From Casetext: Smarter Legal Research

People v. Norwood

California Court of Appeals, Second District, Eighth Division
Apr 15, 2009
No. B210242 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 15, 2009)

Opinion

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. BA336110, Patricia J. Titus, Judge.

Lenore De Vita, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Keith H. Borjon and A. Scott Hayward, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.


BIGELOW, J.

After the denial of his motion to suppress evidence under Penal Code section 1538.5, Antuan Norwood pled guilty to a charge of possession of cocaine base, a controlled substance. (Health & Saf. Code, § 11350, subd. (a).) On appeal, he contends the trial court erred in denying his suppression motion because there was no basis for the investigatory detention that led to the discovery of the cocaine. We disagree and affirm.

FACTS

At the hearing on the motion to suppress, Los Angeles Police Officers Steven Hollowell and Brian Gingras testified as follows:

At approximately 9:40 p.m. on February 6, 2008, they were patrolling an area with high narcotic and gang activity near Halldale and 39th Street in Los Angeles in a marked car. As they turned on to Halldale from 39th Street, they noticed Norwood getting out of his car near 3947 Halldale, a residence believed to be a gang hangout. Because the police car was a hybrid with the lights inside the car, it is unclear whether Norwood realized a police car was approaching him. He stood in the middle of the roadway, near the open door of his car, and did not move out of the way until the officer’s vehicle approached.

When the police officers got out of their car to conduct a pedestrian stop for violation of Vehicle Code section 21956, they smelled marijuana coming from the car. When asked whether it was his car and whether he had any marijuana in it, Norwood replied it was his car and said, “I smoked some good shit earlier. Go ahead and check if you want. You won’t find anything.” In a search of the car they found eight individually wrapped plastic baggies of rock cocaine.

Vehicle Code section 21956, subdivision (a) provides: “No pedestrian may walk upon any roadway outside of a business or residence district otherwise than close to his or her left-hand edge of the roadway.”

Norwood denied giving the officers permission to search his car and testified that he was not standing in the road, but merely getting out of his car to walk to the sidewalk at the time he was detained.

After the court denied Norwood’s motion to suppress, he pled guilty to the charge and was sentenced to the low term of 16 months in state prison to run concurrently with a previous conviction of carrying a loaded firearm. Norwood appealed from the judgment on August 8, 2008.

DISCUSSION

Norwood contends the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress because his conduct was not illegal under Vehicle Code section 21956. He argues that because the police had no lawful basis to detain him, the cocaine had to be excluded because it was tainted by the illegality of the initial detention.

Vehicle Code section 21956 has been interpreted to mean that a pedestrian may be in the middle of the road when he is inside a business or residential district. (People v. Cox (2008) 168 Cal.App.4th 702, 709.) It is undisputed that Norwood was in the roadway in a residential district. (Veh. Code, § 515.) Applying Cox, his conduct did not violate section 21956. That officers Hollowell and Gingras may have held a good faith belief that Norwood did violate section 21956 is irrelevant in determining the legality of the detention. (People v. Cox, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at pp. 710-711.) “A detention is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the detaining officer can point to specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the totality of the circumstances, provide some objective manifestation that the person detained may be involved in criminal activity.” (People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224, 231.) However, “[i]f an officer simply does not know the law, and makes a stop based upon objective facts that cannot constitute a violation, his suspicions cannot be reasonable.” (U.S. v. Mariscal (9th Cir. 2002) 285 F.3d 1127, 1130; People v. Cox, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at p. 711.)

This does not mean, however, that the subsequent discovery of cocaine was subject to suppression. The question we must ask is “ ‘whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’ ” (Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 488.) Norwood complains that “[b]ut for the illegal approach, the officers would not have been in a position to smell the odor of marijuana, which led to appellant allegedly giving consent to the vehicle search and the discovery of the physical evidence, and appellant would not have been in a position to make any false statement.” We disagree.

Here, the officers were monitoring the house on Halldale as part of a gang suppression effort. The officers were paying particular attention to anyone parking or walking near that home. Officer Gingras testified he smelled “a strong odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle” when they were approximately 10 feet away, before Norwood was asked any questions. The officers were driving down Halldale at a slow speed and would have passed within 10 feet of Norwood and his car regardless of whether they intended to detain him. After they smelled the odor of marijuana, the officers were certainly justified in investigating. This independent evidence was sufficient to purge any taint resulting from the initial detention. (Mann v. Superior Court (1970) 3 Cal.3d 1, 7; People v. Boyer (2006) 38 Cal.4th 412, 449-450 [evidence was admissible under the inevitable discovery rule even though it was discovered while defendant was illegally detained].)

Although Norwood argues the search of his car was not consensual, the officers’ testimony supports the trial court’s implied finding that Norwood gave the officers permission to conduct the search. (People v. Dasilva (1989) 207 Cal.App.3d 43, 49.) The trial court did not err in denying the motion to suppress.

DISPOSITION

The judgment is affirmed.

We concur: RUBIN, Acting P. J. BAUER, J.

Judge of the Orange County Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.


Summaries of

People v. Norwood

California Court of Appeals, Second District, Eighth Division
Apr 15, 2009
No. B210242 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 15, 2009)
Case details for

People v. Norwood

Case Details

Full title:THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ANTUAN NORWOOD, Defendant and…

Court:California Court of Appeals, Second District, Eighth Division

Date published: Apr 15, 2009

Citations

No. B210242 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 15, 2009)