Court Opinion

ID: 9721448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:59:42.113715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:25.977547
License: Public Domain

*84NEWSOM, J.
I concur in the result reached by Justice Elkington, but for somewhat different reasons.
It will be remembered that the ultimate source of the information which led to petitioners’ arrest and conviction was the casual observation, made by a private person, of the remnants of a recently butchered cow. This information was conveyed to a deputy sheriff, who, upon investigation, determined that the cow belonged to Mr. Sizemore. Upon hearing of his loss, the latter decided, of his own volition, and independently of a later suggestion by the deputy that he do so, to “have a look around.” In doing so, Sizemore became a technical trespasser, because, while unsure of whose land he had come upon, he knew that it was not his own. But the fact of such technical trespass does not vitiate the truth, or preclude the use, of the observations he then made and imparted through the deputy to the affiant upon whose sworn statement the warrant issued. (People v. Cook (1978) 22 Cal.3d 67 [148 Cal.Rptr. 605, 583 P.2d 130]; Emslie v. State Bar (1974) 11 Cal.3d 210, 222 [113 Cal.Rptr. 175, 520 P.2d 991].)
The Cook decision cannot, I think, reasonably be read as a holding that wherever a “confirmatory” search is made which involves intentional trespass by a public officer, no excision of any such illegally obtained evidence can ever be made. There, the initial illegal entry by a private person was on residential property, while here the “first” search was through unfenced lands in which no indicia of expected privacy were displayed. And there, too, egregiously illegal police conduct was involved in the confirmatory search, and the affidavit in support of the subsequent warrant was riddled with perjury. No such conduct occurred in the case at bar—all facts were fully and honestly reported.
Not only are the facts of Cook dissimilar from those of the present case, but the expressed rationale of that decision does not in my opinion require us to exclude all evidence which is tainted.
In its discussion of the exclusionary rule, the court in People v. Cook, supra, 22 Cal.3d 67, 87-88 explained: “[The rule] does not require police officers to know or even anticipate complex constitutional doctrines. Nor does it penalize them for acts which, although negligent when viewed with hindsight, were done in good faith at the time. It simply seeks to deter the police from lying to the magistrate—surely an obvious prohibition which all can understand and obey.” By negative *85implication, the rationale of Cook, as expressed above, does not forbid excision where the initial evidence was obtained by a private citizen acting in good faith. We are not confronted with intentional (i.e., “bad faith”) misstatements in affidavits. As I read Cook, therefore, excision may still be employed to cleanse the affidavit.
My conclusions are based upon no absolute formula, but on the “facts and circumstances” and the “total atmosphere” of the case at bar. (People v. Ingle (1960) 53 Cal.2d 407, 412 [2 Cal.Rptr. 14, 348 P.2d 577] [cert. den. 364 U.S. 841 (5 L.Ed.2d 65, 81 S.Ct. 79)].) And having said this, I will add that I find nothing inconsistent between these contentions and our recent holding in Burkholder v. Superior Court (1979) 96 Cal.App.3d 421 [158 Cal.Rptr. 86]. In Burkholder we found that petitioner’s reasonable expectation of privacy had been violated by a police search; here we need only concern ourselves with the observations of a private citizen; hence, no state action is involved and the petitioner’s reasonable expectation of privacy is not in issue.