Court Opinion

ID: 9551137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:48:19.124695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:07.234285
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J
I dissent.
The trial court, having heard the witnesses and their explanation of the facts, suppressed the evidence obtained from both vehicles. The majority, drawing a strange distinction, uphold the trial court’s ruling as to the Porsche but reverse as to the Pontiac, located under the same circumstances at the same site at the same time. I would uphold the trial court.
Officer Aumond’s unlawful entry into the Pontiac cannot be legitimized by invoking the “totality of the circumstances” rule. Each and every one of the six facts which the majority hold would justify the entry when taken “in combination” (ante, p. 795, fn. 7) is equally consistent with innocence. As we recently reiterated, “Officers cannot reasonably conclude on the basis *800of behavior that is entirely consistent with innocent activity that an offense has been committed.” (People v. Miller (1972) 7 Cal.3d 219, 225 [101 Cal.Rptr. 860, 496 P.2d 1228].)
The majority first point to “defendant’s presence in the parking lot at night.” But the lot was open to the public, and a number of other cars were parked there at the time of the events in question. The hour, moreover, was not the dead of night, but 8 or 9 o’clock on a spring evening. By contrast, in People v. Miller (1972) supra, 7 Cal.3d 219, the police observed the defendant asleep in a car parked in an abandoned private lot at 3 a.m. Yet we held that this fact could not contribute to a finding of probable cause: “Certainly, the mere fact that defendant was found sleeping in such a location did not evidence any criminal behavior on his part; . . .” (Id. at p. 225.)
By making a point of describing in their statement of facts (ante, p. 791) the particular path followed by defendant on leaving the parking lot, the majority seem to imply that his movements may have furnished an additional ground for suspicion. But we have previously rejected just such an argument. In People v. Simon (1955) 45 Cal.2d 645 [290 P.2d 531], a police officer observed two youths at 10:40 p.m. in a warehouse district, walking first in one direction and then back again; he stopped and searched them, finding narcotics. Holding the search unlawful, we reasoned (at p. 650): “the mere fact that two persons walked a few blocks in a warehouse district at night and then retraced their steps would not constitute reasonable cause to believe either had committed a felony, even if the officer had entertained such a belief.” We reaffirmed Simon in People v. Superior Court (Kiefer) (1970) 3 Cal.3d 807, 825 [91 Cal.Rptr. 729, 478 P.2d 449, 45 A.L.R.3d 559]: the fact that a defendant’s movements occur in the nighttime, we explained, must be “appraised with caution; it does not, without more, transform' an innocent gesture into a culpable one furnishing probable cause to search. As long ago as People v. Simon (1955) 45 Cal.2d 645, 650-651 [290 P.2d 531], we acknowledged, ‘There is, of course, nothing unreasonable in an officer’s questioning persons outdoors at night’ (italics added). Recognizing, however, that in our society it is not a crime for a citizen to be out after dark, we held that ‘to permit an officer to justify a search on the ground that he “didn’t feel” that a person on the street at night had any lawful business there would expose anyone to having his person searched by any suspicious officer no matter how unfounded the suspicions were. Innocent people, going to or from evening jobs or entertainment, or walking for exercise or enjoyment, would suffer along with the occasional criminal who would be turned up.’ These dangers are no less real today.”
*801The majority next refer to “nearby business establishments, some of which had recently been burglarized.” But our decisions have by now made it crystal clear that if the observed activity of a defendant is equally consistent with innocence, as here, the fact that it takes place in an area known by the officer to be the scene of frequent recent crimes of the type suspected does not furnish any element of probable cause. Thus in People v. Moore (1968) 69 Cal.2d 674 [72 Cal.Rptr. 800, 446 P.2d 800], the defendant was detained as a suspected narcotics user in an area in which the officer had previously made several narcotics arrests. Holding the detention unlawful, we said (at p. 683): “[T]he only suspicious circumstances relied upon by the officer were that the area was one where narcotic transactions had taken place in the past and that defendant upon seeing the officers’ car turned his back on them, moved from a comfortable position, and appeared nervous. Defendant was talking on a telephone in a booth at ten in the morning, and there seems little to distinguish defendant from any other citizen who may have been making a telephone call at that time and place. To hold that police officers should in the proper discharge of their duties detain and question all persons in that location or all those who act nervous at the approach of officers would for practical purposes involve an abrogation of the rule requiring substantial circumstances to justify the detention and questioning of persons on the street.”
The same rule was applied in Cunha v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 352 [85 Cal.Rptr. 160, 466 P.2d 704]. There, two officers stationed themselves in an area in which one had made 15 to 20 narcotics arrests in 3 months and the other had made 30 to 40 such arrests in 6 months. They observed the defendant and a companion walk along the street while looking watchfully about them, then apparently exchange an object for money. Inferring that a sale of narcotics had just been consummated, the officers arrested and searched the two men, finding narcotics. Ordering the evidence suppressed, we held (at p. 357) that “Neither petitioner’s activities nor the location of his arrest provided probable cause for arrest.” Quoting the above language from Moore, we concluded: “Moore held that a high crime rate area cannot convert circumstances as innocent as a telephone call by an individual who acted nervous at the approach of a police officer into sufficient cause to detain that individual. Similarly, an area known to be the site of frequent narcotics traffic should not be deemed to convert circumstances as innocent as an apparent transaction by pedestrians who seem generally concerned with their surroundings into *802sufficient cause to arrest those pedestrians.”1 (Accord, Remers v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 659, 665-666 [87 Cal.Rptr. 202, 470 P.2d 11]; People v. Conley (1971) 21 Cal.App.3d 894 [98 Cal.Rptr. 869].)
The third assertedly suspicious circumstance emphasized by the majority is “defendant’s elaborate explanation for his presence.” I find nothing “elaborate” about that explanation, fairly summarized in the majority opinion.2 In any event, “elaborateness” is not the test here: we have held that when a defendant gives “an inherently implausible explanation for his presence,” it may reasonably constitute an additional ground for suspicion. (People v. Sandoval (1966) 65 Cal.2d 303, 310 [54 Cal.Rptr. 123, 419 P.2d 187].) There is, of course, nothing inherently implausible in defendant’s explanation in the case at bar.
More importantly, the majority’s reliance on defendant’s own words to justify Officer Aumond’s conduct is fraught with dangers which we have only recently elucidated. To begin with, in such circumstances the person confronted by the police is not required to say anything at all, and his refusal to do so may not be held against him. Thus, in Gallik v. Superior Court (1971) 5 Cal.3d 855 [97 Cal.Rptr. 693, 489 P.2d 573], the investigating officer observed what he believed was a furtive movement by the defendant and asked for an explanation. We held that the defendant’s negative response was wholly insufficient to invest the movement with guilty significance: “ ‘Upon such inquiry the person questioned may elect to give an explanation of his “furtive” movement or he may freely consent to a search. [Citation.] He may, on the other hand, elect to stand on his constitutional right not to cooperate with the officers in securing evidence against him.’ ” In that event, we declared, probable cause “ ‘must be predicated on specific facts and circumstances, other than a mere negative reply to the subject inquiry, . . .’”
If on the other hand the defendant does give an explanation, we have warned that it must not be turned against him on an easy assumption that it is false. In People v. Superior Court (Simon) (1972) 7 Cal.3d 186 [101 Cal.Rptr. 837, 496 P.2d 1205], we first held that a driver’s failure *803to produce his vehicle’s registration card, without more, cannot reasonably give rise to a belief the vehicle is stolen. (Id. at pp. 193-194.) We then acknowledged that such probable cause may appear if the lack of a registration card is followed by an explanation thereof which is “inconsistent, conflicting, or palpably false” (id. at p. 197). But we hastened to reiterate our admonition in Kiefer that “ ‘the police officer should remember there is no substitute for patient and thorough investigation, and should avoid drawing a hasty or preconceived conclusion’ (People v. Superior Court (1970) supra, 3 Cal.3d 807, 828) that the motorist’s explanation of the lack of his registration card is in fact inconsistent or false.” We concluded that “there may be a substantial difference between an explanation which is patently inconsistent or false and one which simply does not go into enough detail to persuade the arresting officer of its truth. An officer’s subjective opinion that a given motorist ‘should’ be able to furnish a more detailed identification of the owner who lent him the car may well fall short of the objective probability of guilt required by the Fourth Amendment to justify an arrest or search without a warrant.” (Id. at p. 197, fn. 10.) Here again, the explanation furnished by defendant to Officer Aumond was by no stretch of the imagination “patently inconsistent or false.”
The majority next list “the dust disturbances on the door and window” of the Pontiac. Reliance on that evidence is such a novel idea that it is not surprising there are no cases either confirming or rejecting it. But we are not, I hope, left without the guidance of common sense and experience. Officer Aumond’s testimony that he saw “dust disturbances” resembling handprints on the door and windows of the driver’s side was offered to sustain his claim of probable cause to believe the car had been “burglarized or tampered with.”3 The trial court ruled that Officer Aumond’s observation of “dust disturbances” did not contribute to the claimed probable cause because no reasonable man could believe an attempt had been made to break the lock on the driver’s door of a car when the window of the passenger door, as here, was wide open.. I agree. I further submit that most automobiles, except those which have been freshly washed, are likely to *804have similar “dust disturbances” or smudges on their doors or windows, especially around the handles. Unless we are to deny this common experience of our senses, we must acknowledge that the circumstance here relied on is fully as consistent with innocence as with guilt.
The last two circumstances stressed by the majority—“the unsecured condition of the vehicle” and “the visible personal property on the front and rear seats of the vehicle”—may conveniently be considered together. The testimony describipg both was offered by Officer Aumond to support the final rationalization for his warrantless entry: i.e., that he did so to protect the personal property in the car from being stolen by larcenously inclined passersby. The contention will not bear scrutiny in the light of Mozzetti v. Superior Court (1971) 4 Cal.3d 699 [94 Cal.Rptr. 412, 484 P.2d 84]. There the defendant was injured in an automobile collision and was taken to the hospital; prior to towing her car to storage the police “inventoried” its contents, and in so doing opened a suitcase lying on the back seat, finding marijuana. The People contended inter alia that the search of the suitcase “was reasonably necessary to protect [defendant’s] personal property from loss or damage” (id. at p. 707). We rejected that argument, stating that in determining the constitutionality of the officer’s entry we must balance the owner’s interest in keeping his property safe against his “countervailing interest in maintaining the privacy of his personal effects . . . .” (Ibid.) However commendable the officer’s motive may be, the owner may well prefer that his car and its contents not be disturbed by official intrusion.
In this respect the present case is even more compelling than Mozzetti. There the police knew that the driver of the car in question would not soon return to take care of her property, as she had been injured and transported to a hospital; such a belief is also reasonable when the driver has been arrested on a criminal charge and taken to jail. Officer Aumond, by contrast, had no grounds whatever to believe that the owner of the Pontiac was either incapacitated or in police custody.4 But in many other instances *805the owner may be in the vicinity, only temporarily away from his vehicle, and may feel that any slight risk of theft is outweighed by the convenience of immediate access to his car upon his return. The choice in such circumstances should be that of the owner. Certainly the mere fact that a lawfully parked automobile is unlocked and contains visible items of personal property should not give every passing police officer license to climb inside the vehicle for the purpose of “securing” that property against hypothetical thieves.
Moreover, even if we assume that the circumstances relied on by the majority justified the belief in this case that the owner would not shortly return, it was not necessary for Officer Aumond to enter the car in order to protect its contents. As we pointed out in Mozzetti (4 Cal.3d at p. 707), he could simply have rolled up the window and locked the door: “The owner himself, if required to leave his car temporarily, could do no more to protect his property.”5
In the alternative, if the officer felt it was necessary to notify the owner of the insecure condition of the car, he could quickly have learned the latter’s identity by running a radio check of the license number. Since Officer Aumond thus had less intrusive means available to him, his asserted purpose of “securing” the property in the Pontiac did not justify the entry. A case in point is People v. Superior Court (1969) 2 Cal.App.3d 304 [82 Cal.Rptr. 766], relied on by the trial court. There, after observing activity around a parked car in an area in which previous burglaries had taken place, a police officer shone his flashlight through the car’s window and saw loose wires hanging from the dashboard and empty brackets beneath. Believing a stereo set had been stolen from the vehicle, he entered it for the asserted purpose of learning the owner’s name and address and leaving a notice directing the owner to report the theft to the police station. Sustaining an order suppressing evidence of marijuana found in the glove compartment as a result of that entry, the Court of Appeal reasoned (at pp. 309-310): “In this case, as the trial judge observed, the *806police had available other reasonable alternatives to accomplish their laudable goals. There was no necessity to enter the locked car and search the closed glove compartment when the police could have promptly obtained the registration information they desired by other means. Furthermore, even if a police radio was not readily available, we are not convinced that the police officers’ announced need for the registration data presents ‘extreme’ or ‘exceptional’ circumstances justifying governmental intrusion in an area where the defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy. The police could have transmitted the report form to the car owner by dropping it through the open wind wing or by putting it under the windshield wiper as they would a parking citation. ‘We think this is a realistic balancing of the requirements of effective law enforcement and the necessity to protect the privacy of the citizens from unwarranted governmental instrusion.’ (Skelton v. Superior Court, 1 Cal.3d 144 [81 Cal.Rptr. 613, 460 P.2d 485].)”
I conclude, as we did in Cunha (2 Cal.3d at p. 358) that “the behavior observed here was consistent with innocence and any relation to criminality did not depend upon the expertise of the observer.” When each of the individual circumstances observed by the officer is thus consistent with innocence, they do not mysteriously become imbued with an aura of guilt merely by viewing them in their “totality.” Six times zero, in my arithmetic, still equals zero. (See, e.g., People v. One 1960 Cadillac Coupe (1964) 62 Cal.2d 92, 96 [41 Cal.Rptr. 290, 396 P.2d 706]; People v. Privett (1961) 55 Cal.2d 698, 701-702 [12 Cal.Rptr. 874, 361 P.2d 602]; People v. Schraier (1956) 141 Cal.App.2d 600, 602-604 [297 P.2d 81]; cf. People v. Mickelson (1963) 59 Cal.2d 448, 452-454 [30 Cal.Rptr. 18, 380 P.2d 658]; People v. Gibson (1963) 220 Cal.App.2d 15, 22-25 [33 Cal.Rptr. 775].) In Remers (2 Cal.3d at p. 664) we reasoned that “Where the events are as consistent with innocent activity as. with criminal activity, a detention based upon those events is unlawful [citations]; a fortiori, an arrest and search based on events as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity are unlawful.” The majority concede (ante, pp. 794-795) that Officer Aumond’s “entry into each car was, under numerous cases, a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 19, of the California Constitution.” Under the authorities discussed herein, both those searches were unlawful.6
*807When the evidence discovered by means of the illegal entries is excluded, there is not a sufficient basis to support the indictment. It follows that the trial court properly suppressed the evidence and dismissed the charges against defendant, and the order appealed from should be affirmed in its entirety.
Tobriner, J., and Sullivan, J., concurred.

In a footnote at this point (p. 357, fn. 1) we warned that “giving substantial weight to the perceived crime rate of an area may constitute a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“The officer called to defendant, approached him, and requested identification. Defendant produced his driver’s license, which appeared to be in order, and said he was waiting for a friend. In response to additional questions, defendant stated that he did not own the Pontiac and that ‘he thought the car belonged to the person he was waiting for but upon checking he found it wasn’t.’ Defendant also stated that other friends were waiting for him at a cafe located approximately one block from the parking lot.” (Ante, p. 791.)

It bears emphasizing that this testimony was the only evidence offered in support of that belief. Clarifying the point, defense counsel asked Officer Aumond, “When you took the flashlight, you looked in the Pontiac, you didn’t see anything in the Pontiac that appeared to have been tampered with, did you?” The officer acknowledged that the glove compartment was not open, and he could not see any dangling wires indicating that a radio or stereo set might have been taken. The inquiry concluded:
“Q. Now, and there was nothing that you could observe from the outside of the car that in any way indicated that there was anything tampered with in that Pontiac; is that correct? A. That is correct.”

The belief may also be reasonable when it fairly appears the vehicle has been stolen or abandoned. (See, e.g., People v. Grubb (1965) 63 Cal.2d 614, 618 [47 Cal.Rptr. 772, 408 P.2d 100].) Such was the case in People v. Drake (1966) 243 Cal.App.2d 560 [52 Cal.Rptr. 589], which the majority deem “virtually indistinguishable” from the case at bar. A careful reading of Drake, however, shows its distinction. There the automobile was found by the police in a service road between 6 and 7 a.m.; it was illegally parked several feet from the curb; although no one was in the vicinity, one of the car doors was ajar; and the registration card was illegally positioned so as not to be legible from outside the vehicle. In those circumstances it was not unreasonable for the officers to suspect the vehicle might have been “stolen and hurriedly abandoned.” (Id. at p. 564.) But no such facts were shown here: the Pontiac was *805lawfully parked in a public lot; its doors, although unlocked, were closed; and while no registration card was apparently visible, the statute imposing that requirement had been repealed four years before the events here in question (see People v. Superior Court (1972) supra, 7 Cal.3d 186, 193, fn. 5). In these circumstances it is understandable that Officer Aumond not once testified he believed the Pontiac had been stolen or abandoned.

Officer Aumond testified he did not smell the marijuana until after he had entered the car.' We may not speculate whether he might have smelled it if he had simply opened the door and rolled up the window. Our concern is whether the search was constitutional, not whether the same evidence would have been discovered if a constitutional path had been followed.

The majority’s partial affirmance, sustaining the order appealed from insofar as it suppressed the evidence discovered in the Porsche, only emphasizes the weakness of their position. Most of the circumstances deemed suspicious in analyzing the search of the Pontiac were present also in the search of the Porsche: defendant was still *807found “in the parking lot at night”; it was still true that some of the nearby businesses had recently been burglarized; defendant gave the same “elaborate” explanation for being there; and Officer Aumond testified there were also “dust disturbances” resembling handprints on the driver’s door of the Porsche. Why then do the majority hold the search of the latter to be illegal? It is emphasized (ante, p. 797) that the Porsche did not appear “unsecured” and no items of personal property were visible on its seats. But as the presence of those factors does not furnish probable cause to search, their absence is likewise legally insignificant.
The majority also assert that defendant was not “near or about” the Porsche when Officer Aumond arrived on the scene. But the officer testified the distance from the Pontiac to the Porsche was “a little bit over the width of a parking space, I’d say, at the outside 10 feet.” At that brief distance of a few paces, defendant could equally well have been said to be “near or about” the Porsche too. In drawing a constitutional line between these two parked cars, the majority is simply dispensing justice by the length of the chancellor’s foot.