Court Opinion

ID: 9632958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:29:15.426225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:25.320916
License: Public Domain

*709MOSK, J.
I dissent.
I do not find statutory or case law authority for a magistrate in one county to direct a search of premises in another county. If, as a matter of policy or law enforcement efficiency, it is desirable to provide such authority to magistrates, the determination is properly a legislative rather than judicial prerogative.
It is significant that the Legislature has never seen fit to bestow upon magistrates, most of whom serve a limited constituency in one county, the awesome power to authorize the search of a home, business or office in any of the other 57 counties of California. Yet since 1969 the Legislature has been aware of the prevailing authority that there is “considerable reason, supporting the theory that the effect of a search warrant should be limited at least to the county of its origin.” (People v. Grant (1969) 1 Cal.App.3d 563, 568 [81 Cal.Rptr. 812], hg. den.) While finding “hot pursuit” in the facts of the case, the Grant court discussed at length the “general territorial limitation on the jurisdiction to issue a search warrant.” (Id., p. 569.)
People v. Ruster (1976) 16 Cal.3d 690 [129 Cal.Rptr. 153, 548 P.2d 353, 80 A.L.R.3d 1269], did not overrule nor in any way criticize the prevailing rule confirmed in Grant. We merely observed that Ruster had already been arrested and admitted to bail when the warrant issued and therefore the county of issuance “was the most convenient forum in which to resolve the validity of the search and seizure.” (Id., p. 702.)
By contrast, the defendant in the instant case, while undoubtedly under suspicion, had not been arrested and no charges against him were pending in the county in which the warrant was issued.
The territorial limitation on a magistrate’s power would appear to be fortified by a reading of Penal Code section 1528 that authorizes him to issue a search warrant only “to a peace officer in his county.” Certainly the Legislature does not appear to have contemplated that a peace officer in Imperial County would be permitted to enter a home, business or office in Del Norte County on the strength of a warrant issued by his home town magistrate.
As Justice Kingsley observed for a unanimous Court of Appeal in this case: “We point out that the rule which we here recognize and enforce imposes no serious impediment to law enforcement. As the *710opinion in Grant says, under section 1541 of the Penal Code, the Santa Barbara officers could have presented their affidavit to a magistrate in Los Angeles County; assistance of Los Angeles officers could have been obtained; and a lawful execution effected.”
If such procedure were deemed to be too cumbersome, the Legislature would have provided additional powers to magistrates and specified the rules for the exercise of those powers. No such amendments have been adopted since Grant was decided 12 years ago. It is presumptuous for this court to now undertake the task.
I also have reservations about the dictum in the majority opinion concerning the remedy of a stranger to the litigation whose home, business or office is invaded, and property seized, by officers from a distant county. Attempting to judicially fashion a new remedy, the majority purport to permit the property owner to attack the warrant in the county in which it was served. Yet Penal Code section 1540 appears to contemplate that an order restoring property to the person from whom it was taken must be made by the magistrate who issued the search warrant, not by a judicial officer in any other county.
In any event, by the time the property owner can consult an attorney and bring an action for the return of property, the officers who seized it will have been long gone, returned to the distant magistrate who dispatched them. Thus the majority’s gesture to the stranger in allowing him to seek redress in his home county is likely to be fruitless.
I would reverse the judgment.
Bird, C. J., concurred.