Court Opinion

ID: 9551974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:02:48.850408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:16.230500
License: Public Domain

CLARK, J.
Our deference toward the United States Supreme Court is fast becoming a shell game. Opinions not commanding a majority of that court are held controlling; authoritative opinions adhered to by a majority of the court are rejected. In reliance on mere dictum in the plurality opinion in Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971) 403 U.S. 443 [29 L.Ed.2d 564, 91 S.Ct. 2022], the majority interpret the search and seizure clauses of the federal and California Constitutions to prohibit warrant-less arrests within the home in the absence of an emergency, overturning “numerous prior decisions of this court and the California Courts of Appeal.” (Ante, p. 276, fn. 7.) By contrast, when the United States Supreme Court authoritatively construed the Fourth Amendment to permit full body search of a person subjected .to custodial arrest, regardless of his offense or whether he is ultimately to be incarcerated (United States v. Robinson (1973) 414 U.S. 218 [38 L.Ed.2d 427, 94 S.Ct. 467]; Gustafson v. Florida (1973) 414 U.S. 260 [38 L.Ed.2d 456, 94 S.Ct. 488]), a majority of this court nevertheless interpreted virtually identical language in the California Constitution to impose a “more exacting standard.” (People v. Brisendine (1975) 13 Cal.3d 528 [119 Cal.Rptr. 315, 531 P.2d 1099]; People v. Norman (1975) 14 Cal.3d 929 [123 Cal.Rptr. 109, 538 P.2d 237].) To give but one more example, when the United States Supreme Court authoritatively construed the Fifth Amendment to permit impeachment of a defendant with his extrajudicial statements obtained in violation of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436 [16 L.Ed.2d 694, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 10 A.L.R.3d 974] (Harris v. New York (1971) 401 U.S. 222 [28 L.Ed.2d 1, 91 S.Ct. 643]), the same majority of this court nevertheless interpreted virtually identical language in the California Constitution to prohibit such impeachment. (People v. Disbrow (1976) ante, p. 101 [127 Cal.Rptr. 360, 545 P.2d 272].)
*278Today, because it happens to coincide with their own view, the majority resort to mere dictum in the plurality opinion in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra. However, as will be explained below, when they disagreed with another aspect of the same opinion, a majority of this court rejected it noting that the issue had been considered by an equally divided court, “and hence was not actually decided.” (People v. McKinnon (1972) 7 Cal.3d 899, 911 [103 Cal.Rptr. 897, 500 P.2d 1097], italics in the original.) Moreover, contrary to the representation made by the majority, the dictum upon which they now rely was- not joined by five members of the high court. It appears in Part II D of the opinion prepared for the court by Justice Stewart and signed by Justices Douglas, Brennan and Marshall. Justice Harlan concurred in the judgment and in Parts I, II D, and III of that opinion; however, his concurring opinion made it clear that he expressed no view on the question before us.1 Furthermore, the dictum in the plurality opinion no longer expresses the view of even four members of the court,- Justice Douglas having retired in the interim.2
Actually, rather than supporting the majority’s position, the reasoning of the plurality opinion in Coolidge supports the conclusion that, because of the ever-present danger of escape arising from man’s characteristic “mobility,” entry into a residence to effect a probable cause arrest need not be delayed until a warrant is obtained.
*279In Coolidge, the court considered the scope of the “automobile exception” to the general rule that probable cause to believe contraband will be found concealed in certain property does not justify a warrantless search that is neither consensual nor incidental to a lawful arrest, absent an emergency. The ground for this exception was reiterated in Chambers v. Maroney (1970) 399 U.S. 42, 51 [26 L.Ed.2d 419, 428, 90 S.Ct. 1975]: “Carroll [v. United States (1925) 267 U.S. 132 (69 L.Ed. 543, 45 S.Ct. 280, 39 A.L.R. 790)] holds a search warrant unnecessary where there is probable cause to search an automobile stopped on a highway; the car is movable, the occupants are alerted, and the car’s contents may never be found again if a warrant must be obtained. Hence an immediate search is constitutionally permissible.”
In Chambers v. Maroney, supra, police stopped a vehicle based on eyewitness descriptions of robbers and their getaway car. The occupants were arrested, but the car was not searched at the scene. Instead, it was driven to the police station where a later search revealed weapons and incriminating evidence hidden under the dashboard. Affirming a denial of federal habeas corpus after convictions of robbery, the high court held that a search—reasonable at the time and place the car was stopped— does not become unreasonable because conducted later at the police station.
In Coolidge, after arresting a murder suspect in his home, police seized his automobile and searched it later at the police station, finding evidence that the victim had been inside the vehicle. The members of the court signing the plurality opinion found the automobile exception to the warrant requirement inapplicable because there was no real danger that the vehicle would be moved before a search warrant could be obtained. The murder suspect had been arrested. His wife, the only other adult occupant of the house had been informed by the police that she had to spend the rest of the night elsewhere and that she could not use the car. Two policemen then drove her to the house of a relative in another town, and they stayed with her until midnight, long after the car had been towed to the police station. In the interim, the car had been parked in the driveway of the Coolidge residence, which was guarded throughout the night by two policemen.
In People v. McKinnon noted above, this court declined to follow the portion of the Coolidge plurality opinion “which purports to narrow the Carroll-Chambers rule.” (7 Cal.3d at p. 911.) In McKinnon, this court held that a chattel consigned to a common carrier for shipment may lawfully be searched upon probable cause to believe it contains *280contraband. In People v. McGrew (1969) 1 Cal.3d 404 [82 Cal.Rptr. 473, 462 P.2d 1], this court had reached the opposite conclusion on the ground that, the chattels being in the custody of the airlines and the airlines being under no obligation to ship them before a search warrant could be obtained, there was no likelihood that the chattels would be removed or the contraband contained therein destroyed. The officers having had time to obtain a search warrant but having failed to do so, their search of the chattels was ipso facto “unreasonable” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Noting that the intervening Chambers decision had rejected the same line of reasoning in the context of an automobile search, the McKinnon court declined to adhere to McGrew, concluding, that chattels consigned to a common carrier are no less movable than vehicles and that they are therefore subject to the same exception to the search warrant requirement.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Peters argued that Coolidge foreclosed application of the Carroll-Chambers rule in the circumstances of McKinnon. Anticipating the argument, the majority first distinguished Coolidge, then stated that—four justices having signed the opinion of the court in Coolidge, one justice (Harlan) having concurred in the judgment but having declined to join the pertinent part of the plurality opinion, and the remaining four justices having expressly disagreed with that portion of the plurality opinion—“It follows that the Carroll-Chambers issue raised by the plurality opinion in Coolidge was in fact considered by an equally divided court, and hence was not actually decided: under settled doctrine, the judgment of an equally divided United States Supreme Court ‘is without force as precedent.’ ” (People v. McKinnon, supra, 7 Cal.3d at p. 911.) In People v. Laursen (1972) 8 Cal.3d 192 [104 Cal.Rptr. 425, 501 P.2d 1145], relying on Chambers and refusing to follow Coolidge for the reasons stated in McKinnon, this court upheld the warrantless search of an automobile abandoned by robbers and transported to the police impound garage where it was searched hours later.
The point of this extended discussion is that the majority’s position is anomalous in the extreme. On the one hand, they hold that an automobile’s characteristic mobility justifies a warrantless search even if, as a practical matter, delaying the search to obtain a warrant would entail no risk because the vehicle is immobilized ,and secured by impoundment. On the other hand, they hold that police must not arrest a man in his home until a warrant is obtained even if, as here, the suspect is known to be armed and likely to flee, having just been visited by his victim and accused of the crime. An automobile is mobile only insofar as *281it is set in motion by a man. Nevertheless, in the circumstances of Coolidge, the majority would seize the car and allow the man to escape!
It is hoped that this anomaly does not spring from mistrust of a policeman’s motives.3 However, the majority appear to assume that the police chose to arrest defendant in his home, rather than elsewhere, in order to search his residence and seize evidence of the crime. However, the record is to the contrary. This is not a case in which police, having numerous opportunities to arrest a suspect at other locations, wait until he returns home. Defendant just happened to be at home when the police first received information providing probable cause to arrest him. Moreover, had defendant not retreated into the living room in an apparent attempt to secure the weapon or destroy the contraband behind the bar, the arrest would have occurred at the door, restricting the scope of the incidental search to the area within defendant’s reach. (Chimel v. California (1969) 395 U.S. 752 [23 L.Ed.2d 685, 89 S.Ct. 2034].) Finally, it is settled that “when it appears that the search and not the arrest was the real object of the officers in entering upon the premises and that the arrest was a pretext for or at most an incident of the search, the search is not reasonable within the meaning of the Constitution.” (People v. Edwards (1969) 71 Cal.2d 1096, 1110 [80 Cal.Rptr. 633, 458 P.2d 713]; see People v. Haven (1963) 59 Cal.2d 713, 719 [31 Cal.Rptr. 47, 381 P.2d 927]; see also Kaplan v. Superior Court (1971) 6 Cal.3d 150, 154 [98 Cal.Rptr. 649, 491 P.2d 1].) The rule announced today is unneeded to curb this or any other abuse.
I would affirm the judgment.
McComb, J., concurred.
Respondent’s petition for a rehearing was denied April 15, 1976. Clark, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

“Recent scholarship has suggested that in emphasizing the warrant requirement over the reasonableness of the search the Court has ‘stood the fourth amendment on its head’ from a historical standpoint. T. Taylor, Two Studies in Constitutional Interpretation 23-24 (1969). This issue is perhaps most clearly presented in the case of a warrantless entry into a man’s home to arrest him on probable cause. The validity of such entry was left open in Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499-500 (1958), and although my Brothers White and Stewart both feel that their contrary assumptions on this point are at the root of their disagreement in this case . . . the Court again leaves the issue open.. . . In my opinion it does well to do so. This matter should not be decided in a state case not squarely presenting the issue and where it was not fully briefed and argued. I intimate no view on this subject, but until it is ripe for decision, I hope in a federal case, I am unwilling to lend my support to setting back the trend of our recent decisions.” (403 U.S. at p. 492 [29 L.Ed.2d at p. 598] (Harlan, J„ concurring), italics added.)

The reliability of the dictum was further undercut recently by United States v. Watson (1976) 423 U.S. 411 [46 L.Ed.2d 598. 96 S.Ct. 820], In Watson, the court held that the Fourth Amendment permits a police officer to make a warrantless felony arrest in a public place even though the officer has an adequate opportunity to obtain a warrant after developing probable cause for arrest. Watson did not present the question whether warrantless probable cause arrests within the home are permissible in the absence of an emergency. (423 U.S. at pp. 418. fn. 6. 419-424 [46 L.Ed.2d at pp. 605, 609] (Stewart. J., concurring in the result) 423 U.S. at p. 433 [46 L.Ed.2d p. 614] (Powell, J„ concurring).) However, as the dissent pointed out, the reasoning of the Watson majority strongly suggests that the high court will eventually resolve this question in favor of the constitutionality of such arrests. (See 423 U.S. at pp. 453-455 [46 L.Ed.2d at p. 627] (Marshall, J„ dissenting).)

To condemn these good officers by associating their conduct with the tactics of totalitarian regimes—either past or present (see ante, p. 275)—is grossly unjust.