People v. Superior Court

• Decision Date: 31 December 1970
• Citation: 3 Cal.3d 807,91 Cal.Rptr. 729,478 P.2d 449,45 A.L.R.3d 559
• Parties: , 478 P.2d 449, 45 A.L.R.3d 559 The PEOPLE, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF YOLO COUNTY, Respondent; Martell Dean KIEFER et al., Real Parties in Interest. Sac. 7859.
• Court: California Supreme Court

Page 729

91 Cal.Rptr. 729

3 Cal.3d 807, 478 P.2d 449, 45 A.L.R.3d 559

The PEOPLE, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF YOLO COUNTY, Respondent Martell Dean KIEFER et al., Real Parties in Interest.

Sac. 7859.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

Dec. 31, 1970.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., Edsel W. Haws and Elliott D. McCarty, Deputy Attys. Gen., for petitioner.

No appearance for respondent.

Michael Stepanian and Sherman Ellison, San Francisco, for real parties in interest.

MOSK, Justice.

Defendants (real parties in interest herein) were charged by information with unlawful possession and transportation of marijuana. (Health & Saf.Code, §§ 11530, 11531.) Their motion to suppress the evidence on the ground of illegal search and seizure was granted, and the People seek review by statutory writ of mandate. (Pen.Code, § 1538.5, subd. (o).)

The sole witness testifying to the events in question was the arresting officer, Sergeant Cameron of the California Highway Patrol. Approximately 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning Officer Cameron was on duty in his marked patrol car on Interstate Highway 5 in Yolo County, when he observed a 1960 Pontiac automobile being driven southbound at a high rate of speed. He gave chase, and switched on his red emergency light for the purpose of bringing the car to a halt. The driver immediately began to pull over to the side of the road. At this point Officer Cameron saw a woman's head rise from the passenger portion of the front seat; she turned and put her arm over the back of the seat, then faced forward again, bent down toward the floor, and reassumed a normal sitting position. The driver of the Pontiac, defendant Martell Kiefer, alighted first and walked toward Officer Cameron. The officer told Mr. Kiefer why he had stopped him, and the latter readily acknowledged he had been speeding and produced his driver's license.

Officer Cameron then approached the passenger side of the Pontiac. The female occupant, defendant Patricia Kiefer, remained sitting in the front seat with the window rolled up. Officer Cameron made no attempt to communicate with Mrs. Kiefer but immediately opened the car door next to her and looked inside. As he later testified, 'My purpose was * * * several. One was to talk to the passenger and see what had been hidden and I was also concerned about my own safety.'

Upon opening the door, Officer Cameron saw 'some green-looking stems' lying on the floor mat between the seat and the door, and 'several round seeds' in the crack of the seat cushion. Believing the latter to be marijuana, he ordered Mrs. Kiefer to step out and undertook a thorough search of defendants' car. Additional small quantities of marijuana were found in the glove compartment and in Mrs. Kiefer's purse.

The controlling issue in this proceeding is whether in the circumstances shown Officer Cameron's act of opening the door of defendants' car and looking inside was an unreasonable search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We conclude that the question must be answered in the affirmative, and that the trial court correctly granted defendants' motion to suppress.

I

It was stipulated at the suppression hearing that Officer Cameron did not have a warrant to search defendants' car; the burden to show proper justification for the search, accordingly, rested on the prosecution. (Badillo v. Superior Court (1956) 46 Cal.2d 269, 272, 294 P.2d 23.)

Having determined that defendants' car was being driven in excess of the posted speed limit, Officer Cameron had probable cause to stop the vehicle and arrest its driver for committing a misdemeanor in his presence. (Pen.Code, § 836, subd. 1.) ¹ That fact alone, however, would not have justified a search of the vehicle as an 'incident' to the traffic arrest. (People v. Blodgett (1956) 46 Cal.2d 114, 116, 293 P.2d 57; cf. People v. Weitzer (1969) supra, 269 Cal.App.2d 274, 290, 75 Cal.Rptr. 318, and cases cited.) The latter rule has been more often stated than explained, and an analysis of its origin may prove instructive.

It is now settled that as an incident to a lawful arrest, a warrantless search limited both as to time (Preston v. United States (1964) 376 U.S. 364, 367--368, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777) and place (Chimel v. California (1969) 395 U.S. 752, 762--763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685) may be made (1) for instrumentalities used to commit the crime, the fruits of that crime, and other evidence thereof which will aid in the apprehension or conviction of the criminal; (2) for articles the possession of which is itself unlawful, such as contraband or goods known to be stolen; and (3) for weapons which can be used to assault the arresting officer or to effect an escape. (See generally Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden (1967) 387 U.S. 294, 300--310, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782.)

In the case at bar we may quickly exclude the first of these three categories. Inasmuch as the 'instrumentality' used to commit the offense of speeding is, if anything, the automobile itself, a search of any portion of its Interior cannot be justified on this ground. (Grundstrom v. Beto (N.D.Tex.1967) 273 F.Supp. 912, 916.) Moreover, there are no 'fruits' of such an offense, and the 'evidence' thereof is not subject to search and seizure as it consists essentially of the arresting officer's own observations and records. (United States v. Tate (D.Del.1962) 209 F.Supp. 762, 765.) ²

II

Turning to the second of the above categories, we confront initially a more difficult question: If a police officer is ordinarily entitled to conduct a search for contraband as an incident to a lawful arrest, why has this rule been held inapplicable to routine traffic violations? When the officer, as here, has probable cause to arrest a driver for committing a traffic offense in his presence, why may he not search the offender's vehicle for contraband as an incident to that arrest? The answer deducible from the cases is that even when limited as required by Preston and Chimel, a search incident to an arrest must nevertheless remain 'reasonable in scope.' (People v. Cruz (1964) 61 Cal.2d 861, 866, 40 Cal.Rptr. 841, 395 P.2d 889.) As Justice White remarked in his dissent in Chimel, 'The (Fourth) Amendment does not proscribe 'warrantless searches' but instead it proscribes 'unreasonable searches" (395 U.S. at pp. 772--773, 89 S.Ct. at p. 2045). A search, therefore, 'may be unreasonable and hence unlawful although incident to a lawful arrest.' (People v. Brown (1955) 45 Cal.2d 640, 643, 290 P.2d 528, 530, and cases cited.) 'What is the test of reason which makes a search reasonable? The test is the reason underlying and expressed by the Fourth Amendment: the history and the experience which it embodies and the safeguards afforded by it against the evils to which it was a response.' (Chimel v. California (1969) supra, 395 U.S. 752, 765, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2041, 23 L.Ed.2d 685, quoting from United States v. Rabinowitz (1950) 339 U.S. 56, 83, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653 (dissenting opinion of Frankfurter, J.).) The principal evil sought to be forestalled, of course, is the invasion of individual privacy by wholesale exploratory searches conducted under color of governmental authority. (Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden (1967) supra, 387 U.S. 294, 301, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782, and cases cited.) For this reason, 'The scope of the search must be 'strictly tied to and justified by' the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.' (Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1, 19, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1878, 20 L.Ed.2d 889; accord, People v. Collins (1970) 1 Cal.3d 658, 661, 83 Cal.Rptr. 179, 463 P.2d 403.)

These rules govern the search of automobiles. In Preston v. United States (1964) supra, 376 U.S. 364, 368, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777, the defendants were arrested in their car on a charge of vagrancy, and a warrantless search thereof at a different time and place was held to be unreasonable. For the purposes of that opinion, the high court 'assumed' there could be fruits or implements of the crime of vagrancy. In Chambers v. Maroney (1970) 399 U.S. 42, 47, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 1979, 26 L.Ed.2d 419, however, the court acknowledged that in Preston 'the arrest was for vagrancy; it was apparent that the officers had no cause to believe that evidence of crime was concealed in the auto.' By contrast, in Chambers the police received a report of an armed robbery of a service station; eyewitnesses furnished detailed descriptions of the articles stolen, the garb and weapons of the robbers, and the appearance of the getaway car; and shortly thereafter the defendants were arrested in a vehicle precisely matching that description. Upholding on grounds of probable cause a delayed search of the automobile at the police station, the court noted that although the officers had probable cause for their warrantless arrest of the defendant, 'the validity of an arrest is not necessarily determinative of the right to search a car if there is probable cause to make the search. Here, as will be true in many cases, the circumstances justifying the arrest are also those furnishing probable cause for the search.' (399 U.S. at p. 47, fn. 6, 90 S.Ct. at p. 1779.)

The contrary situation is presented, however, in the typical traffic violation case: there, the 'circumstances justifying the arrest'--e.g., speeding, failing to stop, illegal turn, or defective lights--do Not also furnish probable cause to search the interior of the car. In Chambers the arresting officers could reasonably expect to find weapons, clothing, loot, or other evidence of the robbery in the specifically identified vehicle in which the defendants were arrested; it was not unreasonable, therefore, to conduct a search for such items, and if contraband had been uncovered in the course of that search it could have been lawfully seized. But the arresting officer in a routine traffic case, as noted above,...