Court Opinion

ID: 9731360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:43:08.500355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:17.257893
License: Public Domain

AISO, J.
I respectfully dissent. In my opinion, the film was seized by virtue of an invalid warrant. The superior court expressly found that the magistrate issued the search (seizure) warrant relying solely upon the affidavit of Officer Serio. “It is elementary that in passing on the validity of a warrant, the reviewing court may consider only information brought to the magistrate’s attention.” (Aguilar v. Texas (1964) 378 U.S. 108, 109, fn. 1 [12 L.Ed.2d 723, 725, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1511, fn. 1].) Accordingly, this court held in People v. Thompson (1970) 6 Cal.App.3d 945 [86 Cal.Rptr. 327], that a warrant of arrest issued solely upon the basis of an insufficient affidavit was invalid. The language of subdivision (c) of section 1538.5 of the Penal Code that “[w]henever a search or seizure motion is made in the municipal . . . court as provided in this section, the judge or magistrate shall receive evidence on any issue of fact necessary to determine the motion” does not require a deviation from the Aguilar rule and compel our going beyond the affidavit itself to determine the validity of the search (seizure) warrant in this case.
Officer Serio’s affidavit fails to meet the requirements of In re Giannini (1968) 69 Cal.2d 563 [72 Cal.Rptr. 655, 446 P.2d 535], cert. denied 395 U.S. 910 [23 L.Ed.2d 223, 89 S.Ct. 1743], which holds that expert opinion testimony that the material in question is obscene, applying a contemporary statewide community standard, is a sine qua non. Even judges, it would appear, are not competent to determine the question of obscenity without the benefit of such expert testimony. Although my personal views were expressed in People v. Pinkus (1967) 256 Cal.App.2d Supp. 941, 947 [63 Cal.Rptr. 680], I now feel bound by In re Giannini, supra. (Auto Equity Sales, Inc. v. Superior Court (1962) 57 Cal.2d 450 [20 Cal.Rptr. 321, 369 P.2d 937].) The fact that we deal only with probable cause here does not eliminate the requirement of competent expert opinion testimony in my opinion, at least to the extent of informing the magistrate as to what the contemporary statewide community standard is. Officer Serio has not set forth facts sufficient to qualify himself as an expert in this regard. It is not an easy task to so qualify when even justices of the United States Supreme Court find the constitutional criteria of obscenity unclear.1 The *22demarcation between what is constitutionally protected and what is obscene is at best a “dim and uncertain line” (Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963) 372 U.S. 58, 66 [9 L.Ed.2d 584, 590, 83 S.Ct. 631, 637]). Furthermore, Officer Serio’s language that the motion picture “is obscene within the meaning of the Penal Code of the State of California and the opinions of the United States Supreme Court” strikes me as a studied circumvention of the opinions of our State Supreme Court and their teachings, which fact becomes patent by his statements made upon cross-examination in the oral testimony received upon issues other than his affidavit being insufficient on its face.
Thus the search (seizure) warrant was invalid in my opinion and the seizure of the film under that warrant illegal. Having reached this conclusion, it is unnecessary to consider the other points raised by the parties, other than the availability of the mandamus proceeding.
The mandamus proceeding should be available under the circumstances of this case. The method of appeal and return of the films seized as prescribed by section 1538.5 of the Penal Code, as analyzed in detail by the court’s opinion, is inadequate to provide the speedy remedy in this First Amendment area which is required by Freedman v. Maryland (1965) 380 U.S. 51 [13 L.Ed.2d 649, 85 S.Ct. 734]. Use of remedies other than the Penal Code section 1538.5 procedure is expressly reserved by subdivision (n) of section 1538.5. It provides in part: “Nothing contained in this section shall prohibit a person from making a motion, otherwise permitted by law, to return property, brought on the ground that the property obtained is protected by the free speech and press provisions of the federal and state constitutions.”
A petition for a rehearing was denied July 8, 1970, and the petition of the plaintiffs and appellants for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied September 11, 1970. Peters, J., and Mosk, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

Stewart, J. concurring in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) 378 U.S. 184, 197 [12 L.Ed.2d 793, 803-804, 84 S.Ct. 1676, 1683]: “I shall not today attempt further to define the *22kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; ,and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when l see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” (Italics added.)
Harlan, J. dissenting in Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966) 383 U.S. 413, 455 [16 L.Ed.2d 1, 26, 86 S.Ct. 975, 996]: “The central development that emerges from the aftermath of Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 [1 L.Ed.2d 1498, 77 S.Ct. 1304], is that no stable approach to the obscenity problem has yet been devised by this Court.”
Black, J. concurring and dissenting in Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts (1967) 388 U.S. 130, 171 [18 L.Ed.2d 1094, 1120-1121, 87 S.Ct. 1975, 2000]: “It strikes me that the Court is getting itself in the same quagmire in the field of libel in which it is now helplessly struggling in the field of obscenity. No one, including this Court, can know what is and what is not constitutionally obscene or libelous under this Court’s rulings.”