Court Opinion

ID: 9725821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:13:17.66555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:20.291995
License: Public Domain

JEFFERSON (Bernard), Acting P. J.†
I dissent.
The majority rejects the minor’s contention that the trial court erred in precluding the minor from further questioning of Mr. Alig on cross-examination concerning details of the latter’s observations of the pouch which was in the minor’s possession. It is the minor’s contention that the trial court’s ruling deprived him of his right to have illegally obtained evidence suppressed. The trial court based its ruling upon the proposition that Mr. Alig was a private citizen and any search of the minor’s person by him would not subject the minor to an unconstitutional search or seizure; that the cross-examination of Mr. Alig was thus on irrelevant matters.
I disagree with the majority in its holding that the trial court ruled correctly in declaring irrelevant the cross-examination of Mr. Alig which was sought by the minor. Certainly several cases have stated that the federal and state constitutional provisions against unreasonable searches and seizures apply only to conduct of the government and its agents and not to the conduct of private individuals. (See, e.g., People v. McKinnon (1972) 7 Cal.3d 899 [103 Cal.Rptr. 897, 500 P.2d 1097]; Dyas v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 628 [114 Cal.Rptr. 114, 522 P.2d 674]; and People v. Sahagun (1979) 89 Cal.App.3d 1 [152 Cal.Rptr. 233].)
But it is also abundantly clear that a person being searched by a private individual is entitled to the protection of the constitutional provisions against unreasonable searches and seizures if the private individual doing the search has certain connections or a nexus with *151government personnel. This is the substance of the holding of People v. Zelinski (1979) 24 Cal.3d 357 [155 Cal.Rptr. 575, 594 P.2d 1000].
The Zelinski court upheld the right of a defendant to be free from a search by privately employed security personnel. In Zelinski, the search of defendant was performed by security personnel of a department store. In holding that the search violated defendant’s constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure, the Zelinski court emphasized that the store’s security forces were not acting in a purely private capacity “but rather were fulfilling a public function in bringing violators of the law to public justice.” (Zelinski, supra, 24 Cal.3d 357, 366.) One of the reasons which the Zelinski court set forth for its decision was “that in our state today illegal conduct of privately employed security personnel poses a threat to privacy rights of Californians that is comparable to that which may be posed by the unlawful conduct of police officers.” (Id. at p. 366.) (Italics added.)
I agree with the majority that the Zelinski case cannot be construed as a holding that a defendant has a constitutional right to be free from a search by a private individual under any and all circumstances. The essential rationale of Zelinski is that the department store security personnel, although private individuals, were acting in the interests of the state in conducting a search of the defendant in that case. It was this action by private citizens in the interests of the state that brought into play the constitutional provisions against unreasonable search and seizure.
In Zelinski, the court observed that, “[although past cases have not applied the constitutional restrictions to purely private searches, we have recognized that some minimal official participation or encouragement may bring private action within the constitutional constraints on state action.” (Zelinski, supra, 24 Cal.3d 357, 367.) In buttressing its holding, the Zelinski court pointed out that in United States v. Price (1965) 383 U.S. 787 [16 L.Ed.2d 267, 86 S.Ct. 1152], our nation’s high court had made it clear that a private citizen may act under “color of law” without being an officer of the state and, by so doing, may be held accountable along with officers of the state for acts which state officials are not legally entitled to commit.
The majority in today’s decision emphasizes that the Zelinski court made a clear-cut differentiation between a private citizen performing a *152search of another in vindication of self-interest or the interest of another citizen as contrasted with a search by a private citizen of another citizen that is designed to further a state interest. Thus, the search of the defendant in Zelinski by the department store security guards came under the search and seizure proscriptions of the federal and state Constitutions because the security guards sought more than the simple vindication of the merchant’s private interest and the exercise of self-help to obtain a return of the stolen merchandise—they sought to further the state interest of bringing to account alleged violators of the law.
In seeking to distinguish the case at bench from the factual situation presented in Zelinski, the majority concludes—but erroneously so in my opinion—that private citizen Alig was acting in a purely private capacity and was not utilizing the coercive power of the state to further a state interest. The majority also concludes erroneously that, while the store detectives in Zelinski were fulfilling a public function in bringing violators of the law to justice, private citizen Alig in the instant case was acting solely to protect his neighbor’s home and not to fulfill any public function. These distinctions which the majority makes I consider to be unfounded and lacking in support from the record or any reasonable inferences therefrom.
I do not consider it reasonable to interpret private citizen Alig’s actions as designed only to protect his neighbor’s home and thus to bring about the vindication of another citizen’s private interest. In my view, private citizen Alig was fulfilling a public function to the same extent as the store detectives in Zelinski were fulfilling a public function. Alig was not seeking merely to protect his neighbor’s home but to have the minor Bryan apprehended as a law violator. It is of significance that Alig stated, in his testimony without equivocation, that he asked the minor Bryan to wait for the police. Apparently Bryan obeyed this request up to a point, since Alig also testified that, “[b]y the time the sheriffs pulled up, he took off on his bike and they stopped him just across the street.”
In my view, private citizen Alig was unquestionably acting “under color of law” and was seeking to further a significant state interest by trying to have the minor Bryan detained until the police could arrive and place him under arrest. It is to be noted that the Zelinski court *153made the observation that, “[b]y holding defendant for criminal process and searching her, they [the store’s security personnel] went beyond their employer’s private interests.” (Zelinski, supra, 24 Cal.3d 357, 367.) Likewise, it can be concluded, with equal justification and validity, that in the case at bench, private citizen Alig went beyond his neighbor’s private interest by directing Bryan, the minor, to remain for the police to arrive and place him under arrest.
The majority suggests that it is desirable for ordinary private citizens to be alert to public criminal activities in their own neighborhoods. I agree that such alertness is desirable, but I do not agree that such alertness can validly encompass the vigilante-type activity of private citizens who seek to take the law into their own hands and hold and search suspected law violators. Such vigilante-type activity of private citizens must necessarily activate the doctrine of “private action within the constitutional constraints on state action.” (Zelinski, supra, 24 Cal.3d 357, 367.)
When a private citizen seeks to restrain and search an alleged law violator for the purpose of bringing the violator to justice through an arrest by police to follow, he should be held to be engaged in illegal conduct which violates the constitutional proscriptions against unreasonable search and seizure. Such illegal conduct of ordinary private citizens should be held to pose “a threat to privacy rights of Californians that is comparable to that which may be posed by the unlawful conduct of police officers” (Zelinski, supra, 24 Cal.3d 357, 366), to the same extent that the conduct of privately employed security personnel in Zelinski was held to pose such a threat.
Far from contravening public policy as the majority suggests, the application of the exclusionary rule to the factual situation of the instant case would promote the public interest by precluding the threat to privacy rights of all Californians and restrain abuses by law enforcement personnel and by private vigilante citizens acting as law enforcement personnel and with the same purpose in mind as that of true law enforcement personnel.
Although not mandated by California’s Zelinski case and the United States Supreme Court Price case, the view I espouse in this dissent is not precluded by either the holdings or the rationale of Zelinski or Price. On the contrary, it represents a reasonable and logical applica*154tion of the legal principles which produced the actual holdings of Price and Zelinski.
I would thus reverse the order sustaining the petition alleging burglary.
A petition for a rehearing was denied October 10, 1980, and appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied November 5, 1980.

 Retired Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal sitting under assignment by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.