Court Opinion

ID: 9548710
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:07:32.352846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:20.276068
License: Public Domain

PETERS, J.
I dissent. The arrest and search here involved were clearly illegal, and violative of defendant’s constitutional rights.
Five police officers and a parole officer went to the residence of Rose Juarez, where she was living with her six young children, and where defendant was visiting, to arrest him for a parole violation. So far as the evidence shows, the officers then knew that defendant had a narcotic conviction, was on parole, and that he had missed a Nalline test required as a condition of parole. They also had reason to believe that he was visiting Mrs. Juarez, his former common-law wife. The evidence does not show that they knew or had reason to believe that defendant was presently in possession of narcotics, or had recently associated with known narcotic addicts.
Two officers went to the front door of the Juarez residence, and four to the rear. One of the officers knocked on the front door and he and his companion thereafter entered, admittedly *394without making any attempt to comply with section 844 of the Penal Code.1 One of the officers who had gone to the rear door saw defendant “moving rapidly through the kitchen.” Without knocking, and without any attempt to comply with the quoted code section, he opened the door, rushed in, grabbed the defendant, and took him into custody. Thereafter, the officers conducted a thorough search, and after an hour and a half, discovered some heroin as described in the majority opinion.
Both entries, that at the front door, and that at the rear, were illegal. So far as the rear entry is concerned, there is no evidence that the defendant had been in recent possession of narcotics, or that the officers reasonably believed that he had, or was about to destroy any contraband that the officers did not reasonably know that he possessed. Certainly, because a narcotic parolee misses a Nalline test, there is no reasonable cause to believe that he is presently in possession of narcotics, and observing him “moving rapidly through the kitchen” when there is a knock on the front door by someone unknown to him, is not a basis for a reasonable belief that he was about to destroy contraband that the officers had no reason to believe he possessed. The conclusion by the majority that this evidence justified noncompliance with section 844, supra, finds no support in the evidence.
It is true that literal compliance with the provisions of that section has not always been required. However, until the opinion today, to justify noncompliance, the officers must reasonably believe that to comply with the section would endanger their personal safety, would possibly permit the defendant to escape, or that defendant might destroy or secrete contraband that the officers reasonably believed he possessed. That is as far as cases such as People v. Maddox, 46 Cal.2d 301 [294 P.2d 6], go. In the instant case none of the six officers was in peril. There was no danger that the defendant might escape. Police officers, in force, were at both the front and rear exits of the building. There could not have been a reasonable belief that defendant was about to destroy or secrete evidence, because the officers had no reasonable basis for a belief that he was in possession of contraband. It is only by the wildest surmise or conjecture that it can be inferred *395that a narcotic parole violator seen to move rapidly through the kitchen of a house he is visiting is about to harm the police, is about to escape, or is about to destroy evidence which the officers had no reason to believe that he possessed. To hold that the forcible entry through the. rear door here involved without compliance with the code section was valid, is simply to write the section out of the code. This, I submit, is not a proper judicial function.
The entry through the front door was equally, if not more, illegal. Most of the evidence seems to indicate that both the front and rear doors were entered simultaneously without giving the warnings required by the section to legalize the entry. If this is so, the front door entry was clearly illegal, because the officers there neither saw nor heard anything. There is some evidence that when the officers broke into the house through the rear entrance, one of the officers unlocked the front door and admitted the officers standing there. Obviously, if the officers who entered from the rear entered illegally, as they did, they could not legalize the front entry by simply opening the front door. The violation of section 844 is clear and obvious, and cannot be condoned. The police conduct here is precisely the kind of improper police conduct that that section, and the exclusionary rule, were intended to prevent.
It must be remembered that the Juarez residence was not defendant’s home. The prosecution offered no evidence to refute the corroborated testimony of defendant that he actually lived three blocks away, and that defendant visited the Juarez residence almost daily to see his children. Under these circumstances defendant indisputably has the right validly to assert that the constitutional rights of Mrs. Juarez were violated.2
The prosecution lays much stress on the claimed consent to the search by Mrs. Juarez. There is grave doubt that a consent given under the circumstances here, even if the entry were legal, which it was not, can be deemed to have been voluntary (People v. Michael, 45 Cal.2d 751, 754 [290 P.2d 852]). Be that as it may, it is settled that a consent given immediately after an illegal entry is not a valid consent. It is tarnished with the same illegality as the illegal entry. (People v. Haven, 59 Cal.2d 713 [31 Cal.Rptr. 47, 381 P.2d 927].)
The fact that defendant was a parole violator does not alter *396the result. Whatever disabilities he may be subjected to because of bis parole status (see People v. Denne, 141 Cal.App.2d 499 [297 P.2d 451]; People v. Contreras, 154 Cal.App.2d 321 [315 P.2d 916]; People v. Hernandez, 229 Cal.App.2d 143 [40 Cal.Rptr. 100]) the point is that the police obtained the evidence by violating the constitutional rights of Mrs. Juarez, and, therefore, of defendant. As was said in People v. Martin, 45 Cal.2d 755, 761 [290 P.2d 855], the right to object to the use of illegally secured evidence rests “not on a violation of his . . . [defendant’s] own constitutional rights, but on the ground that the government must not be allowed to profit by its own wrong and thus encouraged in the lawless enforcement of the law.
“Since all of the reasons that compelled us to adopt the exclusionary rule are applicable whenever evidence is obtained in violation of constitutional guarantees, such evidence is inadmissible whether or not it was obtained in violation of the particular defendant’s constitutional rights.”
The arrest and search were clearly illegal. For that reason I would reverse the judgment.
Peek, J., concurred.

 That section requires that: “To make an arrest, ... a peace officer, may break open the door or window of the house in which the person to be arrested is, or in which they have reasonable grounds for believing him to be, after having demanded admittance and explained the purpose for which admittance is desired.”

 People v. Martin, 45 Cal.2d 755 [290 P.2d 855], holds that a defendant as a visitor has the legal standing to assert that the constitutional rights of his host were violated.