Court Opinion

ID: 9844108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:57:44.835446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:27.975669
License: Public Domain

TOBRINER, Acting C. J.
I dissent. In my view the police officer’s warrantless seizure of defendant’s purse from within her car was too remote from her arrest properly to be considered “incident” to that arrest under *466pr e-Chimel,1 as well as post -Chimel, standards, and thus I believe the evidence obtained as a result of that seizure must be suppressed.
The standards governing “incidental” searches and seizures conducted prior to Chimel were authoritatively set forth by this court in People v. Cruz (1964) 61 Cal.2d 861, 865-866 [40 Cal.Rptr. 841, 395 P.2d 889]: “[A] search is not ‘incidental to an arrest’ unless it is limited to the premises where the arrest is made; is contemporaneous therewith; has a definite object; and is reasonable in scope.” (Italics added.)2 In applying this standard in the Cruz case itself, this court held that where a defendant was arrested in a car in front of an apartment, a contemporaneous search of the apartment was not confined to the “premises” of the arrest and could not be justified as incident thereto. Similarly, in People v. Henry (1967) 65 Cal.2d 842, 845-846 [56 Cal.Rptr. 485, 423 P.2d 557], we rejected a claim that, when the police searched defendant’s second floor hotel room after arresting him a few steps from the hotel entrance, the search had been “limited to the premises” of the arrest. (See also People v. Sandoval (1966) 65 Cal.2d 303, 307 fn. 1 [54 Cal.Rptr. 123, 419 P.2d 187]; People v. Cockrell (1965) 63 Cal.2d 659, 667 [47 Cal.Rptr. 788, 408 P.2d 116].)
In the instant case defendant was apparently arrested in front of the store by the store manager and was then taken to his office inside the store. The subsequent seizure of her purse from the interior of an automobile located in the parking lot behind the store was clearly not “limited to the premises where the arrest [was] made,” as that area has been defined by the above precedent.
The majority, however, ignore the explicit limitations of the controlling Cruz standard and instead rely on a series of cases which suggest that under pre-Chimel law the geographic limits applicable to incidental searches of automobiles differ from the limits governing incidental search of residences. Although the overwhelming majority of these decisions reach this conclusion without resort to rational justification, the explanation proffered *467in one opinion, People v. Fritz (1967) 253 Cal.App.2d 7, 14-16 [61 Cal. Rptr. 247], reveals the confusion apparently underlying all of these cases.
In Fritz the court explained that this differential treatment, permitting “incidental” searches of distant automobiles under circumstances in which a search of a residence would clearly be “too remote,” was principally justified by the “great mobility” of cars. (253 Cal.App.2d at p. 15.) The mobility of cars has, of course, been the significant factor involved in the judicial determination that police officers possessing probable cause to search an automobile need not always seek a warrant; if the police were required to go to a magistrate to obtain a warrant before instituting the search, the car might be removed from the jurisdiction before the police returned. (See Chambers v. Maroney (1970) 399 U.S. 42, 48-52 [26 L.Ed.2d 419, 426-428, 90 S.Ct. 1975]; Carroll v. United States (1925) 267 U.S. 132, 153 [69 L.Ed. 543, 551, 45 S.Ct. 280, 39 A.L.R. 790].)3
A search incident to an arrest, however, does not involve the element of mobility at all. Prior to Chimel, this type of warrantless search had been permitted as “reasonable,” not because of the “emergency” or “necessity” justification underlying Chambers and Carroll, but rather because it was strictly confined both spatially and temporally.4 The potential mobility of an item outside of these restricted limits bears absolutely no relation to the “incidental search” concept, and thus cannot rationally justify a modification of the Cruz limitations.
The United States Supreme Court has never intimated that incidental searches of automobiles are to be judged by different standards than any other incidental searches. On the contrary, the court has consistently utilized one common test—“immediate vicinity”—in evaluating all incidental searches of automobiles (Preston v. United States (1964) 376 U.S. 364, 367-368 [11 L.Ed.2d 777, 780-781, 84 S.Ct. 881]; Dyke v. Taylor Implement Co. (1968) 391 U.S. 216, 220 [20 L.Ed.2d 538, 542, 88 S.Ct. 1472]) and residences (e.g., James v. Louisiana (1965) 382 U.S. 36, 37 [15 L.Ed.2d 30, 31, 86 S.Ct. 151]) alike. Indeed, in its recent decision in *468Chimel v. California (1969) 395 U.S. 752 [23 L.Ed.2d 685, 89 S.Ct. 2034], the court, after conducting a thorough review of all of its “incidental search” precedents (395 U.S. at pp. 755-764 [23 L.Ed.2d at pp. 689-695]), relied heavily on Preston v. United States (1964) 376 U.S. 364, 367 [11 L.Ed.2d 777, 780, 84 S.Ct. 881], a case involving an automobile search, to clarify the permissible limits of any search incident to an arrest. (395 U.S. at pp. 763-764 [23 L.Ed.2d at pp. 694-695].) Thus, although differences between automobiles and residences may be relevant to some aspects of the Fourth Amendment protection (see Chambers v. Maroney (1970) 399 U.S. 42 [26 L.Ed.2d 419, 90 S.Ct. 1975]), these differences do not justify an alteration of the permissible geographic limits of searches incident to an arrest. (See also Lucas v. Mayo (S.D.Tex. 1963) 222 F.Supp. 513, 515-516; Conti v. Morgenthau (S.D.N.Y. 1964) 232 F.Supp. 1004, 1008.)
As the United States Supreme Court recently observed 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.” (Italics added.) The defendant in the instant case certainly maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the contents of the purse which she left in the interior of her automobile. (Cf. People v. Edwards (1969) 71 Cal.2d 1096, 1104 [80 Cal.Rptr. 633, 458 P.2d 713] (warrantless search of trash can violated the Fourth Amendment).) The majority fail to explain why this expectation of privacy should be subject to greater intrusion through an incidental search than any other personal privacy interest.
I conclude that the officer’s seizure of defendant’s purse cannot be justified as “incidental” to defendant’s arrest, and that the People have failed to meet their burden of demonstrating proper justification for the warrantless seizure. I would suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the seizure.
Peters, J., and Sullivan, J., concurred.

Chimel v. California (1969) 395 U.S. 752 [23 L.Ed.2d 685, 89 S.Ct. 2034], Under the standards established in Chimel, the instant search could not possibly be justified as incident to an arrest. Chimel declares that the permissible scope of a search incident to an arrest extends only to “the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’—construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” (395 U.S. at pp. 763, 766 [23 L.Ed.2d at pp. 694, 695].) Without question the defendant’s car and its contents were not within such an area of “immediate control” in the instant case.

“A search ‘can be incident to an arrest only if it is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest.’ ” (James v. Louisiana (1965) 382 U.S. 36, 37 [15 L.Ed.2d 30, 31, 86 S.Ct. 151]; Stoner v. California (1964) 376 U.S. 483, 486 [11 L.Ed.2d 856, 859, 84 S.Ct. 889].)

The People do not contend that the officer had probable cause to seize defendant’s purse, and thus the action cannot be justified under the Chambers-Carroll rationale. (See Dyke v. Taylor Implement Co. (1968) 391 U.S. 216, 220 [20 L.Ed.2d 538, 542, 88 S.Ct. 1472].)

In Chimel the court made clear that an “incidental” search can now only be justified by (1) the need to protect an officer from an arrestee’s use of weapons and (2) the interest in preventing an arrestee from destroying or concealing evidence within his reach. As such the court held that an “incidental” search is reasonable only if it is limited to “a search of the person arrested and the area within his reach. . . .” (Chimel v. California. (1969) 395 U.S. 752, 766 [23 L.Ed.2d 685, 696, 89 S.Ct. 2034].)