Case Name: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LORENZO CASTILLO, Defendant and Appellant
Court: Court of Appeal of the State of California
Jurisdiction: California
Decision Date: 1992-06-23
Citations: 7 Cal. App. 4th 836
Docket Number: No. B055247
Parties: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LORENZO CASTILLO, Defendant and Appellant.
Judges: 
Reporter: California Appellate Reports, Fourth Series
Volume: 7
Pages: 836–844

Head Matter:
[No. B055247.
Second Dist., Div. Six.
June 23, 1992.]
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LORENZO CASTILLO, Defendant and Appellant.
Counsel
Lauri K. Brown for Defendant and Appellant.
Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Donald E. de Nicola, and David F. Glassman, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Opinion:
Opinion
YEGAN, J.
Lorenzo Castillo was convicted by plea of possessing cocaine. (Health & Saf. Code, § 11350, subd. (a).) Prior thereto he unsuccessfully moved to suppress evidence pursuant to Penal Code section 1538.5. Probation was granted on certain terms and conditions including the service of 180 days in county jail. He appeals contending that the suppression motion was improperly denied. We disagee, affirm, and vacate the stay order of jail time.
We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the order denying suppression which is required by the familiar rule governing appellate review. (People v. Price (1991) 1 Cal.4th 324, 409 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 106, 821 P.2d 610]; People v. Renteria (1992) 2 Cal.App.4th 440, 442 [2 Cal.Rptr.2d 925].) Oxnard Police Officer Robert Camarillo, who had done approximately a dozen "bar checks" at the Terraza Casino Bar in Oxnard in the past, went there on December 6, 1989, to do another "bar check." At the hearing on the suppression motion, Camarillo twice expressly said he went to the Terraza Casino to do a "bar check" which he described as ". . . showing police presence. . . . We're looking for minors drinking, any other violation of the Business and Professions Code." He had been directed to do so by a superior on this later occasion because there was reason to believe that the Terraza Casino did not have an entertainment or dance permit.
Camarillo contacted appellant, the owner of the Terraza Casino whom he knew from prior "bar checks," and asked to see the entertainment or dance permit. Appellant said that it might be in the back office which was also used for liquor storage. Appellant went to look for the permit. Camarillo followed him, opened the office door notwithstanding appellant's attempt to close it, and saw appellant appear to give something to another man. Camarillo then saw narcotics paraphernalia in plain sight in the office, arrested appellant therefor, and discovered cocaine on his person at a subsequent booking search.
In denying the suppression motion, the trial court said: "I'm prepared to make the finding as a matter of law that when you are in the business of selling alcohol, you're fair game and nothing is sacred on the premises. . . . [ft I don't think you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in an office in an establishment that sells alcohol from the alcoholic beverage and control department [or] from peace officers. . [ft Well I'm prepared to make this finding, that one doesn't—one is not confined to a particular act when one is in the bar on a bar check. I don't think you can find [sic, confine] to the hat of an ABC person and I don't think you can find [sic, confine] to the hat of a policeman enforcing dance permits. I think you come in at all times wearing all of the hats that the law charges you with wearing. . [ft I think the law in California is clear that if you are lawfully on the premises, it matters not that you might be there for the wrong reason. . . . [I]f you're lawfully there and you make a seizure of something in plain view . . . [y]ou don't have a warrant and your discovery doesn't have to be inadvertent. . [ft So if he's an officer lawfully acting as an agent of the Alcohol Beverage Control Board in my view it doesn't matter how he got there provided that he has the authority to be in that office, and I think that's where this case is, and that's why I get back to the point that this case turns upon the point of the permissible inspection and whether there is any part of a business establishment that sells alcohol that's immune from inspection. . . ."
The trial court determined that People v. Paulson (1990) 216 Cal.App.3d 1480 [265 Cal.Rptr. 579] provided controlling authority and denied the motion to suppress. Substantial evidence supports the trial court's express and implied factual determinations. Using our independent judgment, we conclude that the trial court's legal determination was correct. (People v. Price, supra, 1 Cal.4th at p. 409.)
The dissent contends that Camarillo's sole purpose in going to the bar and its office was to verify compliance with a local ordinance requiring a dance permit. Even if this were true, the suppression motion was still properly denied. The trial court found Camarillo was wearing two hats at the bar. Camarillo's "bar check" hat allowed him to be in the office.
As we recently indicated in People v. Renteria, supra, 2 Cal.App.4th at page 444: "Police officers are not supposed to wear 'horse blinders.' " Wherever a police officer is, he or she is supposed to keep his or her eyes open for all violations of all laws. It was not unlawful for Camarillo to follow appellant to the office where the plain sight observation was made. When Camarillo's superior told him to do a "bar check" to see if there was a dance permit, the superior did not, ipso facto, put "horse blinders" on Camarillo. The dissent theory, carried to its logical end, puts those "horse blinders" on Camarillo's eyes rendering him a mere municipal code enforcement officer without power to follow appellant to the office.
Here, the suppression motion was properly denied because Camarillo could have lawfully followed appellant to do a "bar check." "[T]he fact that the officer does not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which provide the legal justification for the officer's action does not invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify that action." (Scott v. United States (1978) 436 U.S. 128, 138; [56 L.Ed.2d 168, 178, 98 S.Ct. 1717]; see also People v. Boissard (1992) 5 Cal.App.4th 972, 980, 984; People v. Loudermilk (1987) 195 Cal.App.3d 996, 1005 [241 Cal.Rptr. 208]; People v. Decker (1986) 176 Cal.App.3d 1247, 1250 [222 Cal.Rptr. 689]; People v. Le (1985) 169 Cal.App.3d 186, 193-195 [215 Cal.Rptr. 106].) This principle dictates that we affirm the trial court's order denying suppression. Given the factual determination that Camarillo was wearing two hats, one of which was his "bar check" hat, the rules which allow for an administrative search (see e.g., Bus. & Prof. Code, § 25755, subd. (b); People v. Paulson, supra, 216 Cal.App.3d 1408) made it objectively reasonable for him to be at any location in the bar, including the office/storage room.
Prior to the passage of Proposition 8, our California Supreme Court articulated the "subjective-objective" rule for determining whether a police officer's discovery of evidence could pass constitutional muster. For example, in the arrest context the court said: "Probable cause to arrest without a warrant represents an objective legal standard by which to measure the reasonableness and sufficiency of the officer's subjective beliefs that the defendant has committed an offense. [Citations.] '[U]nless it is first established that the police officer believed that the crime . . . had been committed by the [defendant], the issue of probable cause does not arise, for it would be a logical absurdity for the courts to be asked to determine the reasonableness of an officer's belief that [the] particular crime had been committed unless it were first established that the officer did entertain such a belief.' [Citation]." (People v. Miller (1972) 7 Cal.3d 219, 226 [101 Cal.Rptr. 860, 496 P.2d 1228].)
Proposition 8 eliminated the ". . . judicially created remedy for violations of the search and seizure provisions of the federal or state Constitutions, through the exclusion of evidence so obtained, except to the extent that exclusion remains federally compelled." (In re Lance W. (1985) 37 Cal.3d 873, 886-887 [210 Cal.Rptr. 631, 694 P.2d 744].) There is no "subjective-objective" rule in federal jurisprudence. (Scott v. United States, supra, 436 U.S. 128 [56 L.Ed.2d 168]; compare Brown v. Texas (1979) 443 U.S. 47, 51 [61 L.Ed.2d 357, 362, 99 S.Ct. 2637] [To justify a detention, ". . . we have required the officers to have a reasonable suspicion, based on objective facts, that the individual is involved in criminal activity. . . ."].) Camarillo's subjective thought process is not controlling pursuant to federal law as long as his actions were objectively reasonable. The suppression motion was properly denied.
The judgment (order granting probation) is affirmed. The stay order previously granted by the trial court is vacated.
Gilbert, J., concurred.
There is no reason for us to reexamine the legal analysis of administrative search rules. Presiding Justice Kline's opinion in People v. Paulson, supra, succinctly and correctly sets forth the salient rules with which we are in accord. (See id., at pp. 1487-1489.) It provides a complete answer to the dissent's analysis of the administrative search issues.
Business and Professions Code section 25755, subdivision (b), in pertinent part, provides: "[P]eace officers listed in Section 830.1 of the Penal Code, and those officers listed in 830.6 of the Penal Code while acting in the course and scope of their employment as peace officers may, in enforcing the provisions of this division, visit and inspect the premises of any licensee at any time during which the licensee is exercising the privileges authorized by his or her license on the premises."