People v. Tovar
| Decision Date | 26 January 1966 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 11200 |
| Citation | 239 Cal.App.2d 644,49 Cal.Rptr. 79 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Richard TOVAR, Defendant and Appellant. |
Elinor Chandler Duncan, Los Angeles, Cal., for defendant and appellant.
Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., and Raymond Momboisse, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.
Defendant was charged, in two counts, with possession of marijuana (Health & Saf. Code, § 11530), and sale of marijuana (Health & Saf. Code, § 11531). A motion to dismiss, under section 995 of the Penal Code was made and denied. Defendant pled not guilty and, after a trial to the court (jury trial having been duly waived) he was found guilty; a motion for new trial was made and denied; probation was denied; and defendant was ordered committed to the Youth Authority. He has appealed.
The police were engaged in investigating sales of narcotics at and near Belmont High School, in the City of Los Angeles. They had arranged with the vice principal of the school, Mr. Condit, that Officer Tawes would act as an undercover operative, seeking to identify peddlers; that Officer Tawes would give to Mr. Condit any information thus secured and that Mr. Condit would relay that information to Sergeant Zappey. During the course of this investigation, Officer Tawes had several transactions with a student named Darrell Mitchell, in the course of which Mitchell sold Tawes marijuana cigarettes, and, in conversations, told the officer that his source of supply was a fat Mexican named Tovar, who employed Mitchell to sell Marijuana to students for a commission.
On the morning of November 17, 1964, Mitchell approached Tawes with an offer to sell more marijuana. Tawes arranged to meet Mitchell and make the purchase after school that afternoon. Tawes notified Condit of this arrangement and Condit passed the information along to Sergeant Zappey. On orders from the latter, other officers came to the school and arrested Mitchell, who was found to be in possession of a quantity of marijuana. Under interrogation, 1 Mitchell told the officers that he had obtained the marijuana from Tovar, pointed out the place where Mitchell believed Tovar lived, and told them that Tovar usually caught a morning bus at the intersection of Beverly Boulevard and Park View. At 7:45 a. m. the next morning the officers arrested Tovar at this intersection, took him to the police station, where a search of his person disclosed him to be in possession of a plastic sack containing marijuana cigarettes.
Defendant contends that his conviction was based on evidence illegally obtained, urging that both the arrest of Mitchell and that of Tovar were made without reasonable cause.
The arrest of Mitchell was entirely lawful. The arresting officers acted on information received by them from fellow officers, the foundation of which was the personal information of Officer Tawes as to his prior dealings with Mitchell and Mitchell's statements made to the officer on the morning of the arrest. Defendant contends that the official chain was broken because the data from Officer Tawes passed through Mr. Condit on its way to Sergeant Zappey. But Mr. Condit was a known and reliable person, holding an official status of respect and responsibility. The reasonableness of Mitchell's arrest and the propriety of using information thereby secured is obvious.
But the arrest of Tovar stands on a different basis. The only information tending to connect Tovar with the sales at Belmont was the information given the officers by Mitchell--an informant whose reliability was untested and who had given that information under circumstances not overly conducive to credibility. The Attorney General argues that the officers had other, and independent, information that Tovar was engaged in the narcotic traffic. However, under examination, the officers involved could point to only one specific basis for such suspicion--a juvenile court petition filed and thereafter dismissed. Otherwise, the officers had only 'conversations' with other officers who had said that 'Tovar was involved in narcotics.' We do not regard this as aiding in the search for probable cause. No officer, anywhere along the unidentified chain of communication, was said to have known, of his own knowledge, that Tovar had been discovered in any involvement with narcotics, except for one...
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People v. Sandoval
...officers in other analogous cases (see e.g., People v. Gallegos (1964) 62 Cal.2d 176, 41 Cal.Rptr. 590, 397 P.2d 174; People v. Tovar (1966) 239 A.C.A. 709, 49 Cal.Rptr. 79; Ovalle v. Superior Court (1962) 202 Cal.App.2d 760, 21 Cal.Rptr. 385; People v. Amos (1960) 181 Cal.App.2d 506, 5 Cal......
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Pollock v. Superior Court for Los Angeles County
...62 Cal.2d 176, 179, 41 Cal.Rptr. 590, 397 P.2d 174; People v. Amos, 181 Cal.App.2d 506, 509, 5 Cal.Rptr. 451; People v. Tovar, 239 Cal.App.2d 644, 647--648, 49 Cal.Rptr. 79.) Such independent evidence must corroborate "the essential fact, as to whether (the defendant was) now violating the ......
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People v. Lopez
... ... Defendant relies upon cases in which the informer was known to the police only as a narcotics informant, or a person who was himself involved in the narcotics traffic. (See, e.g., People v. Gallegos (1964) 62 Cal.2d 176, 179, 41 Cal.Rptr. 590, 397 P.2d 174; People v. Tovar (1966) 239 Cal.App.2d 644, 646, 49 Cal.Rptr ... 79; People v. Cedeno (1963) 218 Cal.App.2d 213, 219, 32 Cal.Rptr. 246.) ... There is no precise formula for determining cause to arrest ... 'To constitute probable cause for arrest, a state of facts must be known to the officer ... ...
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People v. Sandoval
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