Opinion
When defendant Deemario Bomone Magee noticed that police officers were approaching him, he avoided them by entering the home of a Mend. Though the officers lacked a warrant, they followed defendant into the house and found him inside the bathroom trying to dispose of individually wrapped pieces of suspected cocaine base. The Mai court suppressed the evidence discovered inside the house, but we reverse; defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the home or the bathroom at the time of the officers’ warrantless entry.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
On September 13, 2008, at 7:48 p.m., Corporal Potts and three other officers of the Vallejo Police Department were patrolling near Mark Avenue
The police officers exited the van. Defendant looked toward the officers and then turned and “jogged hurriedly” toward the Mark Avenue house. Potts called out, “Please stop. Come here, Deemario. Please stop.” Defendant continued to move toward the house and, as Potts pursued him, defendant entered it. Potts knew from previous contacts with defendant that defendant did not live there; defendant had told Potts that his “grandmother” lived there.
Potts followed defendant into the house through an unlocked screen door and heard defendant close the bathroom door. The bathroom door was locked, and Potts kicked it open. Defendant was leaning over the toilet, flushing it. Inside the toilet was a bag containing “at least” 20 individually wrapped pieces of a white chalky substance that Potts believed to be cocaine base.
Potts reached over defendant in an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the bag before it was flushed away. Defendant pushed Potts, and Potts punched defendant. After a struggle involving additional officers, defendant was handcuffed. The officers found on defendant a handgun with one bullet in the chamber and over $800 in cash; they found a gun magazine in the bathtub. The officers also searched and seized evidence from defendant’s car, which was parked outside. Potts opined that defendant possessed the suspected cocaine base for the purpose of sale.
Grace Anderson, who lived with her mother and sister at the Mark Avenue house in September 2008, testified for the defense. She is close to defendant’s parents and has known defendant for over 20 years. Defendant stopped by the Mark Avenue house when he was in the area, two or three times a week. He socialized with Anderson’s mother, who loved defendant as a “grandson.” He had permission to enter without knocking and to use the restroom. Defendant had never stayed overnight. On September 13, 2008, defendant had made arrangements with Anderson’s niece to have his hair braided at the house.
PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In a felony complaint, defendant was charged with possession of cocaine base for sale (Health & Saf. Code, § 11351.5) (count 1), with an enhancement
Prior to the preliminary hearing, defendant filed a section 1538.5 motion to suppress the evidence discovered inside the Mark Avenue house, as well as the evidence seized from his car. At the end of the preliminary hearing, the magistrate granted the motion to suppress the evidence seized from the car,
Subsequently, defendant filed a motion to set aside the information pursuant to section 995, on the ground that the magistrate erred in denying the suppression motion with respect to the evidence discovered in the Mark Avenue house. The trial court concluded the warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and granted defendant’s motion to set aside the information. The People filed a timely notice of appeal.
DISCUSSION
I. Standard of Review
“A criminal defendant is permitted to challenge the reasonableness of a search or seizure by making a motion to suppress at the preliminary hearing. [Citation.] If the defendant is unsuccessful at the preliminary hearing, he or she may raise the search and seizure matter before the superior court under the standards governing a section 995 motion. [Citation.]” (People v. McDonald (2006)
II. The Critical Issue in This Case Is Whether Defendant Had a Legitimate Expectation of Privacy at the Time of the Warrantless Entry
In the present case, the People contend the trial court erred in concluding the evidence discovered after the warrantless police entry into the Mark Avenue house should have been suppressed under the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” by police officers and other government officials. Under the Fourth Amendment, “ ‘searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable ...,’” and “ ‘absent exigent circumstances, a warrantless entry to search for weapons or contraband is unconstitutional even when a felony has been committed and there is probable cause to believe that incriminating evidence will be found within.’ ” (Groh v. Ramirez (2004)
Although the warrantless entry in this case is presumptively unconstitutional, in order to obtain suppression of the evidence discovered in the Mark Avenue house on Fourth Amendment grounds, defendant had to show he had a reasonable expectation of privacy at the time of the warrantless entry. That is because “[t]he touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis is whether a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy, that is, whether he or she has manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the object of the challenged search that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. [Citations.]” (People v. Robles (2000)
Fourth Amendment rights are personal and may be asserted only by someone whose own rights have been violated. As explained in Alderman v. United States (1969)
The People do not contend the officers had reasonable suspicion to detain defendant before he fled after seeing the officers emerge from the van. Potts testified that defendant “hadn’t done anything until he ran from me.”
Defendant had the burden of establishing he had a reasonable expectation of privacy at the time of the warrantless entry. (.Rivera, supra,
III. Defendant Cannot Base His Claim to a Legitimate Expectation of Privacy on the Fact That He Was a Social Guest on Numerous Other Occasions
Olson, supra,
In Carter, the Supreme Court held that the defendants, who had not been overnight guests, did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy. In that case, the resident of an apartment permitted the defendants to use the apartment to bag cocaine. Law enforcement officials obtained a search warrant after an officer observed the illegal activity by looking through a gap in a closed blind. The defendants moved to suppress the evidence seized during the search of the apartment, arguing that the officer violated the Fourth Amendment by observing them through the gap in the blind. The court concluded that the defendants’ Fourth Amendment rights had not been violated, in part because they were in the apartment to conduct a commercial transaction, reasoning: “If we regard the overnight guest in . . . Olson as typifying those who may claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment in the home of another, and one merely ‘legitimately on the premises’ as typifying those who may not do so, the present case is obviously somewhere in between. But the purely commercial nature of the transaction engaged in here, the relatively short period of time on the premises, and the lack of any previous connection between [the defendants] and the householder, all lead us to conclude that [the defendants’] situation is closer to that of one simply permitted on the premises. We therefore hold that any search which may have occurred did not violate their Fourth Amendment rights.” (Carter, supra,
If defendant’s first contact with the police on the day in question had occurred after their warrantless entry into the Mark Avenue house, this case would be unlike Carter, and defendant may well have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the house. (See Bonner v. Anderson (4th Cir. 1996)
However, defendant did have contact with the police immediately before entering the Mark Avenue house. Although the regular social calls described by defendant’s witness are “a longstanding social custom that serves functions recognized as valuable by society” (Olson, supra,
In our analysis, it is relevant in assessing the legitimacy of defendant’s claimed expectation of privacy that, at the time of the warrantless entry, defendant was not at the Mark Avenue house for a social visit. This is one of the “totality of the circumstances” we utilize in determining whether defendant had a legitimate expectation of privacy (People v. Tolliver (2008)
The defendants in Carter, Gordon, and Flores did not lose a legitimate expectation of privacy by engaging in illegal conduct; instead, the defendants did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy because there was no evidence that their presence could be characterized as a social visit. An individual who engages in unlawful conduct in the course of a social visit would not be similarly situated to the defendants in those cases, or to defendant here. (See Carter, supra, 525 U.S. at pp. 109-110 (dis. opn. of Ginsburg, J.) [“As the Solicitor General acknowledged, the illegality of the host-guest conduct, the fact that they were partners in crime, would not alter the analysis. ... If the illegality of the activity made constitutional an otherwise unconstitutional search, such Fourth Amendment protection, reserved for the innocent only, would have little force in regulating police behavior toward either the innocent or the guilty.” (citation omitted)]; People v. Stewart (2003)
It does not change our analysis that the police entered the locked bathroom into which defendant retreated after entering the Mark Avenue house. Although the occupant of a bathroom behind a closed door normally has a heightened expectation of privacy (Young v. Superior Court (1976)
On this issue this case is essentially identical to State v. Gonzalez (2004)
As we rejected defendant’s claimed expectation of privacy as a social guest because there is no evidence of a nexus between his entry into the Mark Avenue house and a desire to socialize, we also reject defendant’s claimed expectation of privacy as an occupant of the bathroom because there is no evidence of a nexus between his presence in the bathroom and the bathroom’s intended use.
Because at the time of the warrantless entry defendant did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the Mark Avenue house in general or in the locked bathroom in particular, defendant lacked the capacity to move under the Fourth Amendment to suppress the evidence discovered due to the officers’ warrantless entry.
DISPOSITION
The trial court’s order of dismissal is reversed and the matter is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this decision.
Iones, P. J., and Needham, I., concurred.
A petition for a rehearing was denied May 5, 2011, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied July 20, 2011, S193332.
Notes
This factual summary is based on the testimony at the preliminary hearing.
All further undesignated section references are to the Penal Code.
In this appeal, the People do not challenge the magistrate’s ruling granting defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence seized from his car.
“[T]he United States Supreme Court has largely abandoned use of the word ‘standing’ in its Fourth Amendment analyses. [Citation.] It did so without altering the nature of the inquiry: whether the defendant, rather than someone else, had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched or the items seized.” (People v. Ayala (2000)
We use the phrase “legitimate expectation of privacy” to refer to an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. (See Olson, supra, 495 U.S. at pp. 95-96; People v. Robles, supra,
The parties dispute whether defendant’s hurried jog toward the Mark Avenue house constituted “flight” from the police. We need not resolve this dispute, because the People do not contend that any flight provided legal justification for the warrantless entry, and because it is clear that defendant’s purpose in turning and hurrying to the house was to avoid the police, regardless of whether his actions constituted “flight.”
Under the facts of this case, it does not appear that the warrantless entry was permissible under the “hot pursuit” exception to the warrant requirement. (See, e.g., United States v. Santana (1976)
Justice Ginsburg, writing in a dissent joined by Justices Stevens and Souter, concluded that a homeowner’s invitation provides a guest a reasonable expectation of privacy. (Carter, supra,
The People cite People v. Cowan (1994)
In Fraiman v. State, Dept, of Administration, DMV (Alaska 2002)
In the Fourth Amendment context, the United States Supreme Court has “eschewed bright-line rules, instead emphasizing the fact-specific nature of the reasonableness inquiry.” (Ohio v. Robinette (1996)
We are not confronted in this case with a Fourth Amendment claim from a person who retreated into a home that is effectively his or her second residence. Relevant considerations would include, for example, that the person possessed a key, had the right to enter when the primary resident was away, sometimes stayed overnight, and kept personal possessions at the home in question. (See In re Lavoyne M. (1990)
Defendant argues for the first time in a petition for rehearing that Potts’s act of kicking open the locked bathroom door was a “ ‘show of . . . authority’ ” that effected a seizure before Potts observed any illegal narcotics. (United States v. Mendenhall (1980)
