Opinion ID: 1366220
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Search of Truck.

Text: (3a) Defendant moved to suppress evidence of stains of the victim's blood found in his truck. He contends the warrantless search of his truck violated the Fourth Amendment and requires reversal of his convictions. (4) (See fn. 3.), (3b) We disagree. [3] The facts leading up to the search showed that defendant had changed his clothes between his first and second visits to the Kerman police station. Officer Singh saw what appeared to be blood on defendant's shoe. Defendant denied it was blood and attempted to wipe it off. Officers Lopez and Singh noticed defendant no longer had his knife, but when they looked where defendant said he had lost it, they could not find it. Sergeant McKinney at the crime scene found a bloody shoe print which matched defendant's shoe print. Sergeant McKinney told Fresno County Detective Williams about the shoe print and told Williams that defendant's truck was parked at the Kerman police station. Williams went to the Kerman police station and shone his flashlight into the interior of defendant's truck, which was parked in the parking lot. Williams observed a bloody shoe print on the floorboard which appeared to be similar to the bloody shoe print at the crime scene. The blood appeared to be fresh. Defendant was placed under arrest and Williams called the criminalist from the crime scene to determine if the blood in the truck was human blood. The criminalist entered the truck and examined the blood stains. The truck was impounded and taken to the Fresno County garage, where the criminalist took blood samples from the truck and the floor mat. The blood matched the victim's unique blood type. At the motion to suppress, the People sought to justify the search solely on the ground of the instrumentality exception to the warrant requirement, i.e., that the vehicle itself is an instrumentality of the crime or is itself evidence. Defendant here argues that there is no instrumentality exception to the warrant requirement, [4] and alternatively, that the exception does not apply. Defendant's contention is without merit. We have recognized and applied the instrumentality exception in several cases. In People v. Teale (1969) 70 Cal.2d 497 [75 Cal. Rptr. 172, 450 P.2d 564], we upheld the warrantless seizure of an automobile in which police had cause to think that the victim was shot. The officers had seized the car incident to a lawful arrest and 10 days later a criminalist examined the car and found the victim's blood spattered on the interior. We found no violation of the Fourth Amendment and, in fact, no search, since the automobile was itself evidence subject to seizure. ( Id. at pp. 508-511.) (5) We quoted our earlier language with approval: `[W]hen the police lawfully seize a car which is itself evidence of a crime rather than merely a container of incriminating articles, they may postpone searching it until arrival at a time and place in which the examination can be performed in accordance with sound scientific procedures.' ... [Citation.] ( Id. at p. 508, italics in original.) In North v. Superior Court (1972) 8 Cal.3d 301 [104 Cal. Rptr. 833, 502 P.2d 1305, 57 A.L.R.3d 155], we applied the Teale rationale to uphold another search. There, the defendant was arrested in his apartment on kidnapping and assault charges. The police impounded his automobile, having cause to believe that it had been used in the kidnapping. They examined its interior without a warrant, and found the victim's fingerprints. We explained that the defendant's car had been seized contemporaneous with petitioner's arrest, as evidence of the alleged kidnapping; the car was believed to be the very instrumentality used to commit the kidnapping. ( Id. at p. 306, fn. omitted.) The car was simply a piece of evidence in plain view which the police were justified in seizing. In People v. Rogers (1978) 21 Cal.3d 542 [146 Cal. Rptr. 732 [579 P.2d 1048], we held that the police were entitled to make a warrantless search of a van they had impounded from the defendant upon his arrest for committing lewd acts on children, since they had cause to think that it had been an instrumentality of the crime: [W]hen officers, incidental to a lawful arrest, seize an automobile or other object in the reasonable belief that the object is itself evidence of the commission of the crime for which the arrest is made, any subsequent examination of the object for the purpose of determining its evidentiary value does not constitute a `search' as that term is used in the California and federal Constitutions. [Citations.] In light of the evidence indicating that the pornographic snapshots were taken in the van and might depict the victims of the reported assaults, Officer Szatmary clearly had reason to believe that the van was itself evidence of the crimes for which defendant had been arrested. ( Id. at pp. 549-550, italics in original.) (3c) The propriety of a warrantless seizure and search where the vehicle is itself evidence or the instrumentality of a crime is implicit in a number of United States Supreme Court decisions as well. (See Cardwell v. Lewis (1974) 417 U.S. 583, 592-593 [41 L.Ed.2d 325, 336, 94 S.Ct. 2464]; Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971) 403 U.S. 443, 464 [29 L.Ed.2d 564, 581-582, 91 S.Ct. 2022] [maj. opn. of Stewart, J.], 502, 505-506 [conc. and dis. opn. of Black, J.]; Cooper v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 58 [17 L.Ed.2d 730, 87 S.Ct. 788]; Carroll v. United States (1925) 267 U.S. 132, 153, 156 [69 L.Ed. 543, 551, 552-553, 45 S.Ct. 280, 39 A.L.R. 790]; United States v. Di Re (1948) 332 U.S. 581, 586 [92 L.Ed. 210, 216, 68 S.Ct. 222]; cf. Colorado v. Bertine, supra, 479 U.S. 367, fn. 5 [93 L.Ed.2d 739, 751] and related text [dis. opn. of Marshall, J.].) Defendant suggests that we repudiated the Teale line of cases in People v. Minjares (1979) 24 Cal.3d 410 [153 Cal. Rptr. 224, 591 P.2d 514]. We did not. We merely stated that the instrumentality exception was inapplicable on the facts before us in that case. ( People v. Minjares, supra, 24 Cal.3d 410, 421.) Unlike the situation in Minjares, where the car trunk was merely a container of evidence, the truck in this case was itself evidence. The bloodstains that had soaked into the floorboard of the truck were clearly an appropriate subject of scientific examination and within the limits of the instrumentality exception.