Court Opinion

ID: 9544363
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:55:06.9532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:12:51.341576
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, J.
I concur in the judgment and I agree with those portions of the majority opinion which hold that the affidavit in support of the search warrant was constitutionally sufficient, that the police officers in executing the warrant were properly excused from complying with the requirements of section 1531 of the Penal Code, and that the warrant itself did not authorize a search of the automobile. Furthermore, I agree that the warrantless search of the automobile was proper since in my view the officers had reasonable cause to believe that the automobile contained contraband. (Chambers v. Maroney (1970) 399 U.S. 42, 52 [26 L.Ed.2d 419, 428-429, 90 S.Ct. 1975]; People v. Laursen (1972) 8 Cal.3d 192, 201 [104 Cal.Rptr. 425, 501 P.2d 1145].)
I do not join, however, in the majority’s gratuitous attempt to establish a hierarchy of Fourth Amendment protection dependent upon fictional levels or degrees of privacy which persons supposedly assign to houses, cars, trunks and trash cans. No authority is cited to support this thesis. Rather, the majority choose to group various staté and federal court decisions into categories that, one is asked to assume, constitute de facto support of this broad proposition.1 I believe that such a classification j-n terms of expectation of privacy is confusing, if not inappropriate, and tends to dilute, if not annul, our responsibility to determine whether, under the circumstances of each case, a warrantless search is unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In addition, I must express grave concern over the implications that arise from the majority’s view that “[u]pon completing this search the officers ‘were entitled to use their reasoning faculties upon all the facts of which they had previous knowledge’ (Carroll v. United States (1925) supra, 267 U.S. 132, 161 [69 L.Ed. 543, 554]) and to conclude that defendant *887had probably hidden the easily movable stolen property in his automobile.” (Ante, at p. 885.) I fear that this broad statement may be interpreted by some as authorizing the wholesale transformation of unsuccessful searches by warrant into fishing expeditions in other areas not covered by the warrant.
It is clear that the police had reasonable cause to believe that defendant’s automobile contained contraband. This belief, however, did not automatically emerge full-blown from the fruitless search of the house pursuant to the warrant. Prior to that search, the police had substantial information through a corroborated tip that defendant possessed stolen bonds and other contraband that he wished to sell. On the basis of this information, the police secured a warrant to search those places over which the defendant had control—his apartment and appurtenances—in which the contraband was likely to be found. The vehicle, registered to defendant and parked close to the apartment, was certainly a likely hiding place for the easily movable stolen property that defendant was trying to sell,2 and undoubtedly it could have been included in the warrant had the application so requested. (Cf. United States v. Combs (6th Cir. 1972) 468 F.2d 1390, 1392.) Apparently, the officers did not learn of the automobile’s existence until they had searched the house.3 At that point they possessed the same probable cause to search the car which they had possessed at the time of application for the warrant. Acting upon that probable cause the officers proceeded to search the automobile. Their search was not made any more reasonable by the fact that their search of the house was unsuccessful. To so reason, as the majority seem to do, would be to advance the dubious thesis that an unsuccessful search of one-potential location of contraband under a suspect’s control—be it house, boat, cabin, car or garbage can—generates probable cause for the search of other locations, even though probable cause therefor may not be independently present under the circumstances. In short, I see no need for the elaborate categorization constructed by the majority. The case at bench merely adds up, to this: the police, based upon the information in their possession, had probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of defendant’s automobile upon discovering its existence.
Wright, C. J., and Tobriner, J., concurred.

Indeed, cases upholding warrantless searches of automobiles have distinguished searches of residences not on the basis of any difference in expectation of privacy, but because of exigent circumstances—the mobility of the automobile and the danger that, without immediate search or impoundment, the evidence would be lost. (Chambers v. Maroney, supra, 399 U.S. 42, 51 [26 L.Ed.2d 419, 428]; People v. Laursen, supra, 8 Cal.3d 192, 201.)

The automobile was surely as likely a hiding place as the “trash cans, storage areas, garages and carports" which were mentioned in the warrant.

Contrast Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971) 403 U.S. 443, 460-462 [29 L.Ed.2d 564, 579-580, 91 S.Ct. 2022], where the Supreme Court noted that the police “had known for some time of the probable role of the Pontiac car in the crime.” (Id. at p. 460 [29 L.Ed.2d at p. 579].) The officers should thus have secured a warrant before searching the vehicle.