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People v. Martinez

California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, First Division
Jul 10, 2008
No. D051020 (Cal. Ct. App. Jul. 10, 2008)

Opinion


THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LARRY MARTINEZ, Defendant and Appellant. D051020 California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, First Division July 10, 2008

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Imperial County Super. Ct. Nos. JCF18436, JCF19069, Raymond A. Cota, Judge.

McDONALD, J.

At his preliminary hearing, and again prior to trial, defendant Larry Martinez moved to suppress evidence obtained by officers in connection with his arrest. The motions were denied. Martinez thereafter pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, and in a separate proceeding was found guilty by a jury of a second count of receiving stolen property. On appeal, Martinez asserts the evidence should have been suppressed because the initial detention was improper.

I

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. The Facts

We review the facts most favorably to the trial court's disposition of the suppression motion. (People v. Woods (1999) 21 Cal.4th 668, 673.)

At the preliminary hearing, Officer Holetz testified that on November 26, 2006, he received a radio dispatch stating a man was riding a quad on a public street in front of an apartment complex on West Malan Street. The dispatcher described the driver as a Hispanic man wearing a black beanie, a black jacket, and grey shorts. The dispatcher also stated the persons who had called in the report, Lisa D. and Shane D., stated the quad might be stolen because the driver was having trouble operating it.

A quad is an off-road vehicle.

Holetz arrived in front of the apartment complex in his police car and was joined by Officer Southward driving a separate police car. Holetz saw no one on a quad, and asked two individuals if they had seen a quad. The two individuals stated they had seen a quad being driven and directed the officers to the other side of the complex. When Holetz and Southward drove to the area, as directed by these witnesses, they found a quad parked in a parking stall. There was no one on top of the quad, but a group of people stood nearby. Holetz parked near the quad, and Southward parked his police car behind Holetz's car.

Martinez was among those persons congregated near the quad. He stood out because he was clad in a black beanie, a black jacket, and grey shorts. Holetz and Southward got out of their cars, and as they began to walk toward the group, Martinez started walking away. Southward recognized Martinez, stating, "that's Larry Martinez," and told Martinez to "come over here." Martinez stopped walking away and returned to the officers. Without further questioning or prompting, Martinez handed the quad's keys to Southward and claimed he had just bought it for $500.

At that point, another officer arrived and ran a check on the registration for the quad and determined it had been reported stolen. The owner subsequently arrived and confirmed it had been stolen. The officers arrested Martinez.

B. The Motions to Suppress

At the preliminary hearing, Martinez moved to suppress the evidence that he possessed the keys to the quad, arguing they were obtained as the result of an unlawful detention. The court denied the motion, concluding Martinez had not been detained but instead that officers were merely investigating the facts and their request to talk to Martinez was casual and did not involve any show of force or compulsion restraining Martinez's liberty.

Martinez renewed his motion to suppress by a pretrial motion, arguing (1) the officer who actually detained Martinez was Southward, who did not testify about the facts on which he relied for the detention, and (2) even if Southward were deemed to have been aware of the same facts as Holetz, there was insufficient cause to support the detention. The court again denied the motion, concluding the evidence showed Southward and Holetz were together acting as a team when they found the quad and stopped Martinez. The court further found there were sufficient facts to permit an investigative stop because the facts supported a reasonable suspicion an offense had been committed and Martinez was the perpetrator.

ANALYSIS

A police officer may stop and detain a person under the Fourth Amendment when the officer has specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the totality of the circumstances, give rise to a reasonable suspicion that the person was involved in criminal activity. (People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224, 231.) We conclude that, even assuming Southward's request to talk to Martinez amounted to a detention, the minimal detention was supported by a reasonable suspicion and did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

The court at the preliminary hearing found Southward, who apparently knew Martinez, made a casual request for Martinez to speak with them, and therefore there had been no detention. " '[T]here is nothing in the Constitution which prevents a [police officer] from addressing questions to anyone on the streets,' [citation]. Police officers enjoy 'the liberty (. . . possessed by every citizen) to address questions to other persons,' [citation], although 'ordinarily the person addressed has an equal right to ignore his interrogator and walk away.' [Citation.]" (United States v. Mendenhall (1980) 446 U.S. 544, 553.) "As long as the person to whom questions are put remains free to disregard the questions and walk away, there has been no intrusion upon that person's liberty or privacy as would under the Constitution require some particularized and objective justification." (Id. at p. 554.) "Our cases make it clear that a [Fourth Amendment] seizure does not occur simply because a police officer approaches an individual and asks a few questions. So long as a reasonable person would feel free 'to disregard the police and go about his business,' [citation] the encounter is consensual and no reasonable suspicion is required. The encounter will not trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny unless it loses its consensual nature . . . . '. . . Only when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a [person] may we conclude that a "seizure" has occurred.' " (Florida v. Bostick (1991) 501 U.S. 429, 434.) Here, the initial contact between Martinez and Southward contained a request to speak with Martinez, and there was no evidence the officers did anything to restrain Martinez's liberty in any way. Instead, Southward spoke casually, and applied no physical or verbal force that might have caused a reasonable person to feel compelled to respond. From all appearances, Martinez returned voluntarily, and nothing was done by Southward to alter the consensual tone of his request or to imply he would stop Martinez from simply continuing on his way. "The mere fact [Southward] might and probably would have stopped [Martinez] from leaving had he chosen to do so is legally irrelevant. That did not happen. And, of course, any uncommunicated subjective motivation entertained by [Southward] has no bearing on our analysis. [Citations.]" (People v. Bennett (1998) 68 Cal.App.4th 396, 402-403, fn. 5.)

The officers had specific articulable facts supporting a reasonable suspicion that an offense had occurred: police received reports from reports from Lisa D. and Shane D., from whom Holetz had previously received a reliable report concerning a stolen vehicle, stating a man was operating a quad on public streets in violation of the Vehicle Code. Additionally, there were specific articulable facts supporting a reasonable suspicion that the quad might be stolen because (1) the driver was unlawfully driving it on a public road (consistent with moving it from the owner's locale to the thief's locale) and (2) Lisa D. and Shane D. (who had owned quads in the past) perceived and reported the driver was having trouble operating it and that the driver's lack of facility could be attributable to it being stolen.

There were also specific articulable facts supporting a reasonable suspicion that Martinez was the person who had committed the driving offense and might have stolen it: he was standing near the quad with others when the officers arrived; he matched the description of the driver in four particulars (he was Hispanic and was wearing a hat, coat and shorts matching the clothing described in the dispatch); and he was the only member of the group who started to leave when the officers parked near the quad. Additionally, he engaged in suspicious behavior when the officers called him over: he offered (without knowing why the officers were there) an exculpatory explanation for driving the quad (claiming he bought it "from a guy" for $500) and then handed the key to the officers, which Holetz found unusual because "[i]t's not really common for individuals to hand keys over to us to their vehicles."

Martinez argues that, even if there were sufficient facts to support a reasonable suspicion of a Vehicle Code violation or theft, there were insufficient facts known to the police supporting a reasonable suspicion that Martinez was the driver of the quad, because the description of the driver was too vague to support the investigative detention under In re Eskiel S. (1993) 15 Cal.App.4th 1638. However, the court in Eskiel S. addressed a functionally anonymous tip of criminal activity, in which the only corroboration for the tip was the defendant's ethnicity and proximity to the area of the reported activity, and his attempt to avoid the police. The court first concluded the defendant's flight provided no basis for the detention. The court then concluded the description was too general to provide corroboration of the information in the tip, and therefore there was no reasonable basis to detain the defendant. (Id. at pp. 1642-1644.) In contrast, the "tip" in this case was shown to have come from a source previously shown to have been reliable, and involved a description of the suspect more particularized than his mere ethnicity. Moreover, to the extent Eskiel S. held that evasive conduct by a suspect must be disregarded in assessing whether the police have reasonable grounds to detain, that aspect of Eskiel S. was subsequently overruled sub silencio by People v. Souza, supra, 9 Cal.4th 224. The Souza court, which evaluated whether "the Fourth Amendment permits treating flight from a police officer as a suspicious circumstance even though there may be some innocent explanation for the flight, and whether flight must be combined with other objective factors to warrant a temporary detention" (id. at p. 233), concluded that "even though a person's flight from approaching police officers may stem from an innocent desire to avoid police contact, flight from police is a proper consideration--and indeed can be a key factor--in determining whether in a particular case the police have sufficient cause to detain." (Id. at p. 235.) Souza held that evasive conduct may be considered in conjunction with all of the other facts to assess " 'the totality of the circumstances--the whole picture' to determine whether a particular intrusion by police was justified" (id. at p. 239), and that the totality of facts--including evasive conduct when police made their presence known to the defendant--can "justif[y] a brief, investigative detention to enable the officer to resolve the ambiguity in the situation and to find out whether the activity was in fact legal or illegal." (Id. at p. 242.)

The totality of the circumstances here--the report of an illegal use of a quad, the fact the driver lacked facility operating it, the description matching Martinez's gender, ethnicity and clothing, and his evasive behavior when police arrived--justified the officers' effort to "resolve the ambiguity in the situation" by Southward's request (made in a casual and nonconfrontational manner) that Martinez speak with them. When Martinez then engaged in additionally suspicious behavior (i.e. focusing his comments on the quad and offering the key to officers), the officers were entitled to detain Martinez for the few additional minutes necessary to confirm the status of the quad, and to thereafter arrest Martinez when they confirmed it had been stolen. The court correctly concluded that, even if the request to talk to Martinez rose to the level of a brief detention, there were specific articulable facts supporting the detention.

DISPOSITION

The judgment is affirmed.

WE CONCUR: NARES, Acting P. J., O'ROURKE, J.


Summaries of

People v. Martinez

California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, First Division
Jul 10, 2008
No. D051020 (Cal. Ct. App. Jul. 10, 2008)
Case details for

People v. Martinez

Case Details

Full title:THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LARRY MARTINEZ, Defendant and…

Court:California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, First Division

Date published: Jul 10, 2008

Citations

No. D051020 (Cal. Ct. App. Jul. 10, 2008)