Opinion ID: 2632374
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: Defendant Norman J. Dolly was convicted after a jury trial of being a felon in possession of a firearm and, after a bench trial, was found to have suffered a prior strike conviction within the meaning of the three strikes law. He was sentenced to four years in prison. The court also found defendant had violated probation and sentenced him to a consecutive eight-month term. In this appeal, defendant challenges the denial of his motion to suppress the firearm and all statements he made concerning the firearm. The evidence at the hearing on the suppression motion revealed the following: At 3:16 p.m. on April 17, 2002, an unidentified man placed a call to 911. The call was received by the California Highway Patrol and then transferred to the Los Angeles Police Department. The caller reported that a light-skinned African-American male had just pulled a gun on him and had mentioned a gang name. The caller said he felt the perpetrator was gonna shoot me right there at that minute. According to the caller, the perpetrator had a bandage over his left hand, as though it had been broken, and was in the driver's seat of a gray Nissan Maxima parked on the north side of Jefferson Boulevard at Ninth Avenue, near the recycling center. When asked whether he wanted to talk to the police when they arrived, the caller said, No, no, I don't. I sure don't. Because if they find out I'm snitching, they're going to kill me around here. The call ended at 3:18 p.m. At 3:20 p.m., the tipster-victim made a second call to 911. Identifying himself as Drew, he said that he had just driven by the Nissan Maxima again and wanted to correct his description of the vehicle. It was black, not gray. Around 3:20 p.m., Los Angeles Police Officer Frank Dominguez and his partner, Officer Goldstein, received a radio call about a man with a gun at Jefferson Boulevard and Ninth Avenue. The perpetrator was described as a light-skinned African-American male with a cast on his arm, in a possibly gray Nissan Maxima on the north side of Jefferson, and was said to have threatened the 911 caller with a gun. Two or three minutes later, the officers arrived at the scene and spotted a black Nissan Maxima parked on the north side of Jefferson, just east of Ninth. There were three people in the car. Defendant, who was sitting in the driver's seat, matched the description provided in the radio dispatch. He also had a cast on his left arm. Officer Dominguez ordered defendant to exit the vehicle and lie down in the street with his hands at his side. He also ordered the two passengers out of the vehicle. Neither of them was wearing a cast. A loaded .38-caliber blue steel revolver was found underneath the front passenger seat. (At trial, Detective Delicia Hernandez testified that defendant, during a post-arrest interview, had admitted owning and possessing the revolver.) Following the hearing, the superior court denied the motion to suppress, finding (1) that defendant's Fourth Amendment rights were not implicated because he was on probation subject to a search condition, and (2) that the officers had reasonable suspicion defendant had committed a firearms offense before effecting the stop. A divided panel of the Court of Appeal affirmed in an opinion published in part. The panel ruled first that the detention and search could not be justified by the probation search condition since the responding officers were not aware of [defendant's probation status or condition, citing People v. Hester (2004) 119 Cal. App.4th 376, 402-405, 14 Cal.Rptr.3d 377, and People v. Bowers (2004) 117 Cal. App.4th 1261, 1270-1271, 13 Cal.Rptr.3d 15. The Court of Appeal majority found instead that the detention and search were justified by reasonable suspicion that defendant had threatened the anonymous 911 caller with a gun. The dissenting justice, relying on the absence of police corroboration of the criminality alleged in the anonymous tip, would have granted the motion to suppress. We granted review on the limited issue of whether the anonymous tip was sufficient to justify defendant's detention.