Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Sonoma County Super. Ct. No. SCR503731
Sepulveda, J.
Defendant Thomas David Waiton was charged by information with felony possession of methamphetamine (Health & Saf. Code, § 11377, subd. (a)). He filed a motion to suppress evidence (Pen. Code, § 1538.5), which the trial court denied. A jury convicted defendant as charged. On appeal, defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress because the prosecution did not offer sufficient evidence that he was arrested pursuant to a valid arrest warrant. We disagree and affirm.
I. Factual and Procedural Background
The following facts relating to defendant’s detention and arrest are taken from the evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress. Shortly before 11 p.m. on January 6, 2007, Rohnert Park police officer Brian Davis was called to a grocery store on Commerce Boulevard. He spoke with a security guard, who said he had seen someone in front of the store who was screaming and yelling, who could possibly be a danger to himself. The guard directed Davis to defendant, who was in the freezer aisle of the grocery store.
Davis spoke briefly with defendant to check on his welfare and to determine if he was aware of his surroundings. Davis also asked defendant his name. Defendant provided his name and date of birth, but did not provide identification when asked. Davis determined that defendant was not a danger to himself, thanked defendant for his time, told him he was free to go, and walked away.
As Davis walked away from defendant, he radioed police dispatch with defendant’s name and date of birth, and asked that the information be run through CLETS. Davis was told that there was a “possible hit on that name as a wanted person out of San Francisco County.” Davis immediately asked dispatch to call the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department to confirm whether there was a warrant for defendant’s arrest.
CLETS stands for California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, a program operated by the Department of Justice. (People v. Dunlap (1993) 18 Cal.App.4th 1468, 1471, 1474, fn. 5.)
Davis saw that defendant was by this time outside of the grocery store, standing at a bus stop. He approached defendant, told him that there was a hit on his name for a “possible warrant,” and told him he was going to detain him until he could verify whether there was a valid warrant. A dispatcher told Davis shortly thereafter that the warrant for San Francisco County was confirmed. Davis then placed defendant under arrest. He pat searched defendant for weapons and checked defendant’s bags, but determined that it would be safer and more efficient to conduct a more thorough search at the police department. Defendant was placed in handcuffs and transported to jail. Davis searched defendant and found presumptive methamphetamine in his front left pants pocket.
Davis also completed a form so that he could receive a copy of the abstract of the arrest warrant for defendant, which he received at the jail. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, Davis was shown a copy of the warrant abstract that he saw after defendant was arrested. When the prosecution sought to introduce the document into evidence, defendant objected on hearsay grounds, and also objected that the warrant abstract was not certified. The trial court stated that the document was “hearsay, just a document with no certification. So I’m not going to rely on that in making my decision.” However, Davis did testify about the warrant number, the fact the warrant had defendant’s name and date of birth, and the charges against defendant in San Francisco (for violation of Penal Code sections 148, subd. (a)(1) (resisting or obstructing police officer) and three counts under 148.4, subd. (a)(2) (tampering with fire alarm)).
The prosecution also sought to introduce a copy of a printout from the Integrated Justice System (IJS) (certified by the Sonoma County Superior Court) showing that there was an outstanding warrant as to defendant. Again, defendant objected on hearsay grounds. The trial court ruled that the document was admissible, because it demonstrated that there was a valid misdemeanor warrant with information corroborated by Davis. When defendant objected again that the document was “double hearsay,” the trial court replied, “Well, it—I was also looking at the Court’s record. The fact that he has a hold from San Francisco at this point, and the fact it corroborated the warrant number, I think the Court can take judicial notice of its own records, and the fact he currently is in custody on a hold from San Francisco, the [Penal Code section] 148(a)(1), $25,000 warrant. And the warrant number is 675732, according to the court records. [¶] And that’s the same warrant number that the officer testified to in regards to it [sic]. So I do feel that there is corroboration of the warrant, the fact he’s here on the hold from San Francisco, the warrant number matches, the information matches, his name matches, everything matches in regards to Mr. Waiton. So I do feel there’s sufficient evidence to show that it was a warrant outstanding for his arrest at the time of the arrest on January 6, 2007.”
The record does not reveal the nature of IJS, although the trial court referred to it as “the Court’s own records.”
The trial court denied defendant’s motion to suppress. A jury convicted defendant as charged, and he was sentenced to the lower term of 16 months in prison. This timely appeal followed.
II. Discussion
“When, as here, we review a ruling on a defense motion to suppress evidence, we defer to the trial court’s factual findings, but we independently apply the requisite legal standard to the facts presented.” (People v. Celis (2004) 33 Cal.4th 667, 679.)
Defendant’s sole argument on appeal is that the prosecution failed to establish that there was a facially valid warrant that authorized Officer Davis to arrest him. “It is well settled that an officer may reasonably rely on information received through official channels to support an arrest. An officer may rely on information from other officers within his or her own department and from other departments and jurisdictions. [Citations.] The general rule is that an officer may rely on the ‘collective knowledge’ of law enforcement to establish probable cause to arrest. (Remers v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 659, 666-667.) However, when the arresting officer relies upon information gathered by other officers, the court looks to the ‘total police activity’ to test the constitutional reasonableness of the conduct in question.” (People v. Alcorn (1993) 15 Cal.App.4th 652, 655-656 (Alcorn); see also People v. Madden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 1017, 1021 [prosecution must prove that source of information that provides basis for arrest “ ‘ “is something other than the imagination of an officer who does not become a witness.” ’ ”].)
“The most direct way of proving police do not manufacture probable cause for an arrest, generated because one officer tells the arresting officer an arrest warrant exists, is production of that warrant or a certified copy. This is, however, ‘not the only way’ in which such proposition may be proven.” (People v. Armstrong (1991) 232 Cal.App.3d 228, 245, original italics.) “Proof that the warrant information precipitating the arrest was not manufactured may be made by circumstantial evidence other than the warrant or a certified copy.” (Ibid., italics added.) In Alcorn, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th 652, the court held that where the prosecution “produces an abstract showing the existence of a facially valid warrant, identifying the warrant with sufficient particularity to allow the defendant to obtain a copy of the warrant and its supporting documents, the prosecution has met its burden of producing evidence.” (Id. at p. 660.) The court reasoned that an abstract furnishes a basis for finding that police officers acted reasonably in relying on the existence of a warrant for a defendant’s arrest. (Id. at p. 659.)
The Alcorn court also acknowledged that the existence of a warrant does not foreclose the possibility that the underlying warrant was not based on probable cause, and that the court must “trace the probable cause back to its original source” to determine whether there were any defects in the underlying arrest warrant. (Alcorn, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 659, citing United States v. Leon (1984) 468 U.S. 897, 923, fn. 24.) However, the court concluded that once the prosecution produces evidence (such as an abstract) that identifies the warrant “with sufficient particularity to allow the defendant to obtain a copy of the warrant and its supporting documents,” the prosecution has met its burden. (Alcorn, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 660.) This is especially true where, as here, there is no evidence attacking the validity of the underlying warrant. (Id. at pp. 659-660.) “Requiring the prosecution to produce the actual warrant, or a certified copy, on pain of having evidence suppressed extracts a high cost from society, with no corresponding benefit.” (Id. at p. 559.)
In this case, even absent the warrant abstract that the trial court excluded based on the fact it was uncertified, the prosecution met its burden of producing evidence of sufficient particularity that a valid warrant for defendant’s arrest existed. Officer Davis testified that the night defendant was arrested, he (Davis) received information regarding an arrest warrant showing defendant’s name and date of birth, another identification number for him, the charges against him, and the number of the warrant for defendant’s arrest. This information was consistent with “the Court’s record,” and defendant made no showing attacking the warrant’s validity. Where, as here, “the prosecution has introduced some credible, independent evidence of the existence of a facially valid warrant supporting the arrest, ‘the prosecution has met its burden of producing evidence.’ ” (People v. Collins (1997) 59 Cal.App.4th 988, 994 (Collins).) We reject defendant’s argument that his motion to suppress should have been granted because the prosecution failed to prove the validity of the underlying warrant. He complains, for example, that the IJS document relied on by the trial court should have been “rejected as hearsay.” He acknowledges, however, that the record “was proper for the fact that the record of an outstanding warrant exists,” and challenges only the truth of information in the document. (Original italics.) Defendant misconstrues what the prosecution was required to show. As the Alcorn court observed, suppressing evidence “simply because of the prosecution’s failure to produce the warrant, which is equally available to the defendant, does not further the goals of the exclusionary rule.” (Alcorn, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 660.) We therefore reject defendant’s argument that his suppression motion should have been granted because the prosecution did not provide “formal proof” or because the validity of the warrant was supposedly “subject to dispute,” because defendant made no showing that such “dispute,” in fact, existed. (Id. at pp. 659-660.)
The trial court acknowledged that People v. Alcorn, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th 652, supported the prosecution’s argument that a warrant abstract was sufficient to show the existence of a valid warrant, but stated that the case was distinguishable because in Alcorn, it was the defendant who offered the abstract into evidence and there was therefore no dispute about its admissibility. (Id. at p. 654, fn. 1.) We need not decide whether, as respondent argues, the trial court erred in excluding the warrant abstract, as the prosecution offered other sufficient evidence of a valid warrant.
The source of Davis’s testimony is unclear. The trial court asked him questions about what information he received when dispatch confirmed the warrant. When asked if he knew what the charges against defendant were, Davis replied, “No. I have a copy of it, though, right here.” The court asked whether the “copy” would assist Davis in refreshing his memory as to the warrant. Davis testified that it would, and went on to provide information about the warrant. The prosecution then showed Davis a copy of the warrant abstract that was “just like the one” he received at the jail; however, it is unclear whether the abstract was what he relied on for his answers to the trial court’s questions. Whatever the source of Davis’s testimony, it is clear (contrary to defendant’s argument) that there was testimony regarding whether “the warrant actually exists.” It is also not true, as defendant argues, that defendant was arrested based on an “unspecified warrant.” Davis testified that he was informed by dispatch that the warrant was out of San Francisco County for “a misdemeanor for $25,000.”
We reject defendant’s argument that this case is similar to Collins, supra, 59 Cal.App.4th 988, or that Collins required the prosecution to prove the validity of the underlying arrest warrant. In Collins, unlike here, “the prosecution introduced no independent evidence whatsoever concerning the existence [as opposed to validity] of the warrant.” (Id. at p. 994, italics added.) Defendant claims that Davis, like the testifying officer in Collins, “had no personal knowledge of the warrant.” To the contrary, Davis testified that he reviewed the warrant abstract after he transported defendant to jail, and he provided the trial court with detailed information about the warrant.
Moreover, Collins acknowledged that “the underlying validity of the arrest warrant is not the ultimate issue in any case involving arrest pursuant to a warrant,” but that the prosecution had failed to show that there was a warrant for defendant’s arrest in the first place. (Collins, supra, 59 Cal.App.4th at p. 997, italics added.) Again, defendant acknowledges here that the prosecution provided evidence of the existence of a warrant for defendant’s arrest. It strains credulity to argue that defendant was not provided with sufficient information upon which to base a challenge to the warrant, in light of Davis’s testimony regarding the warrant and the IJS court document admitted by the trial court which confirmed its details. Defendant points to Davis’s testimony that defendant told him that he had already “ ‘taken care of’ ” the warrant to show that the warrant was somehow in dispute. Again, the prosecution met its burden of showing that a valid warrant, in fact, existed at the time of defendant’s arrest. The trial court did not err in denying defendant’s motion to suppress.
III. Disposition
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: Ruvolo, P.J., Reardon, J.