Case Name: OSWALD DAWKINS, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Defendants and Appellants
Court: Supreme Court of California
Jurisdiction: California
Decision Date: 1978-09-15
Citations: 22 Cal. 3d 126
Docket Number: L.A. No. 30772
Parties: OSWALD DAWKINS, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Defendants and Appellants.
Judges: 
Reporter: California Reports
Volume: 22
Pages: 126–143

Head Matter:
[L.A. No. 30772.
Sept. 15, 1978.]
OSWALD DAWKINS, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES et al., Defendants and Appellants.
Counsel
Burt Pines, City Attorney, John T. Neville, Thomas C. Hokinson, Assistant City Attorneys, and Daniel U. Smith, Deputy City Attorney, for Defendants and Appellants.
D. Lowell Jensen, District Attorney (Alameda), John J. Meehan, Assistant District Attorney, William M. Baldwin and Wm. McKinstiy, Deputy District Attorneys, as Amici Curiae on behalf of Defendants and Appellants.
Godfrey Isaac and Lawrence Jay Kraines for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Opinion:
Opinion
MOSK, J.
Plaintiff brought an action against the City of Los Angeles and two of its police officers for false imprisonment and assault and battery. A jury found in his favor, and awarded him $100,000 in compensatory damages against the city and $5 against each police officer as punitive damages. On this appeal from the ensuing judgment, defendants contend that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that plaintiff was lawfully detained by the officers and that they had reasonable cause to arrest him. They assert also that the damages are excessive as a matter of law and that plaintiff's counsel was guilty of prejudicial misconduct during the course of the trial.
Plaintiff, a 44-year-old black male anesthesiologist, and an athlete, often jogged at night at the Los Angeles City College field, which was located a few blocks from the hospital where he was employed. The field was not lighted. While plaintiff was running on the track on April 17, 1973, about 10 p.m., a woman was assaulted in the vicinity of the athletic field by a black man. Plaintiff and two others who observed the events that evening testified at the trial.
Plaintiff testified that he heard a woman screaming, and walked in the direction of the sound. Near the steps leading to the track, he saw a black man assaulting a white woman. Plaintiff decided to intervene; as he approached the two, the assailant looked around, noticed plaintiff approaching, and walked down the stairs to the track and away from the scene. The victim, whose left side was injured, pulled herself up the stairs and out into the street above the track. Plaintiff sought to offer medical assistance, but she ignored his attempts to attract her attention and walked away. He then returned to the track and resumed jogging. His apparel consisted of a track jogging suit with blue pants and shirt, with a stripe down the sides of the pants, a dark windbreaker jacket, a yellow knit cap, and red track shoes with white side markings.
Another witness and friend of plaintiff, Morris Moses, arrived at the field during the altercation. As he parked his car on the street above the stairs leading to the track, he heard a woman screaming for help and observed a large black man assaulting a woman. The man dragged the woman down the stairs and continued the attack on a stair landing. After a few minutes, the assailant departed, proceeding down the stairs to the athletic field. Moses drove away, but returned to the track about five minutes later. A police car pulled up just as he arrived. Moses told the police that "the person who had committed the assault was down there" and he pointed to the track.
A third witness, known as Boom Boom Buttram, lived in an apartment building across the street from the field; he observed the assault from his window. He heard a woman screaming, and saw a muscular black man dragging her by the hair down the stairway leading to the field. He telephoned the police and reported the assault, and then proceeded to the street, arriving just as the victim staggered away. According to Buttram's testimony, when the police arrived, he told them that the suspect was "[d]own on the athletic field," but he did not point out plaintiff specifically as the suspect. He testified that he described the assailant to the police as a heavy black man five feet ten inches tall, wearing a dark woolen stocking roll-up type hat, a dark woolen pullover, probably a turtleneck, dark pants, and light sneakers or track shoes. He might have told the police that he had not taken his eyes off the assailant for a moment.
Officers Akesson and Ellington arrived at the scene about two minutes after they received a call on their car radio that a woman was being attacked near the Los Angeles City College track field. According to Akesson, Buttram told him that a black man had assaulted a girl on the sidewalk above the athletic field, had dragged her down the stairs leading to the field, and that the assailant was down on the field. Moses also told the police that the assailant was on the track. According to Akesson's testimony, he observed a man in running clothes on the track and Buttram pointed to the man and identified him as the assailant. Ellington testified that Buttram described the suspect as a male Negro approximately five feet ten inches in height, wearing dark athletic clothing. Akesson proceeded down the stairs and approached plaintiff. The evidence is in conflict as to what occurred thereafter.
According to plaintiff, about 15 minutes elapsed between the time he returned to the track and the police arrived. As he jogged over to greet Akesson, the officer said, "You have been pointed out." When plaintiff asked the reason, Akesson replied only, "come with me" and reached for plaintiff's elbow. Plaintiff did not attempt to run and did not raise his hand in anger, and he did not refuse to accompany the officer up to the street. Ellington then arrived at the scene, placed a hold over plaintiff's head and neck, twisting his head up in the air, and applied pressure to his vocal cords. Plaintiff attempted to pull Ellington's arm away; Ellington lowered plaintiff to the ground and hit him on the head and shoulder with his baton. Both officers kneeled on plaintiff's body. Ellington called plaintiff a "black son of a bitch" and said "this will teach you to attack white girls."
Plaintiff was handcuffed, dragged up the stairs, and over his protests that he was a doctor, placed in the police car. At the police station, plaintiff's spiked running shoes were removed, and Ellington "stomped" on his instep. Plaintiff was released on bail after about three hours.
The officers relate a different story. According to them, Akesson, who first approached plaintiff on the track, told him that he was investigating an assault which had occurred minutes earlier, and plaintiff had been pointed out as the assailant. Plaintiff replied that he had been running at the track all evening and did not know about any assault. Akesson asked plaintiff to accompany him to the top of the stairs to talk with witnesses to the attack, but plaintiff refused. He was then placed under arrest. As Akesson reached for plaintiff's arm, plaintiff jerked away and clenched his fist in a fighting stance.
At this point, Ellington arrived, and he also told plaintiff that he was under arrest. The officer reached for plaintiff's right arm, and as he did so, plaintiff lunged forward and broke free of his grasp. Ellington then applied a bar arm hold, placing the flat of his wrist along plaintiff's throat, and applying pressure. Plaintiff was lowered to the ground, and as he struggled in the officers' grasp, Ellington struck him on the left shoulder with his sap, a blow which may have glanced off plaintiff's head. Plaintiff was handcuffed and taken up the stairs to the police car. At the police station, he was booked for resisting a police officer in the discharge of his duties. (Pen. Code, § 148.) Ellington denied making the racial slurs attributed to him by plaintiff.
As a result of the incident, plaintiff suffered headaches and a backache. He had a cut on his left upper lip, and his voice was hoarse. His head and neck continued to hurt intermittently for three to six months, and he suffered psychological trauma. The medical expenses resulting from the altercation were $200.
The trial court instructed the jury on the standards applicable to their determination of the question whether the officers lawfully detained and arrested plaintiff. It refused an instruction offered by defendants that the detention was lawful and that the officers had reasonable cause to arrest plaintiff for assault. Defendants' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a new trial was denied.
In our view, the evidence establishes as a matter of law that the officers validly detained plaintiff for investigation and, therefore, an instruction to that effect should have been given. However, the trial court was correct in refusing to instruct that plaintiff's arrest for assault was justified.
A police officer may detain a suspect for questioning " 'when the circumstances indicate to a reasonable man in a like position that such a course of action is called for in the proper discharge of the officer's duties . The good faith suspicion which warrants an officer's detention of a person for investigative reasons is necessarily of a lesser standard than that required to effect an arrest . Where there is a rational belief of criminal activity with which the suspect is connected, a detention for reasonable investigative procedures infringes no constitutional restraint.' " (People v. Harris (1975) 15 Cal.3d 384, 388-389 [124 Cal.Rptr. 536, 540 P.2d 632]; People v. Flores (1974) 12 Cal.3d 85, 91 [115 Cal.Rptr. 225, 524 P.2d 353].)
Applying this test to the facts of the present case, there is no question that the officers had a rational belief that a criminal act had taken place, since they had been informed both on the police radio and by witnesses at the scene of the crime that an assault had occurred near the athletic field. Two eyewitnesses reported that the assailant was still on the athletic field at the time the officers arrived, and that he was a black man, one identifying him as being dressed in casual clothes and athletic shoes.
The only serious question relating to the validity of the detention is whether the discrepancy between the description of the clothing worn by the assailant, as related to Akesson by Buttram, and the clothes actually worn by plaintiff, was significant enough so that the officers could not have rationally assumed that plaintiff and the suspect were the same person. As we have seen, Buttram informed the officers that the assailant was wearing a dark woolen stocking roll-up type hat, a dark woolen pullover, probably a turtleneck, dark pants, and light sneakers or track shoes. In fact, plaintiff was wearing a yellow knit cap, a blue jogging suit with a stripe on the pants, a dark windbreaker, and red track shoes with white markings. However, the general type of athletic attire described by Buttram was not significantly dissimilar to the clothes worn by plaintiff. The field was unlighted, and the officers may have been unable to discern that plaintiff was wearing a yellow cap and red track shoes with white markings rather than a dark woolen cap and light track shoes. The fact that plaintiff and his athletic attire fit the general description given by eyewitnesses, who told the officers that the assailant was on the athletic field, justified the officers in believing, at least for the purpose of investigation, that plaintiff was the assailant; the sportswear color discrepancies urged by plaintiff were not sufficient to vitiate the reasonableness of the detention.
Plaintiff asserts that 15 minutes had elapsed between the time he returned to the athletic field after the assault and the arrival of the officers, and that this passage of time should have placed the officers on notice that plaintiff might not be the assailant. However, the validity of the detention must be tested by the knowledge which the officers had at that time, and they testified they arrived at the scene about two minutes after receiving the call on their car radio; they could reasonably assume that the assault had occurred only a short time prior to the call.
Under all the circumstances, whether the officers had a good faith rational belief that plaintiff might be the assailant should not have been a factual question for the jury. It was, therefore, error to refuse the instruction offered by defendants that under the law plaintiff was properly detained for questioning.
However, the trial court correctly refused to instruct the jury that the officers had reasonable cause to arrest plaintiff for assault likely to produce great bodily harm. Defendants assert that the evidence established as a matter of law that there was probable cause to arrest plaintiff for the assault and for violating section 148 of the Penal Code. They rely in this connection upon the knowledge gained by the officers from eyewitnesses to the assault and upon plaintiff's conduct after the officers arrived on the athletic field.
As we have seen, the eyewitnesses told the police that the assailant was on the athletic field and gave them a general description of the suspect and his attire which justified the police in detaining plaintiff for questioning. However, the evidence was in conflict on the question whether plaintiff himself was pointed out as the suspect. The police claim that Buttram identified plaintiff as the assailant, while Buttram denied that he did so. Moreover, there was a clear conflict in the evidence with regard to the events which occurred after the officers approached plaintiff.
We disagree with defendants' assertion that the jury was compelled to find in their favor on the issue of the lawfulness of the arrest because, according to plaintiff's own testimony, after one of the officers told him he had been "pointed out" and said "come with me," plaintiff asked why the request was made and what the charges were. We think it is obvious that these remarks cannot be said as a matter of law to amount either to suspicious conduct which could "transform an officer's suspicion into probable cause sufficient to support an arrest," in defendant's words, or probable cause to arrest for a violation of Penal Code section 148. Thus, the trial court correctly left the issue of the lawfulness of the arrest to the juiy.
Nevertheless, the judgment must be reversed. The error in refusing to instruct the juiy that the detention was lawful was prejudicial, for it is reasonably probable that a result more favorable to defendants would have been reached if the instruction had been given. (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 13; People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836 [299 P.2d 243].) The court's instructions made clear that the detention of plaintiff could be justified by circumstances falling short of probable cause for the arrest (fns. 3 and 4, ante, p. 132), but the juiy might nevertheless have determined that the detention was unlawful, and that therefore it followed without more that the arrest was also invalid. The lawfulness of the arrest was a critical issue; thus defendants were prejudiced by the court's error.
In view of our conclusion that the judgment must be reversed we are not required to consider defendants' claims that plaintiff's attorney was guilty of prejudicial misconduct and that the damages were excessive as a matter of law.
The judgment is reversed.
Clark, J., Richardson, J., and Newman, J., concurred.
Plaintiff testified that the man he observed weighed about 200 pounds, had a large "Afro" hair style, wore eyeglasses, and was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, a dark brown jacket with orange stripes, and ordinary street pants and shoes.
Section 148 provides: "Every person who wilfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer, in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his office, when no other punishment is prescribed, is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment."
The court told the jury: "You are instructed that every person who wilfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his office, commits a misdemeanor.
"The phrase 'in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his office,' as used in this instruction, includes the lawful detention of or the lawful attempt to detain a person for questioning or investigation by a peace officer.
"A police officer is [a peace officer and as such is] a public officer within the meaning of this instruction.
"A peace officer may lawfully detain and question a person when the circumstances are such as would indicate to a reasonable man in a like position that such a course of conduct is necessary to the proper discharge of his duties.
"Temporary detention for questioning permits reasonable investigation, without the necessity of making an arrest. Although peace officers have the power to detain and question, there must be probable or reasonable cause to detain. Probable or reasonable cause to detain requires that there be some unusual or suspicious circumstance, or other demonstrable reason, warranting the investigation. Time, location, number of people, demeanor and conduct of a suspect, a recently reported crime, and the gravity of the crime, are among the factors that you may consider.
"The general grounds for a reasonable detention are:
"(1) There must be a rational suspicion by the peace officer that some activity out of the ordinary is taking place or has taken place;
"(2) Some indication must exist to connect the person under suspicion with the unusual activity; and
"(3) There must be some suggestion that the activity is related to a crime."
The instruction was as follows: "You are instructed that a lawful arrest may be made by a peace officer without a warrant whenever he has reasonable cause to believe that the person arrested has committed a felony whether or not a felony has in fact been committed. A peace officer may also make an arrest without a warrant whenever he has reasonable cause to believe that the person arrested has committed a misdemeanor in his presence. The term 'reasonable cause' as used in these instructions mean[s] . . . such a state of fact[s] or circumstances confronting the officer at the time of the arrest as would lead a man of ordinary caution and prudence to believe and conscientiously entertain a strong suspicion that the person arrested had committed a felony or a misdemeanor in his presence."
There is some confusion in the evidence as to whether another person was jogging on the track at the time these events occurred. According to plaintiff, he was the only person on the track at the time in question. However, Officer Akesson had a vague recollection that someone else was running halfway down the track. He made no attempt to question the other jogger, and could not recall how he was dressed. Even if there was in fact another runner on the track, this would not render plaintiff's detention unlawful. At most, it would have provided justification for also questioning the second runner about the assault.