal.App.3d 535, 108 Cal.Rptr. 146, involved two marijuana plants found growing in a corral on a ranch in a rural area of Merced County. Acting upon a tip that there was marijuana somewhere on that ranch, a deputy sheriff set out to survey the entire ranch in a helicopter, and finally found the contraband plants by hovering over the corral at a height of 20 to 25 feet. It does not appear that this area was the subject of a regular air patrol for the safety and protection of the inhabitants and their property. Indeed, the opinion points out that there was no evidence that any crop-dusting planes or mosquito-abatement helicopters had ever been over the area. It is not necessary to belabor the difference between the investigation conducted in Sneed and that shown by the evidence in the case at bench.

The observation made by the officers looking over the...