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People v. Gardea

California Court of Appeals, Sixth District
Apr 22, 2009
No. H033050 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 22, 2009)

Opinion


THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SALVADOR GARDEA, JR., Defendant and Respondent. H033050 California Court of Appeal, Sixth District April 22, 2009

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

Santa Clara County Super. Ct. No. CC790052

Premo, J.

The People bring this appeal from an order dismissing narcotics charges against defendant Salvador Gardea, Jr., after the trial court granted Gardea’s motion to suppress evidence seized from his person during a traffic stop. (Pen. Code, § 1538.5.) We conclude that the trial court properly granted the motion to suppress, since the evidence was discovered only after the traffic stop was unduly prolonged by the police officer. Accordingly, we will affirm the order dismissing the charges.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

Officer Richard Bailey of the Santa Clara Police Department testified at the hearing on the motion to suppress that on December 15, 2007, at approximately 9:00 a.m., he was on patrol when he observed a vehicle that did not have a front license plate. Bailey activated his emergency light and stopped the vehicle.

Bailey approached the vehicle and asked the driver, Gardea, for his driver’s license, which Gardea produced. Bailey explained to Gardea the reason for the stop, and asked if he was on probation or parole. Gardea responded that he was not. At some point, a second patrol car arrived, and since there were no passengers or other people in the area, the second officer stood on the sidewalk on the passenger side of Gardea’s vehicle.

Bailey took Gardea’s license back to his patrol car and initiated a records check, which revealed that Gardea’s license was valid and confirmed that he was not on probation or parole. However, the records check also revealed that Gardea was a sex offender registrant under Penal Code section 290 and a narcotics registrant under Health and Safety Code section 11590. The dispatcher’s response came in approximately two minutes after Gardea was first stopped.

Bailey walked back to Gardea’s vehicle, but did not return his license. The officer then asked Gardea where he was coming from, to which Gardea replied that he had come from the Motel 6. Bailey knew that the Motel 6 was a location where drug users congregated. Because Gardea was a narcotics registrant, Bailey next asked if Gardea had anything illegal on him at that time. Gardea paused, looked around the vehicle, looked back at Bailey and said, “No.” As he believed Gardea was lying, Bailey repeated the question. This time, Gardea admitted that he had a pipe on him, which Bailey presumed to mean an opium pipe. The officer asked Gardea if he could search his person for the pipe, and Gardea agreed. Bailey estimated that this entire exchange lasted approximately one minute or less.

Gardea stepped out of the car and told Bailey the pipe was in the front waistband of his pants. As Bailey began the search, Gardea advised him that the pipe had slipped down his pants leg. When Bailey lifted Gardea’s pants leg, a pipe fell to the ground. Bailey retrieved the pipe from the ground and noted that it had a white residue inside it which is consistent with smoking methamphetamine.

Continuing the search, Bailey discovered a small plastic baggy in Gardea’s right front pants pocket. Bailey removed the baggy, which contained a white, crystalline powder, from Gardea’s pocket, and Gardea stated that it was “just a small amount of meth.” Bailey arrested Gardea at 9:11 a.m., 10 minutes from the time Gardea was pulled over.

Bailey did not issue Gardea a traffic citation for the missing license plate, nor did he ever ask him any questions about that plate.

Gardea was charged by information with one felony count of possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine) (Health & Saf. Code, § 11377, subd. (a)) and one misdemeanor count of possession of controlled substance paraphernalia (a pipe) (id., § 11364). The information further alleged that Gardea had one prior strike conviction (Pen. Code, § 667, subds. (b)-(i)), and a prison prior (id., § 667.5, subd. (b)).

Gardea successfully moved to suppress evidence pursuant to Penal Code section 1538.5. The trial court, after expressing its “philosophical disagreement” with the relevant appellate decisions, stated that the “officer had the full right to call in to check the license, validity of his license and so forth; and during the time that the officer might have been waiting for that to come back he could have any conversation he wanted to. But it appears to [be] the law, once the information comes back, that the questioning has to stop and the citation be issued or a warning given.” All charges against Gardea were subsequently dismissed. The People timely appealed.

II. Discussion

A. Standard of review

In reviewing a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress, we defer to the trial court’s factual findings where supported by substantial evidence. (People v. Leyba (1981) 29 Cal.3d 591, 596-597.) However, we exercise independent judgment to determine whether, on these facts, the search and seizure was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Id. at p. 597.)

B. The trial court did not err in finding that Gardeas detention was unduly prolonged

The People contend that the trial court erred when it found that the officer unduly prolonged the detention when he questioned Gardea after the records check had been completed. The questioning lasted less than a minute and did not have an appreciable effect on the total length of the encounter.

The temporary detention of individuals during the stop of a motor vehicle by police constitutes a “seizure” of “persons” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, even though the detention is only for a brief period and for a limited purpose. (Whren v. United States (1996) 517 U.S. 806, 809-810.) “A detention that is unreasonably prolonged amounts to a de facto arrest that must be supported by probable cause to be constitutionally valid.” (People v. Gomez (2004) 117 Cal.App.4th 531, 538, citing Dunaway v. New York (1979) 442 U.S. 200, 212.) There is no set time limit beyond which a detention is automatically deemed “unreasonably prolonged”; instead, each case must be judged on its individual circumstances. (Williams v. Superior Court (1985) 168 Cal.App.3d 349, 358.) However, a traffic stop will be found unreasonably prolonged if it extends past the time necessary for the officer to discharge the duties incurred by virtue of the stop. (People v. McGaughran (1979) 25 Cal.3d 577, 586.)

In McGaughran, a police officer stopped a car going the wrong way on a one-way street. The officer obtained and examined the driver’s licenses of the defendant and his passenger. Instead of promptly releasing the men with a citation or warning, the officer detained them for an additional period while he initiated a warrant check which revealed that both men were subject to arrest warrants. The officer duly arrested them, searched them incident to their arrests and found evidence eventually used to convict the defendant of burglary. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction, finding that an officer cannot prolong a detention based on a traffic violation for the purpose of running a warrant check. (People v. McGaughran, supra, 25 Cal.3d at p. 586.)

In Williams, a police officer, suspecting that the defendant was involved in recent robberies, stopped the defendant’s car after he committed a traffic violation. Although the officer promptly obtained all the information needed to prepare a citation, he never commenced writing one. Instead, he began to investigate extraneous matters. The court held that the officer’s investigation into the unrelated matters had unnecessarily extended the traffic detention and therefore the evidence should have been suppressed. (Williams v. Superior Court, supra, 168 Cal.App.3d at p. 359.) The Williams court said that “[t]he clear intent of McGaughran is to preclude officers from imposing a general crime investigation upon the detained traffic offender that is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to completion of the officer’s traffic citation duties unless the officer has an independent reasonable suspicion that the driver has committed unrelated offenses.” (Id. at p. 358.)

Here, as in Williams, at the time he began his unrelated inquiry, the officer had all the information necessary to either cite or warn Gardea for not having a front license plate. Pursuant to the records check, the officer knew that Gardea had provided a valid driver’s license and had truthfully answered his question regarding his parole and probationary status. The only remaining duties related to the traffic stop were to issue a citation or a warning to Gardea. However, since the officer did neither of those things, the time necessary for the officer to discharge his duties related to the traffic stop expired. The subsequent questioning, in the absence of an independent reasonable suspicion that Gardea had committed unrelated offenses, unreasonably prolonged the detention.

C. The prolonged detention was not supported by probable cause

The People argue, citing Atwater v. City of Lago Vista (2001) 532 U.S. 318 (valid arrest for seatbelt violation) and People v. McKay (2002) 27 Cal.4th 601 (valid arrest for riding bicycle against flow of traffic), that probable cause supported Officer Bailey’s conclusion that a traffic violation had occurred, therefore the Fourth Amendment would not have precluded him from making a full custodial arrest of Gardea for a missing front license plate. Any lesser degree of detention preceding Gardea’s actual arrest, even if prolonged, was therefore constitutional.

We disagree. The People contend that the holdings in Atwater and McKay have “undermined” McGaughran. In a case which post-dates both Atwater and McKay, McGaughran was cited by our Supreme Court for the proposition that an officer may temporarily detain an offender at the scene for the period of time necessary to discharge the duties that he incurs by virtue of the traffic stop. (See, e.g., People v. Carter (2005) 36 Cal.4th 1114, 1141.) Atwater and McKay apply when an officer has decided to make a custodial arrest for a traffic violation and proceeds to search incident to that arrest. That is not what occurred in this case. Though Gardea was initially detained due to a missing front license plate, it was not until the records check was complete that Bailey began his unrelated inquiry. Only after Gardea advised Bailey that he had come from the Motel 6, a “known” hangout for drug users, did Bailey entertain the suspicion that Gardea, a narcotics registrant, had committed an unrelated offense. Prior to that time, the circumstances did not add up to a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity necessary to support a detention.

To Officer Bailey and, presumably, other members of the Santa Clara Police Department.

Bailey could have asked Gardea questions unrelated to the missing license plate while he wrote a traffic citation for that offense. Questioning during a routine traffic stop on a subject unrelated to the purpose of the stop is not itself a Fourth Amendment violation. (People v. Brown (1998) 62 Cal.App.4th 493, 499.) However, “this rule must be applied in light of the companion rule that the length of a detention must be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” (Ibid.) The length of the detention here exceeded what was reasonably related to the detention’s lawful purpose.

D. Gardeas consent was the product of illegal detention and was thus involuntary

Finally, the People contend that Gardea consented to the search of his person, and therefore, the evidence seized was admissible. We disagree.

“[I]t is axiomatic that a consent to search produced by an illegal arrest or detention is not voluntary.” (People v. Valenzuela (1994) 28 Cal.App.4th 817, 833.) As discussed above, Gardea had been illegally detained by Bailey at the time he consented to a search. Consequently, his consent was not voluntary and cannot support the admission of the evidence seized.

III. Disposition

The order is affirmed.

WE CONCUR: Rushing, P.J., Elia, J.


Summaries of

People v. Gardea

California Court of Appeals, Sixth District
Apr 22, 2009
No. H033050 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 22, 2009)
Case details for

People v. Gardea

Case Details

Full title:THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SALVADOR GARDEA, JR., Defendant…

Court:California Court of Appeals, Sixth District

Date published: Apr 22, 2009

Citations

No. H033050 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 22, 2009)