THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. ROBINSON WHITING COULON et al., Defendants and Respondents.
Crim. No. 5105
Third Dist.
May 20, 1969
Rehearing Denied June 17, 1969
273 Cal. App. 2d 148
James E. Kleaver and William Heidewald, Public Defenders, and Larry G. Bacon, Assistant Public Defender, for Defendants and Respondents.
One of the two affidavits, that of a Siskiyou County deputy sheriff, reported information received by another police department from an informant who said that during the early morning hours of July 5, 1968, he had driven with four persons to a “hippy [sic] ranch” somewhere in the Iron Gate Dam area; that these persons delivered six kilos of marijuana, plus methedrine, “smack,” mescaline and LSD to “some hippies who took it into the house on the ranch;” that darkness prevented the informer from describing the location in more detail.
The next day, July 6, another deputy sheriff executed an affidavit stating that he was familiar with all the ranches in the northeastern portion of Siskiyou County; that in January 1968 he had been at the “Old Quadros Ranch” assisting in a narcotics arrest. The affidavit continued: “[T]he Old Quadros Ranch . . . is the only ranch in the northeast portion of the county which is regularly occupied by hippies. The owner of the ranch is absent, and the premises are leased or otherwise occupied with the consent of the owner by hippies. When I was on the premises in January, 1968, there were ten adults and two children who claimed to be living in the house. At that time the smell of marijuana was very strong in the house, but none was observed.
“The premises consist of 640 acres, approximately, upon which there is a house, barn, and two outbuildings. I have today [i.e., July 6, 1968] observed, in addition, 1 tepee and 5 campsites on the premises and seven adults who appeared to be at home on the place, some in typical hippy [sic] garb, some naked, doing gardening, carrying water, and other household chores.”
On the basis of these affidavits a magistrate issued a search warrant commanding search of “the house, outbuildings, tepees, and campsites at the Old Quadros Ranch in Siskiyou County, as well as the persons in residence there for the following: Marijuana, methedrine, heroin, morphine, mescaline, and LSD. . . .”
Armed with a search warrant, a group of peace officers raided the Old Quadros Ranch at about 5:30 a.m. the next day, July 7. Defendant Coulon and his codefendant, Miss Gooley, were living in a camp near a creek on the ranch. A
In addition to the house and outbuildings, there were five campsites on the Old Quadros Ranch, three of which were occupied. The creekside camp of defendants was 300 yards upstream from the nearest campsite. No other inhabited place could be seen from defendants’ camp. One officer estimated the number of ranch inhabitants at 18 to 20, but another observed only seven or eight adults and two children.
Constitutional concepts condemn “general” search warrants with little or no restriction on the area of search; both the affidavit upon which it is based and the warrant itself must describe the place of search with particularity; the requirement of particularity is met if the description is such that the searching officers can, with reasonable effort, ascertain and identify the place intended.1
In the case of dwellings, the “place” is usually a single living unit, that is, the residence of one person or family; a warrant directing a search of an apartment house or dwelling place containing multiple living units is void unless issued on probable cause for searching each separate living unit or believing that the entire place is a single living unit; a group of adults, nevertheless, may share a single dwelling unit as a common residence, and a warrant describing that unit as the “place” to be searched is constitutionally adequate.2
In support of the warrant, the people argue that the activities of the hippies on the ranch “indicate a back-to-nature type of communal living” which qualified the entire ranch as a single living unit or household. We apply several criteria to
“. . . where circumstances are detailed, where reason for crediting the source of the information is given, and when a magistrate has found probable cause, the courts should not invalidate the warrant by interpreting the affidavit in a hypertechnical, rather than a commonsense, manner.” (United States v. Ventresca (1965) 380 U.S. 102, 108-109 [13 L. Ed. 2d 684, 688-689, 85 S. Ct. 741].)
A parallel notion is expressed in California rules which view issuance of a search warrant as a judicial act of the magistrate (Dunn v. Municipal Court (1963) 220 Cal. App. 2d 858, 869 [34 Cal. Rptr. 251]) and enjoin a reviewing court to upset a warrant only if it fails as a matter of law. (People v. Govea, supra, 235 Cal. App. 2d at p. 297.)
Another criterion is the California doctrine of judicial notice. A court may recognize facts “of generalized knowledge that are so universally known that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute.” (
Viewed by these criteria, the term “hippies” has a limited (but only a limited) significance here. “Hippie” has wide currency as a description of a contemporary social phenomenon. The term denotes an unconventional young person in rebellion against competitive middle-class values, who usually consorts with his own kind and tends to symbolize his rebellion through hirsuteness and picturesque garb.3 As a
In the trial court defendants urged that the informant had been able to identify only the general location of the narcotics delivery point; that the deputies had no probable cause to pinpoint the Old Quadros Ranch as the location of contraband; hence that the search warrant failed. The informant had provided the officers with two clues to the delivery point: first, that it was a ranch somewhere in the Iron Gate Dam area; second, that persons whom he described as hippies took the narcotics into the ranch house. The officers had several pieces of preexisting information: one, that Old Quadros Ranch was in the same general area; two, that this was the only ranch in the area regularly occupied by persons described as hippies; three, that the ranch house had once been redolent of marijuana. Since persons physically described as hippies were identified at the ranch where the narcotics were received and at the Old Quadros Ranch as well and since the latter had a past association with narcotics, the officers could reasonably entertain an honest and strong suspicion that the ranch visited by the informant had been the Old Quadros Ranch, a suspicion which the magistrate could appropriately accept as probable cause for accepting the latter as the contraband‘s location.
At that point the term “hippie” exhausts its value. To view the appellation as evidence of specific behavior at the specific time and place bursts the boundary of judicial notice. As an individual, the magistrate could reasonably suppose that some hippies live communally. (See fn. 3, supra.) Acting judicially, he could not accept that supposition as evidence
In determining the validity of the search warrant, the primary question is “whether the affiant had reasonable grounds at the time of his affidavit and the issuance of the warrant for the belief that the law was being violated on the premises to be searched . . . .”4 In brief, the warrant‘s validity depends upon the showing before the magistrate at the time it was issued.5 Consequently, the courts hold that a warrant showing probable cause for searching an entire establishment has continued validity even after the search reveals the existence of separate dwellings within the establishment.6 If the affidavits show advance awareness of sufficient facts, the magistrate may justifiably find probable cause for the search of the entire premises even though occupied by different families or tenants.7
The present case is unlike those dealing with apartments or rooming houses physically and figuratively divided into separate households and separate tenancies. The zones of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment are not so much a product of physical or legal boundaries as of Fourth Amendment purpose. The constitutional demand for particularity seeks to protect the privacy of innocent persons by limiting the search to the place where there is probable cause to believe the search object is located. (See Camara v. Municipal Court, fn. 9, infra.) The authority to search for contraband and seize it on described premises extends “to all parts of the premises used for the unlawful purpose.”8
Order reversed with instructions to deny the motion.
Janes, J., concurred.
PIERCE, P. J.—I dissent.
The majority opinion expands the scope of the search warrant beyond that justified by the affidavits which supported its issuance.
Courts in their appraisal of affidavits filed for such purpose take into consideration—and rightly so—that they are not prepared with the forethought, care and deliberation one may expect in the drafting of other legal instruments. Frequently they are prepared by laymen and usually—if they are to be effectual—they must be prepared in haste. But there are limits to tolerance. In drawing inferences, magistrates and courts may not take off into the wild blue yonder—not if any semblance of obedience to Fourth Amendment rights is to be observed.
The logic of the majority opinion breaks down in its next-to-last paragraph. After having demonstrated that no inferences of communal living can be drawn from use of the term “hippies,” the majority opinion then states that the affidavits showed a “single establishment.” That is just what the affidavits did not show. Both the prosecutor and the Attorney General recognized this and tried to correct the deficiency by attaching meaning to the term “hippies.”
There is no basis in the affidavits for the majority‘s statement that the campsites were separated by space alone, for the affidavits described neither the topography of the ranch nor the physical relationship of the campsites to the main house. This was pertinent information if the house was a suspected distribution center for the ranch as the majority assumes. Nor is there a basis for the majority‘s statement that there were no separate tenancies. The affidavits reveal the officers’ ignorance of the living arrangements and familial relationships of the inhabitants of the ranch. The majority opinion acknowledges that ignorance but concludes that there was probable cause to believe that the contraband might be found anywhere on the ranch. This conclusion does not logically follow from the officers’ ignorance of the living patterns of the inhabitants. Rather than stating that the officers should have ob-
The majority opinion, in order to fill the gap between that declaration and the officers’ apparent ignorance, asserts that Camara v. Municipal Court (1967) 387 U.S. 523 [18 L. Ed. 2d 930, 87 S. Ct. 1727], is authority for the proposition that, in determining whether there is probable cause to make a search, the investigatory difficulties of law enforcement officers may be weighed against the breadth and character of the search to be made. Camara does not support the use to which the majority puts it. If that were indeed the law, the Fourth Amendment would bar few searches. The Fourth Amendment always hampers, and often frustrates, the investigatory aims of law enforcement. Camara dealt with administrative searches, and specifically disclaimed any intention to affect the rules applicable to searches in the enforcement of the criminal law.1 Camara allowed a lesser standard of probable cause to justify administrative searches in the enforcement of housing, fire, health, etc., codes. Camara did not weigh enforcement difficulties against intensity of the search in deciding what constitutes probable cause. Rather it allowed a lesser standard of probable cause to justify an administrative search where there was unanimous consent in the administrative field that there could not be an acceptable level of code enforcement under the traditional probable cause test, and where the search involved a lesser invasion of personal privacy and dignity because it would focus on house facilities such as gas and plumbing systems and on possible accumulation of garbage and debris rather than on the person and his more personal property.2 Thus these factors in Camara were added together and not weighed against each other as stated by the majority.
The decision in this case is far-reaching. Six hundred forty acres, besides being a square mile, is also a section of land. In the less populated areas and in the mountains of California there are no doubt thousands of “Old Quadros Ranches” where people either with the express or tacit permission of the owners hunt, fish, and camp. To the many persons pitching
A petition for a rehearing was denied June 17, 1969. Friedman, Acting P.J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Respondents’ petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 16, 1969. Peters, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.