Court Opinion

ID: 9745371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:51:52.665645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:23.898342
License: Public Domain

HULL, J., Dissenting.
Because, as a practical matter, the stated reason for the rule may have become lost in the era of cross-designation and, now, court unification, I question the vitality of Lilienthal’s (People v. Lilienthal *494(1978) 22 Cal.3d 891 [150 Cal.Rptr. 910, 587 P.2d 706]) holding that a magistrate’s ruling on a motion to suppress is not reviewable if it is not raised again in the superior court. Even so, while we may not be bound by a holding of the Supreme Court premised on court structures and responsibilities that now have been altered in ways that render the rule arguably artificial, the rule should be changed by the Supreme Court, if it is to be changed at all. There may be a reason for it. Therefore, I agree that defendant’s challenge to the search of her purse was waived for purposes of appeal when her attorney failed to raise the issue in the superior court.
I also agree that defendant’s attorney’s failure to raise the matter of the search in superior court, under these circumstances, necessarily places into question the effective assistance of defendant’s counsel. Since there could have been no sound tactical reason for failing to pursue a motion which, if successful, would have resulted in a dismissal of the charges brought against defendant, and since it must be said that a reasonably competent attorney would not have waived the search issue by failing to raise it in superior court, we must decide whether defendant’s counsel’s failure to preserve the issue for purposes of appeal was to defendant’s prejudice. The question of prejudice, in turn, depends on the lawfulness of Deputy Donald Bricker’s search of defendant’s purse. If the search was lawful, the motion to suppress properly was denied and defendant was not prejudiced by her counsel’s failure to preserve a point that was destined to be lost. If the search was unlawful, the evidence in defendant’s purse should have been suppressed and, so far as we can tell from this record, the charges dismissed. In that case, her attorney’s failure to save this issue for further review left defendant without the effective assistance of counsel. Because the majority and I disagree on the lawfulness of the search, I dissent.
A detailed, chronological recitation of the events of May 8, 1997, is necessary to a correct resolution of the issue before us.
In the early morning hours of May 8, a resident of a Sacramento neighborhood became suspicious of a van parked across the street from his home and called the police. The person making the report “believed there was possibly burglary activity about to take place” because the van did not belong in the neighborhood and there were people inside of it. At approximately 1:26 a.m. Deputy Bricker was sent to investigate.
Bricker found the van and, because the tires on the right side of the van rested on the sidewalk, decided the van was parked in violation of the Vehicle Code. By this time another deputy had arrived to support Bricker.
Bricker knocked on the side door of the van “to gain the attention of anyone that would be inside.” Defendant opened the side door and asked the *495deputies what they wanted. Bricker told defendant the reason he and the other deputy were there and then asked defendant what she was doing in the neighborhood. Bricker noticed there was a mattress on a frame of some sort and a person, who turned out to be Scott LeBlanc, in the back of the van. Defendant did not immediately respond to Bricker’s question, nor did Leblanc.
Bricker then asked the two for identification because he wanted to determine whether either person was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant and whether either had a valid driver’s license. Defendant and LeBlanc were still in the van and Bricker “probably” was using his flashlight to shine inside the van.
Bricker was concerned for his safety and the safety of the other deputy at this time because “[ijt’s [a] large passenger type van with a bed in the rear which could easily conceal weapons of any kind, and they had not been searched for weapons.”
Bricker allowed defendant to look around on the floor of the van for her identification but, “after several minutes” or “a couple of more minutes” she could not find any. Bricker asked both defendant and LeBlanc to get out of the van in order to search them for weapons and detain them in the patrol car. They did and Bricker conducted a patdown search of both of them. Bricker found nothing and was able to determine that defendant had no identification “on her person.”
Bricker put defendant and LeBlanc in the back of his car at which time defendant gave the deputies her name and her date of birth and told them she owned the van. She also said that her identification was on the floorboard or in the visor at the front of the van. At some time while defendant was in the back of the patrol car she explained her presence in the neighborhood by saying that “they both had [a] separate boyfriend, girlfriend[], and they were there on a rendezvous because they didn’t want to be seen together.”
Bricker told defendant he was going to search her van for her identification. She objected.
Bricker “initially went inside the van to do a quick cursory search for any weapons that would be in the immediate presence or out in the open, and then walked out, back out of the van.” Bricker was concerned that someone might be under the bed, although he did not look there first. He did not see any weapons in the van; he did see, however, a purse on the floor of the van that he believed belonged to defendant.
*496After this first cursory search for weapons, Bricker had a discussion with his partner about the purse and then went back into the van to look for identification in the purse, on the floorboard and in the visor area. After retrieving the purse from the van, Bricker did not give it to defendant but instead looked into it himself. He saw a glass pipe and, upon further search, he found marijuana, methamphetamine and defendant’s California identification card.
During the course of these events, defendant was “somewhat hesitant to listen to what [Bricker] had to say.” Bricker concluded defendant did not feel that the deputies had a right to ask about her presence in the neighborhood.
Bricker wrote on the arrest report that defendant was sober and he did not see anything that led him to believe defendant was “under the influence.” He did not, however, conduct a complete examination of defendant to determine whether she was under the influence of narcotics.
When asked whether anything about defendant’s conduct made him feel that defendant was carrying any kind of weapon or was otherwise dangerous, Bricker answered, “No.”
My principal disagreement with the majority opinion lies with the analytical framework the majority adopts to sustain the search of defendant’s purse.
First, the majority concludes that in light of the traffic citation Deputy Bricker had a right to require defendant to produce identification. Second, based on a concern for officer safety, Bricker was justified in conducting the search for identification himself. As to the second part of their analysis, the majority resorts to officer safety as a rationale not only to support a search of the van, but also the contents of defendant’s purse. Citing Wyoming v. Houghton (1999) 526 U.S. 295 [119 S.Ct. 1297, 143 L.Ed.2d 408] for support, the majority holds that, if Bricker could search the van for weapons, on that basis alone, he could search for weapons and identification in defendant’s purse, which was in the van. This, according to the majority, is because “it is well established that containers in a vehicle are searchable if the vehicle is searchable . . . .” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 487.) But the law of search and seizure has not yet gone that far.
Wyoming v. Houghton held that the existence of probable cause to search a vehicle justified the search of any portion of the vehicle or any container therein that might hold contraband or evidence of the suspected criminal activity. It is fundamentally different to say that a concern for officer safety *497that justifies the search of a vehicle itself justifies, in all circumstances, the search of any place or anything in the vehicle that might contain a weapon. Once an officer has probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, as in Wyoming v. Houghton, the justification for the search is established and the search proceeds. A search justified by a concern for officer safety or the safety of the public must be based on circumstances known to the officer at the moment of the search, circumstances that can change as an encounter with a suspect progresses.
In Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1 [88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889] the United States Supreme Court held “. . . where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous; where in the course of investigating this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries; and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him.” (Id. at pp. 30-31 [88 S.Ct. at pp. 1884-1885, 20 L.Ed.2d at p. 911], italics added.)
Thus, a reasonable belief that a car’s occupants are committing or have committed a crime and that they are armed and dangerous at one point in an investigation may later be dispelled by other facts discovered as the investigation proceeds. If the search follows the. discovery of new facts that reasonably should dispel the officer’s suspicions, one cannot properly reach back to an earlier set of facts to justify the search.
While it often will be true that an officer’s reasonable suspicion, formed early in a confrontation, that someone might be armed and dangerous will continue throughout the confrontation to the time of the search, it is not always so. In my view, that which the majority sees as a well-established rule is not established at all except where a vehicle search is based on probable cause. I cannot agree that the search of defendant’s purse was justified so long as the search of the van was justified. One must give independent consideration to the search of the purse itself and the officer’s knowledge at the time of the search.
As the earlier quotation from Terry v. Ohio demonstrates, it has been the law since at least 1968 that an officer, suspicious of criminal activity, has the right to conduct a limited search of a person only if the officer entertains a reasonable suspicion or belief, based upon the facts known to him at the *498time, that the person may be armed and presently dangerous. The search can extend to any area that might contain a weapon to which a suspect may have access. (See Michigan v. Long (1983) 463 U.S. 1032 [103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201].) Thus, in addition to a reasonable belief of criminal activity, a reasonable belief that a suspect is armed or could immediately become armed has been a constant in the law as it relates to searches based on officer safety. Notwithstanding the majority’s lengthy quotation from Wyoming v. Houghton concerning a reduced expectation of privacy in the contents of a motor vehicle (maj. opn., ante, at p. 490), the law in this regard has not changed.
The officer’s belief that a suspect is armed and dangerous is necessary even for a search as limited as a patdown of outer clothing and it is certainly necessary to a holding that the search of this defendant’s purse was lawful.
I cannot find in this record facts that would have led Deputy Bricker reasonably to believe that the defendant had a weapon in her purse at the time he searched it.
At the time he looked into her purse, Deputy Bricker knew defendant and LeBlanc were in a van that was parked illegally on a sidewalk in a neighborhood other than their own at 1:30 in the morning. He knew that defendant had initially refused to explain her presence there and had been unable on her first attempt to produce identification, all of which was of course suspicious of something.
He also knew that, with his acquiescence, she had rummaged around on the floor of the van looking for identification and had not produced a weapon. He knew that he had both occupants out of the van, that he had searched them for weapons and they had none. He knew that he had searched the van once for weapons or other occupants and a second time for identification and had found no weapons and no other occupants. He did not find tools or other items that might have suggested the occupants had committed or were about to commit a crime of violence or a crime that would be likely to entail the use of weapons.
Officer Bricker also knew that defendant had given him a name and date of birth and a legally innocent explanation for defendant’s and LeBlanc’s presence in the van in that neighborhood at that time of night, which explanation, whether believable or not, was supported at least by the presence of a bed in the back of the van. While defendant was “somewhat hesitant” to listen to what Bricker had to say, she was not abusive and Bricker did not see or hear anything that led him to believe defendant was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
*499Finally, Deputy Bricker himself said there was nothing about defendant’s conduct that made him think defendant was carrying any kind of weapon or was otherwise dangerous.
These facts are not sufficient to support a reasonable belief by Deputy Bricker that defendant had a weapon in her purse and was presently dangerous at the time he conducted his search.
If the majority opinion is correct and this record is sufficient to support a reasonable belief there were weapons in the van which ipso facto justified a search of defendant’s purse, we effectively have arrived at a point where a reasonable belief of any criminal activity equates to a reasonable belief that suspects are armed and dangerous, a point where a reasonable belief of criminal activity in or about a vehicle alone will justify a full search of the vehicle for weapons and, therefore, the vehicle’s occupants for weapons and whatever is within the vehicle that could contain a weapon. At least in cases involving vehicles, if the majority is correct, in the words of Terry v. Ohio, an officer now need only conclude that “criminal activity may be afoot” (392 U.S. at p. 30 [88 S.Ct. at p. 1884, 20 L.Ed.2d at p. 911]) to conduct a search for weapons. The majority has effectively dispensed with the further requirement that, in order to conduct a lawful search, an officer must reasonably believe also that the person with whom the officer is dealing is armed or capable of becoming so and presently dangerous. While a concern for officer safety is “ ‘both legitimate and weighty,’ ” (Maryland, v. Wilson (1997) 519 U.S. 408, 412 [117 S.Ct. 882, 885, 137 L.Ed.2d 41], quoting Pennsylvania v. Mimms (1977) 434 U.S. 106, 110 [98 S.Ct. 330, 333, 54 L.Ed.2d 331]), and while I do not underestimate or underappreciate the risks facing law enforcement officers every time they stop a vehicle, I do not believe Fourth Amendment cases by which we are bound allow so much. I would reverse the judgment.
A petition for a rehearing was denied August 23, 1999, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied November 10, 1999. Kennard, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.