People v. White
| Decision Date | 30 July 1986 |
| Citation | 228 Cal.Rptr. 672,183 Cal.App.3d 1199 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | In re Teddy Lee WHITE on Habeas Corpus. The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Teddy Lee WHITE, Defendant and Appellant. B018530, B013365. |
Arredondo & Mendoza and David Arredondo, for defendant and appellant on Habeas Corpus.
John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., and Norman H. Sokolow and Mark Alan Hart, Supervising Deputy Attys. Gen.
Appellant was convicted of rape. The primary issue on appeal relates to the admissibility of evidence obtained during a warrantless entry of appellant's home. We hold the entry was not justified under the "hot pursuit" doctrine and consequently reverse.
The prosecution's evidence established the following facts. Shortly after midnight on July 2, 1984, the eventual victim, Ms. C., and a girl friend were driving back from a party in a borrowed Cadillac. The car broke down. The girl friend decided to return to the party. Ms. C. elected to continue on home. She called her mother from a phone booth. She then walked to a bus stop to wait for her mother.
A few minutes later appellant Teddy Lee White drove up and asked Ms. C if she wanted a ride home. She declined and said her mother was picking her up. White left but then returned to a gas station at the same intersection. He walked over to Ms. C., grabbed her by the arm and threatened to kill her if she didn't enter his car. Ms. C. feared he had a gun, although she never saw one.
White drove Ms. C. to his home. He forced her out of the car and into the house. As they walked through the living room she saw two people asleep on couches. White and Ms. C. went to his bedroom at the rear of the house. He told her to take off her shoes and get comfortable. He would drop her off at her home in the morning. He then told her to join him in bed. She refused. This angered appellant. "Don't no woman get into my bedroom without getting into the bed with me." He pushed her onto the bed and began stripping her clothes off. He beat her, tried to smother her with a pillow, and threatened to kill her if she continued screaming. Eventually he succeeded in penetrating her.
After the sex act, appellant left the bed and started dressing. He instructed Ms. C. to remain in bed until he said she could get out. But she ignored him and put on her pants anyway. White unlocked a side door and told her to leave. Ms. C. grabbed her purse and jacket and took his invitation. She ran to appellant's car to obtain his license number. Before she could, however, appellant ran out. He chased her around some cars parked on the street. She started screaming. White told her to quiet down because of his neighbors. But she continued screaming. White gave up the chase, jumped in his car and drove away.
It was now between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning. Ms. C. walked to the nearest telephone booth and called the police. Officer Gray arrived at the phone booth at 6:45 A.M. Ms. C. was in bad shape. Her clothes were disheveled. Her face, mouth and jaw were swollen and dried blood covered a cut on her mouth. She told the officer she had been raped. She also gave him the address where the rape had taken place, described her assailant, and said the rapist had driven away in his car.
Officer Gray drove to appellant's residence. He did not see appellant's automobile there. The officer immediately walked to the front entrance of the house. Two young men came to the door and told him appellant had left. Nonetheless, Officer Gray ordered the young men out of the house and entered. He walked directly to the bedroom. He did not find the defendant there. But he did find blood-stained sheets matching the description Ms. C. had given. He also noted the room did not smell of PCP.
On August 6, 1984, the People filed an information charging appellant with forcible rape and kidnapping. White moved to suppress the sheets and Officer Gray's observations obtained during the warrantless entry of his home and bedroom. This motion was denied.
The case proceeded to jury trial on February 14, 1985. White testified in his own defense. 1 He claimed Ms. C. was already battered and disheveled when he picked her up at the bus stop. She said she had been in a fight with her boy friend. She voluntarily went to appellant's house and consented to have sex with him. After sex, Ms. C. lit up a PCP cigarette. He volunteered to take her home, but she wanted to stay in his house until he returned from work that evening. He didn't want her to remain in his house the rest of the day. He had to pull her from the house. This upset her. He gave up trying to persuade her to enter his car and drove away.
After the defense rested and while oral argument was underway White's lawyer finally located appellant's nephew. He was one of the two young men sleeping in the living room. He would have testified he heard no screaming from his uncle's bedroom indeed that he slept through whatever was happening in that room. White's trial counsel tried to obtain a stipulation from the prosecutor allowing him to put on this additional evidence. The People refused The jury returned its verdict on February 26--not guilty of kidnapping but guilty of forcible rape. White moved for new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence--the nephew. This motion was denied and sentence imposed on March 26, 1985. The trial court imposed the low term of three years. Appellant appealed on grounds his motion to suppress and his motion for new trial should have been granted. He also filed a habeas corpus alleging ineffective assistance of counsel.
however, and counsel failed to move to reopen.
The Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before entering a citizen's home. (See, e.g., Payton v. New York (1980) 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639; People v. Ramey (1976) 16 Cal.3d 263, 127 Cal.Rptr. 629, 545 P.2d 1333.) One of the few exceptions to this rule--and the one the trial court invoked in this case--is the so-called "hot pursuit" doctrine. As the term suggests, this exception dispenses with the warrant requirement when officers are chasing a suspect who is in active flight. The justification is that otherwise he might escape again while the police sit around waiting for the warrant to be issued.
In the archetypical situation the officers arrive at the scene of the crime as the suspect jumps in his car and speeds away. The officers pursue him in their own vehicle for several miles without losing track of him. The suspect finally pulls into a driveway and flees into a house. The officers pull in right behind him and chase after him into the house. They find him hiding in one of the rooms, place him under arrest, search him and find the stolen jewels. The jewels are admissible even though the officers entered the house without a warrant because they were in "hot pursuit" of a fleeing felon.
Entries of dwellings have been found to be in "hot pursuit" in California without fitting this archetype, however. Indeed we do not question the officers were in "hot pursuit" of White, as "hot pursuit" has been defined in the cases. In People v. Escudero (1979) 23 Cal.3d 800, 153 Cal.Rptr. 825, 592 P.2d 312; People v. Smith (1966) 63 Cal.2d 779, 48 Cal.Rptr. 382, 409 P.2d 222; and People v. Gilbert (1965) 63 Cal.2d 690, 47 Ca.Rptr. 909, 408 P.2d 365, revd. on other grounds (1967) 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178, the police learned of the suspect's probable route of flight from third party witnesses rather than by personally pursuing him from the scene of the crime. Here the victim was only a half-block away from the crime scene. Moreover, it was a half-hour to an hour after the crime's commission when she described the defendant and the officers took off after him. Only minutes later the officers arrived at and entered White's house. This is well within the life span of a "hot pursuit" as established by the California Supreme Court. For instance, in People v. Gilbert, supra, 63 Cal.2d 690, 47 Cal.Rptr. 909, 408 P.2d 365, about two-and-one-half hours elapsed between the crime and the entry. Still the Supreme Court upheld the entry as falling under the "hot pursuit" exception to the warrant requirement.
The issue here is not whether the officers were in hot pursuit of a criminal suspect but whether they could reasonably Appellant White argues officers must have a full measure of "probable cause" to believe a fleeing felon is actually in his house before they may enter in the same sense they must have probable cause to believe certain designated property is present before they may enter to search for evidence. We have found no support for this proposition in the case appellant cites, People v. Larry A. (1984) 154 Cal.App.3d 929, 201 Cal.Rptr. 696, nor in any other California opinion we have been able to locate. Nor, it should be added, have we found cases expressly holding officers can pursue a suspect into his home where they lack probable cause to believe he has fled.
have pursued him where they did. Here the same person who told the officers of the crime and described the suspect also told them he had driven away from his house. When they arrived his car had not returned. Moreover, when they knocked on the door, the officers were again told he had left and was not there. Still they persisted in...
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