Court Opinion

ID: 9738253
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:46:43.384334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:04.884747
License: Public Domain

PIERCE, P. J.
I dissent.
The majority opinion expands the scope of the search warrant beyond that justified by the affidavits which supported its issuance.
Courts in their appraisal of affidavits filed for such purpose take into consideration-—and rightly so—that they are not prepared with the forethought, care and deliberation one may expect in the drafting of other legal instruments. Frequently they are prepared by laymen and usually—if they are to be effectual—they must be prepared in haste. But there are limits to tolerance. In drawing inferences, magistrates and courts may not take off into the wild blue yonder—not if any semblance of obedience to Fourth Amendment rights is to be observed.
The logic of the majority opinion breaks down in its next-to-last paragraph. After having demonstrated that no inferences of communal living can be drawn from use of the term “hippies,” the majority opinion then states that the affidavits showed a “single establishment.” That is just what the affidavits did not show. Both the prosecutor and the Attorney General recognized this and tried to correct the deficiency by attaching meaning to the term 11 hippies. ’ ’
There is no basis in the affidavits for the majority’s statement that the campsites were separated by space alone, for the affidavits described neither the topography of the ranch nor the physical relationship of the campsites to the main house. This was pertinent information if the house was a suspected distribution center for the ranch as the majority assumes. Nor is there a basis for the majority’s statement that there were no separate tenancies. The affidavits reveal the officers’ ignorance of the living arrangements and familial relationships of the inhabitants of the ranch. The majority opinion acknowledges that ignorance but concludes that there was probable cause to believe that the contraband might be found anywhere on the ranch. This conclusion does not logically follow from the officers’ ignorance of the living patterns of the inhabitants. Rather than stating that the officers should have ob*158tained information linking the contraband to each person or place to be searched, the majority has declared that' “ [t]he entire ranch was suspect. ’ ’
The majority opinion, in order to fill the gap between that declaration and the officers’ apparent ignorance, asserts that Camara v. Municipal Court (1967) 387 U.S. 523 [18 L.Ed.2d 930, 87 S.Ct. 1727], is authority for the proposition that, in determining whether there is probable cause to make a search, the investigatory difficulties of law enforcement officers may be weighed against the breadth and character of the search to be made. Camara does not support the use to which the majority puts it. If that were indeed the law, the Fourth Amendment would bar few searches. The Fourth Amendment always hampers, and often frustrates, the investigatory aims of law enforcement. Gamara dealt with administrative searches, and specifically disclaimed any intention to affect the rules applicable to searches in the enforcement of the criminal law.1 Camara allowed a lesser standard of probable cause to justify administrative searches in the enforcement of housing, fire, health, etc., codes. Camara did not weigh enforcement difficulties against intensity of the search in deciding what constitutes probable cause. Eather it allowed a lesser standard of probable cause to justify an administrative search where there was unanimous consent in the administrative field that there could not be an acceptable level of code enforcement under the traditional probable cause test, and where the search involved a lesser invasion of personal privacy and dignity because it would focus on house facilities such as gas and plumbing systems and on possible accumulation of garbage and debris rather than on the person and his more personal property.2 Thus these factors in Camara were added together and not weighed against each other as stated by the majority.
The decision in this case is far-reaching. Six hundred forty acres, besides being a square mile, is also a section of land. In the less populated areas and in the mountains of California there are no doubt thousands of “Old Quadros Ranches’’ where people either with the express or tacit permission of the owners hunt, fish, and camp. To the many persons pitching *159camp on such lands, their camps—under the majority opinion—are no longer their castles.
A petition for a rehearing was denied June 17, 1969. Friedman, Acting P.J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Respondents’ petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 16, 1969. Peters, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

“. . . Such an approach neither endangers time-honored doctrines applicable to criminal investigations nor makes a nullity of the probable cause requirement in this area. ” (18 L.Ed.2d at p. 941.)

See LaFave, Administrative Searches and the Fourth Amendment, 1967 Supreme Court Review 1, 11-20.