Court Opinion

ID: 9549031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:12:24.109373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:45.747124
License: Public Domain

RICHARDSON, J.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority purports to “limit [its] consideration” (ante, pp. 724-725) of the issues in this case to the single question whether the officer’s search of defendant’s tote bag was an “accelerated booking search,” because this point supposedly was the only one raised in the Attorney General’s opening brief on appeal. I find it unnecessary to reach the “accelerated booking search” issue because the search clearly was a proper search incident to defendant’s valid arrest. (New York v. Belton (1981) 453 U.S. 454 [69 L.Ed.2d 768, 101 S.Ct. 2860].) Contrary to the majority’s suggestion, the record demonstrates beyond question that the People raised and relied on the “search incident to arrest” theory from the outset in this case.
Thus, following the preliminary examination, and during oral argument regarding defendant’s motion to suppress, the parties focused upon the only *729two possible theories supporting the search, namely, that it was either an accelerated booking search (citing People v. Bullwinkle (1980) 105 Cal.App.3d 82 [164 Cal.Rptr. 163]), or a search incident to arrest (citing People v. Pace (1979) 92 Cal.App.3d 199 [154 Cal.Rptr. 811]). Indeed, in its brief to the superior court, the People stated that “The only issue before this Court is whether the search of defendant’s ‘handbag’ . . . incident to his arrest for a violation of Penal Code 647(f) was lawful. The People respectfully submit that it was.” (Italics added.)
The fact that the Attorney General emphasized the “accelerated booking search” theory in his Court of Appeal brief is hardly surprising. The United States Supreme Court had not yet decided Belton, and pre-Belton decisions (including Pace, supra) regarding searches incident to arrest seemed adverse to the People’s position. Once Belton was decided, however, the Attorney General called our attention to that case in a supplemental brief.
Moreover, analytically, an “accelerated booking search” is merely one form of a search incident to arrest, rather than an entirely different variety of search as the majority suggests. By relying upon the former theory, the Attorney General was arguing, in effect, that the search herein was a valid search incident to an arrest which contemplated eventual booking. In making such an argument, surely the Attorney General cannot reasonably be held to have waived his right to rely upon any subsequent controlling cases (such as Belton) which upheld searches incident to arrest whether or not booking was contemplated.
Thus, the majority seriously errs in declining to examine whether the search at issue was proper under Belton, to which question I now turn.
In Belton, an officer stopped a vehicle for speeding; after discovering evidence of marijuana use, he arrested the four men in the car for possession of marijuana. A search of an envelope found on the floor of the car and marked “supergold” revealed marijuana, and the officer proceeded to search the persons of the arrestees and the entire passenger compartment. He discovered cocaine in a zippered pocket of Belton’s jacket which was found lying on the back seat.
The Belton court noted at the outset that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures can be realized in practical effect only if the courts fulfill their obligation to guide the conduct of police by developing “straightforward rule[s], easily applied, and predictably enforced.” (453 U.S. at p. 459 [69 L.Ed.2d at p. 774].) After adopting the factual assumption that items within the interior of automobiles generally are within the reach of its occupants, the court proceeded to hold that the *730search was valid because “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile. [K] It follows from this conclusion that the police may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment, for if the passenger compartment is within reach of the arrestee, so also will containers in it be within his reach. [Citation.] Such a container may, of course, be searched whether it is open or closed, since the justification for the search is not that the arrestee has no privacy interest in the container, but that the lawful custodial arrest justifies the infringement of any privacy interest the arrestee may have.” (Id., at pp. 460-461 [69 L.Ed.2d at p. 775], fns. omitted.)
In an important footnote, the court squarely rejected the argument that the jacket search was invalid because it was conducted after the officer had assumed exclusive control of the jacket, stating simply that “under this fallacious theory no search or seizure incident to a lawful custodial arrest would ever be valid; by seizing an article even on the arrestee’s person, an officer may be said to have reduced that article to his ‘exclusive control.’ ” (Id., at p. 462, fn. 5 [69 L.Ed.2d at p. 776].)
It will readily be seen that the facts of the case at bar clearly invite application of the principles of Belton: Laiwa’s stuffbag was plainly within the area of Laiwa’s immediate control at the time of its seizure. As in Belton, the searching officers reasonably could have suspected that the bag held contraband. Hence, the reasoning of Belton would allow it to be searched without a warrant. If confirmation of this reasoning is necessary, it is clearly provided by the following dictum from the high court’s even more recent holding in United States v. Ross (1982) 456 U.S. 798, 823 [72 L.Ed.2d 572, 592, 102 S.Ct. 2157]: “A container carried at the time of arrest often may be searched without a warrant and even without any specific suspicion concerning its contents.”
On the record before us, it cannot be determined with any certainty whether or not defendant actually had access to the interior of the stuffbag at the time the search was conducted, because he made no attempt to gain such access. He was handcuffed, and he may even have been sitting in the back seat of the patrol car at the time the search occurred. Nevertheless, the search should be upheld. Laiwa was arrested for the crime of being under the influence of PCP in a public place; the commission of that crime is commonly accompanied by evidence in the form of the drug itself on a defendant’s person or in his immediate vicinity. Therefore, the arresting officers had the authority to conduct a reasonably intensive search of both the arrestee’s person and all items found within the area of his immediate *731control in order to disclose any weapons or evidence which might be located in that area. Such a result represents a sensible accommodation between privacy interests and the needs of legitimate law enforcement activities. The Fourth Amendment requires only that searches be “reasonable” in scope. By any rational definition of the term, the present search was reasonable.
I would reverse the order granting defendant’s motion to suppress.