Court Opinion

ID: 9726544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:56:20.998036+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:28.264906
License: Public Domain

ROTH, P. J.
I dissent.
In my opinion there would have been no charge and there could have been no conviction of illegal possession of drugs for sale without the admission of the evidence illegally seized under the doctrine announced by Mozzetti v. Superior Court, 4 Cal.3d 699 [94 Cal.Rptr. 412, 484 P.2d 84], made retroactive and applicable to this case by Gallik v. Superior Court, 5 Cal.3d 855 [97 Cal.Rptr. 693, 489 P.2d 573]. The right to object to the illegally seized evidence rests “. . . 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.” (People v. Martin, 45 Cal.2d 755, 761 [290 P.2d 855]; People v. Gonzales, 17 Cal.App.3d 848, 853, fn. 9 [95 Cal.Rptr. 291].)
I have noted the argument of the majority that an officer’s mistake in announcing the wrong offense at the moment of arrest does not vitiate an otherwise lawful arrest. However a search, initially unlawful, is not validated by what it turns up. At bench, the officer was asked whether “. . . when you checked the car subsequent to the arrest of the defendants, you were doing that to inventory it for impound purposes. . .” (italics added) to which the answer was “yes.” The majority by their decision are not only converting an unlawful inventory search into a search properly incident to a lawful arrest—a kind of retroactive vindication denied the police—but in addition violate the latter and spirit of the Mozzetti decision in upholding a search that was unquestionably what the officer said it was: an inventory search.
In addition, I agree with the argument made by appellant that the issue of search having been litigated on the inventory impound theory, it is unfair to switch theories in an effort to uphold the judgment of the trial court. (Reinert v. Superior Court, 2 Cal.App.3d 36, 42 [82 Cal.Rptr. 263].) The appellant in the circumstances had no opportunity to cross-examine and develop a record on an issue which was not litigated below.
In our first opinion filed April 5, 1971 (pre-Mozzetti—Mozzetti was *718filed April 30, 1971), we spent approximately three pages justifying the search as art inventory search which the officer who said it was and which Mozzetti, supplemented by Gallick, now makes illegal.
Considerations of fundamental fairness and adherence to the record at bench dictate that this court decide the propriety of the impound-inventory procedure solely on the basis of the Mozzetti decision, and in my opinion, the Supreme Court’s order transferring this case for reconsideration requires this court to decide it on the basis of Mozzetti.
Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied January 26, 1972.