Court Opinion

ID: 9531768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:14:23.56374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:34.665504
License: Public Domain

REYNOSO, J.
I respectfully dissent. A person does not relinquish rights by voluntarily walking into a police station. As the United States Supreme Court held in Katz v. United States (1967) 389 U.S. 347, 351 [19 L.Ed.2d 576, 582, 88 S.Ct. 507], “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” The right of privacy recognized in Katz is based on the status of the complaining party and not on the individual’s physical location.
Article I, section 1 of the California Constitution gives all people of this state the express right of privacy. (White v. Davis (1975) 13 Cal.3d 757, 773 [120 Cal.Rptr. 94, 533 P.2d 222].) This right of privacy is also protected by article I, section 13 of the California Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which together give the people of this state the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The majority implicitly relies on Lanza v. New York (1962) 370 U.S. 139 [8 L.Ed.2d 384, 82 S.Ct. 1218], decided before Katz. There, the Supreme Court held that a nondetainee could not rely on the Fourth Amendment in refusing to answer questions based on a monitored conversation with his jailed brother. A jail visiting room, the court explained, was not a protected area. However, although Lanza himself was not detained, the person with whom he spoke was. In contrast, neither speaker in the present case was legally detained. The fact that they spoke in a police station does not abrogate their constitutional rights.
For the government to infringe a person’s fundamental constitutional right, such as the right of privacy (Roe v. Wade (1972) 410 U.S. 113, 152 [35 L.Ed.2d 147, 176-177, 93 S.Ct. 705]), a compelling interest must exist (White v. Davis, supra, 13 Cal.3d 757, 775). One such compelling interest is the need for reasonable institutional security. (People v. Owens (1980) 112 Cal.App.3d 441, 449 [169 Cal.Rptr. 359].)
In De Lancie v. Superior Court (1982) 31 Cal.3d 865 [183 Cal.Rptr. 866, 647 P.2d 142], this court held that county jail officials may not monitor ostensibly private conversations between pretrial detainees and their visitors for the purpose of discovering evidence for use in criminal trials. The ma*41jority disposes of this case based on the nonretroactivity of De Lancie, since De Lancie was decided in 1982 while the electronic monitoring in the instant case occurred in 1980. However, I believe the retroactivity or nonretroactivity of De Lancie is irrelevant. De Lancie merely clarified existing law— that absent security purposes, the monitoring of detainees’ conversations for the purpose of discovering evidence for use in criminal trials is now and always has been unlawful.1
While the majority states that pre-De Lancie California cases do not clearly articulate whether the crucial factor in intercepted conversation cases is the status of the individuals or the location of the conversation, it concedes that the cases upon which it relies do not “discuss the admissibility of an intercepted conversation in a jail or police station between persons who have not been arrested or detained. ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 33, fn. 5; italics added.) In the case at bench, unlike the detainees in De Lancie and North v. Superior Court (1972) 8 Cal.3d 301 [104 Cal.Rptr. 833, 502 P.2d 1305, 57 A.L.R.3d 155], and the inmate in Lanza, neither individual electronically monitored was imprisoned or detained by the police. In fact, neither was even a suspect.
As the majority acknowledges, the monitoring was apparently for evidentiary rather than security purposes. Had the police proffered evidence that the monitoring was for security purposes, it would be for the trier-of-fact to determine whether the monitoring was reasonable under the circumstances. In the absence of such evidence, the monitoring was clearly unlawful as a matter of law.
I conclude that the monitoring of the conversation between defendant and his brother constituted an invasion of their right of privacy and resulted in an unreasonable search and seizure under both federal and California law. The evidence obtained thereby is therefore inadmissible.
Bird, C. J., concurred.
Petitioner’s application for a rehearing was denied December 21, 1983. Bird, C. J., was of the opinion that the application should be granted.

 The limited scope of this permissible intrusion on the constitutional right of privacy is underscored by the 1975 amendment to Penal Code section 2600 and the enactment of Penal Code section 2601, subdivision (d). In these provisions, the Legislature established that prisoners retain the rights of free persons except to the extent that restrictions are necessary to insure the security of the prison and the protection of the public. Although these sections speak of persons confined in state prison, detainees and visitors in local jails and police stations must enjoy at least equal rights as a matter of logical and constitutional necessity.