Opinion ID: 1375029
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Denying Motion to Exclude Evidence Stemming from Arrest

Text: Pursuant to section 1538.5, defendant moved at his prior trial to exclude all evidence of his guilt stemming from his arrest as the product of an arrest made without probable cause and hence unlawful. The court denied the motion, stating in a minute order, The court finds there was probable cause for the arrest of the Defendant. Defendant sought to renew his motion at the trial before us, also under section 1538.5. In response, the prosecution filed papers citing authority for the proposition that such a motion ordinarily may not be relitigated. The court denied the motion and it was not reheard. Defendant contends that (1) there was no probable cause to arrest him, (2) certain witnesses should have been excluded during the motion hearing, and (3) the court erred by denying his application to renew his motion. Because the court herein left intact the ruling from the prior trial, we address all of these contentions on the merits, including the first and second. To do otherwise would be to unfairly deny defendant a determination of the matter on the merits.
Defendant urges that because his crimes predate Proposition 8 (Cal. Const., art. I, § 28), we must inquire whether the police actually suspected that he committed a crime, and if we conclude that they did, we must then ask whether the facts known to them gave them adequate cause to arrest on an objective standard. ( People v. Miller (1972) 7 Cal.3d 219, 226 [101 Cal. Rptr. 860, 496 P.2d 1228].) For purposes of this opinion only we will accept this contention, without deciding whether it is correct. In the first step of our inquiry we apply the deferential standard of substantial evidence; in the second, we exercise our own judgment. (See People v. Leyba (1981) 29 Cal.3d 591, 596-597 [174 Cal. Rptr. 867, 629 P.2d 961].)
In this case, the police and defendant told the court almost entirely conflicting stories of the events leading to defendant's arrest. Preliminarily, we note two facts that were essentially undisputed. There was undisputed if implicit evidence that Carter's mysterious disappearance had generated substantial news coverage in local media, and explicit evidence that defendant was aware of the news stories although he had not read them. And there was no necessary indication of foul play: Carter had simply vanished. The police version of the events preceding defendant's arrest provided overwhelming evidence of probable cause for his arrest. They related the facts as follows: According to Officer Sims, by Friday, October 27, 1978, five days after Carter's disappearance, he and Officer Gluhak had exhausted all leads. There was implicit evidence that the police were desperate, because they had resorted to the paranormal in their investigation: they obtained an artist's sketch based on a psychic's vision of a person Carter might have been with. Armed with that sketch, they went back to the Carter residence. Carter's parents each said the sketch looked like defendant. Officers Sims and Gluhak decided to interview him. They knocked on defendant's door and, Officer Sims testified, he virtually blurted out, `I knew you were coming sooner or later. I['ve] been in Atascadero for molestation of a nine-year-old boy in the city of Huntington Park.' Soon thereafter  this first prearrest interview lasted 15 minutes  as the police were copying down information from defendant's driver's license, he also volunteered, in Officer Sims's words, `You are going to find out,' or he stated to me, `You are going to find out anyway.' He said, `When I was arrested in Huntington Park in '72 it was because I went into a fit of rage and beat the shit out of a nine-year-old boy.' He said he was sent to Atascadero for that reason. In the interim, defendant had invited Officers Sims and Gluhak into the living room of his apartment. The police did not go into any other part of the house. The living room, said Officer Sims, was littered with literally hundreds of pictures of young boys, both clothed and partially clothed. I also observed lying on the floor and living room furniture of the apartment numerous books, pornographic material. [1] The police explained to defendant that they were investigating Carter's disappearance, an event that, as stated, had generated major news coverage. He replied that he had seen nothing unusual at the Carters' house the night of Carter's disappearance. The police left defendant's residence to return to the Carters' house. Defendant left his residence separately to bring a car part to the Carters' house  it will be recalled that Carter's father was repairing defendant's Volkswagen and that defendant had dropped it off the day of Carter's disappearance. When he saw defendant at the Carters' house, Officer Sims asked him again whether he might have seen anything when he dropped off his car on the Sunday that Carter disappeared. In Officer Sims's words, defendant stated to me, `Oh, yeah. I remember now. I was going to the Sizzler to get some dinner, but the line was too long.' [¶] He said it was about 6:00 ... in the evening. He said he decided to go over to Carl Carter, Sr.'s, house to talk to him about working on his car. He stated that when he got to the rear door, Carl Carter [Jr.] was there and he asked him if he wanted to go and have a Coke. This occurred around the time that Carter was last seen. Officer Sims then arrested defendant on suspicion of kidnapping. He arrested him because of the seriousness of the crime, the fact that a seven-year-old boy had been missing for a week, that Defendant Memro did not give me any of those statements at his apartment, the fact that he had told me he had taken the boy but he didn't do anything to him[,] led me to believe that he was possibly involved in the missing boy's disappearance. He added that he believed defendant was also the last person to see Carter before he was reported missing. On cross-examination, the testimony was impeached in several important respects. Although Officer Sims testified that the police had not ventured beyond defendant's living room, he also testified that he arrested him because of the urgency of the case, including an urgency about the boy's safety at that point. When defendant asked him to reconcile this perceived urgency with his own testimony that the police did not search his entire apartment until after he had confessed later that night, he could not do so  he offered no explanation except that he did not know why he had not searched the dwelling. Officer Sims also had testified that the police turned to defendant because they had no other leads, but conceded that they had not interviewed registered sex offenders in South Gate, nor had they learned the name of the individual who helped Carter's father repair cars. As stated, defendant's version almost entirely contradicted that of the police. Defendant testified in great detail about the events surrounding his arrest. The police asked to talk to him as he was preparing to drive away. He agreed. They asked whether he had ever been arrested, and he stated that he had served time at Atascadero for a violation of section 273d (child abuse; see Stats. 1965, ch. 1271, § 4, p. 3146). They asked when he had last seen Carter, and he replied that it was the Saturday before he vanished. They asked to search his apartment, and when he asked if it would do any good to refuse, they said no, so on that basis he consented. The police looked at the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and closets as well as the living room. Defendant, an amateur photographer, had a stack of photographic proof sheets on the living room coffee table, which the police examined. A good many of them were of males under 20 years old, as were those on the living room walls. None of them, it can be inferred, were sexually explicit. The police then asked to view the trunk of his car and asked him about a sleeping bag in it. Again being told he could not refuse, he consented. Defendant also described the second encounter, at the Carter residence, in different terms. The police, seeing him there, said they had more questions. He wanted to know again when the last time I seen Carl was. And I told him  Carl, Jr., that is  I told him that was on the previous Saturday; that he had been playing up and down the block with the neighbor kids when I stopped over to see Mrs. Carter. He said nothing about seeing Carl the day he vanished. The police then asked defendant to take a polygraph test. He refused initially, but eventually agreed to it. The police told him he could choose to take the test or be arrested for kidnapping. He went to the station with them. On cross-examination, defendant adhered to his story. Carter's father, Carl Carter, Sr., testified that he could not recall the police mentioning that they had seen any unusual photographs in defendant's apartment when they interviewed Carter just after their initial contact with defendant, and just before defendant's return to the Carter residence. During argument on the hearing on the section 1538.5 motion, defendant pointed out what he viewed as serious inconsistencies in the testimony of the police regarding his arrest. He pointed out the oddity of claiming to fear for Carter's safety and yet failing to search his apartment for hours. Given testimony that the police found photographs of male youths in plain sight on their initial visit to the apartment, defendant emphasized the curiousness of the police officers' failure to ask Carter's father whether he might know anything about defendant's choice of photography subjects. He maintained that there was no probable cause for his arrest, the police knew it, and therefore they had at times manufactured their testimony to justify it. Citing People v. Rios (1956) 46 Cal.2d 297 [294 P.2d 39], the court found that there was probable cause for the arrest of the defendant; that the arrest occurred in the alley behind the Carter residence in the afternoon of the 27th of October. .... .... .... .... .... .... .... The Court finds that the use of the psychic in this case was merely an investigative tool and cannot be relied upon by the officers in connection with justifying their arrest. However, it may be used to follow up additional leads. The comments, the testimony that was presented and the identification by Mr. Carter, then the admission by the defendant at the home that he had been at Atascadero for assaulting another young boy, then his position that he hadn't seen the boy on the day the boy was missing, the information to the officers that he was there the day the boy was missing and then after the officers talked to the defendant and see him again at the Carter residence, the inconsistent statements of the defendant to the officers that he actually was the last person with the individual, in this Court's evaluation is sufficient evidence to justify an arrest for a homicide.... The Court finds there was a legal arrest of the defendant.
(21) As stated, we defer to the trial court's findings regarding the officers' suspicion that defendant had committed a crime and then decide, based on the facts known to them, whether probable cause objectively existed to make an arrest. The trial court in essence entirely accepted the police officers' testimony regarding defendant's arrest. We are bound by that acceptance. Under the version of defendant's interviews the police described, substantial evidence supports the court's implicit conclusion that the police suspected defendant of committing the crime of kidnapping. It would have been extraordinary for the police not to have such a suspicion. The case had dominated public discourse in South Gate for a week, and defendant knew the Carter family, yet when the police asked him whether he had seen anything unusual the day Carter vanished, he first said no. He later suddenly recalled that he had invited Carter out for a soft drink at around the time that he disappeared. He had various materials in his living room in plain sight showing a morbid sexual interest in young boys. And he had a record for physical abuse of a nine-year-old. The foregoing facts, accepted by the court, supplied ample reasonable cause under state law (former § 836, subd. 3), and ample probable cause under the federal Constitution  the standards are identical ( People v. Talley (1967) 65 Cal.2d 830, 835 [56 Cal. Rptr. 492, 423 P.2d 564])  to believe that defendant had committed a crime and thereby justify a warrantless arrest ( Dunaway v. New York (1979) 442 U.S. 200, 208, 213-214 [60 L.Ed.2d 824, 832-833, 836-837, 99 S.Ct. 2248] (plur. opn.); see also id. at pp. 215-216 [60 L.Ed.2d at pp. 837-838] [requiring probable cause to effect arrest made for investigative purposes]). The police officers' awareness that defendant had made conflicting statements for which there could be no innocent explanation and that he admitted being in Carter's company about the time he vanished are particularly significant. (See People v. Kaurish, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 676 [police knew suspect had left apartment in same building shortly before murder committed]; People v. Wright (1990) 52 Cal.3d 367, 392 [276 Cal. Rptr. 731, 802 P.2d 221] [police knew suspect was seen near victim's residence shortly before her death]; People v. Davis (1981) 29 Cal.3d 814, 823 [176 Cal. Rptr. 521, 633 P.2d 186] [suspect admitted he was with victim at approximate time of death]; People v. Galceran (1960) 178 Cal. App.2d 312, 313, 316-317 [2 Cal. Rptr. 901] [irreconcilably conflicting statements regarding ownership of vehicle, inter alia, furnished sufficient cause to search], cited with approval in People v. Superior Court ( Simon ) (1972) 7 Cal.3d 186, 197 [101 Cal. Rptr. 837, 496 P.2d 1205] [conflicting answers constitute ... a further suspicious circumstance sufficient to support a belief that the vehicle is stolen]; People v. Garcia (1981) 121 Cal. App.3d 239, 246 [175 Cal. Rptr. 296] [conflicting statements that television set belonged to the `black man' and also to Madrid, inter alia, provided probable cause to arrest]; In re Collins (1969) 271 Cal. App.2d 195, 197, 203-204 [76 Cal. Rptr. 622] [suspect first said articles belonged to sister, then that he found them under a bridge; probable cause to believe crime had occurred].) By themselves, defendant's patently inconsistent statements on such a vital matter as the whereabouts of Carter near the time he vanished had no discernible innocent meaning and strongly indicated consciousness of guilt. ( People v. Superior Court ( Simon ), supra, 7 Cal.3d at p. 197.) There is no question that the police had probable cause to arrest defendant.
Defendant maintains that the court erred when it denied his motion to exclude witnesses during the hearing to suppress evidence because there was no probable cause for his arrest. He asserts in a conclusory manner that [b]y permitting all of the officers to remain, the court irreparably prejudiced appellant's opportunity to cross-examine the officers effectively and to prove the invalidity of the arrest. He does not state that the court violated any statute. His claim is purely speculative and lacks merit. (See State v. Seel (Utah 1992) 827 P.2d 954, 959.)
As stated, at defendant's second trial, the court denied an application to hear his motion to suppress evidence under section 1538.5 de novo. The motion was made in a manner the court called conclusionary; defendant did not explain what new evidence might justify a rehearing. Nevertheless, he argued at the motion hearing that the matter should be relitigated because there was more [evidence] on the credibility of the officers that were involved in the [prior section 1538.5] motions. The purported new evidence consisted of the possibility that two other witnesses would testify they never saw nude pictures in plain sight in defendant's apartment. The court rejected that offer of proof immediately, saying that defendant could have told counsel about any such witnesses before the prior litigation. Defendant also suggested vaguely that prior counsel may have exercised poor judgment in not pursuing the possibility that Carter had been seen in another individual's company after defendant admitted having been with him. The court found that defendant has not established through any evidence whatsoever that [he] lacked an opportunity for a full determination of the merits of his motion as originally made and noticed at the previous hearing and the request for a 1538.5 de novo is denied. (22) Defendant now contends that the court erred in denying a new hearing on his section 1538.5 motion because counsel at the first trial was ineffective for not impeaching the arresting officers with purported evidence, contained in a police report that they possessed, that Carter was seen by his brother near their house an hour after defendant saw him. He contends that the denial of his application violated rights he finds in the Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to due process, to counsel, and to a reliable fact-finding process in a capital case. In People v. Superior Court ( Corona ) (1981) 30 Cal.3d 193, 199-200 [178 Cal. Rptr. 334, 636 P.2d 23], we suggested that if counsel's ineffectiveness at a section 1538.5 suppression hearing denied a defendant an opportunity for a full determination of the motion's merits, in some circumstances the defendant should receive a new hearing. But we believe that the question whether there was an opportunity for a full determination of the motion's merits at the prior trial is essentially factual and we review for substantial evidence the court's implicit ruling that there was such an opportunity. Substantial evidence supports the ruling: on this record, we conclude that the court could reasonably find that defendant failed to show he was denied the opportunity to present all the available evidence at the time of the original hearing. This record is similar to that before the Court of Appeal in People v. Dorsey (1973) 34 Cal. App.3d 70 [109 Cal. Rptr. 712], overruled on another ground in Bunnell v. Superior Court (1975) 13 Cal.3d 592, 602 [119 Cal. Rptr. 302, 531 P.2d 1086]: The reversal of defendant's conviction returned him to the position he occupied prior to his conviction, i.e., facing trial after the denial of his motions to set aside the information and suppress the evidence. Defendant made no showing of any change of circumstance necessitating renewal of these motions at the second trial. The opportunity of renewing such motions for a second time is within the discretion of the trial court judge upon retrial. [Citation.] We find no abuse of discretion here. (34 Cal. App.3d at p. 73.) Neither do we. Anticipating we might reach this conclusion, defendant contends briefly that any failure to raise the point adequately constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Presumably he refers to the fact that defendant's motion papers did not mention the purported exculpatory police report and that he only alluded to it vaguely at the hearing. We doubt that the contents of any such report, if admissible in evidence and accepted by the court, would have altered its ruling denying a new hearing, for it is also doubtful that the court at the prior trial would have ruled differently if it had learned of the report and received it in evidence. It is unlikely that the purported one-hour discrepancy to which defendant alludes would have changed the officers' assessment of his possible guilt of crime, assuming for purposes of argument that they were aware of it. Although Officer Sims listed his perception that defendant was the last person known to have seen Carter as a factor in arresting him, it is clear that his inconsistent statements alone provoked strong suspicion that he had committed an offense. On this record, we reject the ineffective-assistance contention: there is no reasonable probability that, if defendant had better briefed the motion with supporting argument or furnished a police report of the type he describes, the outcome would have differed.