Court Opinion

ID: 9625700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:48:17.321725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:13.660847
License: Public Domain

Mowbray, J.,
concurring:
A jury in Clark County found Ferman Wayne Wright guilty *473of burglarizing a bowling alley in Henderson, Nevada. He has appealed from his judgment of conviction and seeks reversal on the ground that the seizure of the pistol used to blow the lock off a safe located in the bowling alley, a bowling ball bag that contained money taken in the burglary, a crowbar, and a case of whiskey — all items that were found in Wright’s car at the time of his arrest — were improperly seized by the arresting officers in violation of Wright’s constitutional rights. He also claims that reversible error was committed when one of the State’s witnesses made a reference to Wright’s probation status.
1. The Facts.
During the early morning hours of April 17, 1970, two police officers on patrol observed a 1964 Oldsmobile bearing Texas license LWK 373 stopped at a traffic light in Las Vegas. By radio, the officers requested their headquarters to check the plates. They were informed that the plates had been stolen. The officers followed the car into a motel parking lot and stopped it. The driver, one George Watts, left the vehicle and headed for the motel. Appellant Wright remained seated in the front passenger seat of the car. One of the officers ordered him to get out of the car. Wright refused. The officer pulled his revolver and repeated his request. This time, Wright complied. After Wright left the car, the officer noticed a pistol protruding from under the front seat where Wright had been sitting. The officers then frisked both Wright and Watts and found a bulge inside Watts’s shirt. Upon the officers’ inquiry, Watts said that the bulge was currency he had taken by force from one of his debtors in California. Wright claimed he owned the vehicle and that he had borrowed the stolen license plates from a friend whom he did not care to name. The officers arrested both Wright and Watts for displaying fictitious license plates and gave them the required Miranda warning. The officers then radioed for a tow truck to impound the car, and they proceeded to inventory the vehicle. In addition to the pistol, the officers found, in the back seat of the car, a case of whiskey and a crowbar; and on the rear floor they found the bowling ball bag and money. The officers took Wright and his friend Watts to the police station. Later, after a check with the law enforcement authorities, they learned that the bowling alley had been burglarized.
2. The Search of Wright’s Car and the Seizure of the Contraband.
Wright claims as his principal assignment of error that the *474pistol and the other items mentioned above were taken from his car at the time of his arrest during a warrantless search, in derogation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
It appears to me that our review in the instant case, therefore, is limited to the facts presented, and that it is focused and narrowed upon the validity of on-the-spot, warrantless searches of defendants’ automobiles that have been properly stopped by the police.
Before venturing further into the “quagmire” of warrantless searches, as so characterized by the majority, I think it is well to keep in mind for whose protection the Fourth Amendment is intended. As Chief Judge Murrah said in Sumrall v. United States, 382 F.2d 651, 654 (10th Cir. 1967) i1
“Throughout the long, tedious and controversial interpretative history of the Fourth Amendment in which standing to invoke its protections has been almost constantly expanded and enlarged, the keystone has been the protection of the right of privacy. The Fourth Amendment has never been characterized as a rule of evidence, but rather a charter for freedom from the invasion of the right of privacy. . . .”
In quoting Mr. Justice Frankfurter, Judge Murrah wrote (also at 654):
“. . . Mr. Justice Frankfurter unequivocally recognized [in Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257 (I960)] that the exclusionary rule incident to the prohibitions of the Fourth Amendment is ‘a means for making effective the protection of privacy’; that to come within the exclusionary rule one must belong to ‘the class for whose sake the constitutional provision is given’; and that to come within the class, he must be the victim of the search in the sense that his right of privacy was invaded. . . .”
Certainly, under the factual posture of this case it cannot be said that Wright’s right of privacy was unlawfully invaded. The officers had every right, and a duty, to stop Wright’s car, because they had been advised that his license plates were stolen plates.
In Wilson v. Porter, 361 F.2d 412, 415 (9th Cir. 1966), *475the court, in quoting from Frye v. United States, 315 F.2d 491, 494 (9th Cir. 1963), said:
. . ‘[T]he local policeman, in addition to having a duty to enforce the criminal laws of his jurisdiction, is also in a very real sense a guardian of the public peace and he has a duty in the course of his work to be alert for suspicious circumstances, and, provided that he acts within constitutional limits to investigate whenever such circumstances indicate to him that he should do so.’’ (Emphasis added.)”
In Wilson, the police officers on patrol saw the defendant drive by several times in his car at a very slow speed during the predawn hours. The police followed the defendant, turned on their red light, and directed the defendant to pull over to the curb. The officers had no specific knowledge that a crime had been committed, and no traffic law had been violated. One of the officers walked to the right-hand side of the car and requested the passenger to get out and asked for his identification. As the passenger opened the door, the officer standing outside the car shone his flashlight into the car and saw what appeared to be a gun barrel protruding from under the front seat. The officer reached under the seat and pulled out a .22 caliber pistol. The defendant and his companion were then placed under arrest and searched. The officers found a dagger on the defendant’s person. The court ruled, at 414:
“We conclude that no right of the appellee was violated when the officers stopped the car and that the subsequent seizure of the evidence upon which he was convicted [possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a concealed dagger] was justified as pursuant to a lawful arrest. . . .”
At 415, the court held:
“We take it as settled that there is nothing ipso facto unconstitutional in the brief detention of citizens under circumstances not justifying an arrest, for purposes of limited inquiry in the course of routine police investigations. [Citations omitted.] A line between reasonable detention for routine investigation and detention which could be characterized as capricious and arbitrary cannot neatly be drawn. But due regard for the practical necessities of effective law enforcement requires that the validity of brief, informal detention be recognized whenever it appears from the totality of the circumstances that the detaining officers could have had reasonable grounds for their action. A founded suspicion is all that is necessary, some basis from which the court can determine that the detention was not arbitrary or harassing.”
And, finally, at 416, the court said:
*476“The initial stopping of appellee’s car having been a lawful detention but not an arrest, the admissibility of the evidence subsequently seized will depend upon the point in time when the arrest occurred. If discovery of the pistol preceded the arrest, that discovery provided probable cause for a subsequent arrest and search.”
The case before us is much stronger than Wilson, because in our case the officers knew that the license plates on Wright’s car had been stolen. They then had a right and a duty to stop the car. They noticed, as Wright stepped from the car, a pistol protruding from under the front seat. They then placed the defendant and his companion under arrest for having fictitious plates and for possession of a concealed weapon. They proceeded to seize the other contraband in the car, namely, the bowling ball bag and the money therein, the case of whiskey, and the crowbar.
Just recently, the Colorado Supreme Court, in Avalos v. People, 498 P.2d 1141 (1972), upheld the validity of the warrantless search of the purse of a defendant who had been stopped because the right taillight on her car was not functioning. The Colorado court, in its per curiam opinion, said:
“. . . Upon being asked to produce her operator’s license, she told the policemen that her driver’s license had expired. She was then asked to return with the officers to the police car so that they could determine whether her license had expired or had been suspended or revoked. This procedure was wholly proper and did not infringe upon any rights of the defendant. [Citations omitted.]
“While the officers were awaiting a report as to the status of the defendant’s driver’s license, one of the officers noticed a fresh needle mark on the defendant’s right wrist. The needle mark was in plain view. The officer knew the defendant from past encounters and also had information from a reliable informer, as well as from a fellow officer, that the defendant was a narcotics user. . . . Under these circumstances, the officer clearly had probable cause to arrest the defendant. . . .
“Following the defendant’s arrest, she was taken immediately to police headquarters, where a search of her purse revealed five hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes. The warrant-less search of the defendant’s purse and the seizure of the marijuana cigarettes may be upheld either as a search incident to arrest or as an inventory procedure conducted prior to incarceration. . . .”
Any warrantless search that is exploratory or tainted with sham or pretense will not be tolerated. See Mozzetti v. Superior *477Court, 94 Cal.Rptr. 412, 484 P.2d 84 (Cal. 1971). There was no such evidence in the case before us. The police officers, in making the arrest and seizing the contraband, acted properly. Wright may not complain that his right of privacy was unlawfully invaded.
3. The Reference to Wright’s Probationary Status.
During direct examination of one of the State’s witnesses, Officer Edwin R. Lattin of the Henderson Police Department, the following occurred:
“Q Was that the extent of the conversation or was more said?
“A Oh, I would say that we probably were there for more than fifteen minutes and the gist there ending — we were discussing his probation and a letter that he had received from his mother regarding his wife and we spoke about it and we paraphrased part of the letter — well, it’s nothing relevant to the case probably.”
The officer’s observation that “it’s nothing relevant to the case . . .” was accurate, because a law enforcement officer should know that such testimony may be highly prejudicial to the defendant and be a ground for a mistrial. In this case, the district judge denied Wright’s motion for a mistrial because the evidence was overwhelming in favor of conviction. The district judge observed that, had it been a close case, the motion would have been granted.
Under the factual posture of this case, I believe that the district judge ruled properly in denying the motion for a mistrial. Fairman v. State, 83 Nev. 287, 288-290, 429 P.2d 63, 64 (1965).

 The court, in sustaining a bank robbery conviction, held that police officers had probable cause to arrest the defendant without a warrant for either speeding or driving without a proper license (a license in “a name other than his [Nabors’] own”) and that, having made such lawful arrest, a subsequent search of the defendant at the time and place of his arrest was appropriately incidental thereto and that the evidence obtained (a “large amount of money”) as a result of the search was not inadmissible on the theory that it was in violation of the Fourth Amendment.