Police May Search Backseat of Car With Parolee-Passenger if Reasonable Belief Stuff Stowed There
• SCHMITZ, #S186707 ____ C4 ___, ___ CR3 ___, ___ P2 ___ (12):
Deputy Sheriff Mihaela Mihai saw Def’s car turn into a dead-end alley lined with the garages of a condominium complex. When Def. then made a U-turn, Mihai stopped alongside his car and asked whether he was lost. Def. said no, that he had driven into the alley to avoid making a U-turn on the street. Mihai got out of her car and asked defendant for his driver’s license. As Def. complied, Mihai observed that his arms were covered with abscesses, which she associated with drug use. Asked if defendant was on probation or parole, Def. said, “No.” Mihai then asked him for permission to search the car. Def. did not respond.
Def. had three passengers: a man in the front seat, and a woman and her small child in the back. The male passenger said he was on parole. Mihai searched the car on that basis after removing the occupants. In the backseat area, she found a syringe cap in a woman’s purse, two syringes in a chips bag, and some methamphetamine in a pair of shoes.
Def. moved to suppress. Denied. Court of Appeal Reversed. Now, the California Supreme Court reverses the appellate court. Def. is hosed.
First, it rejected the Court of Appeal’s reliance on Woods, 21 C4 668 (99):
The Court of Appeal relied on the consent-based “common authority” standard employed in Woods to conclude that the permissible scope of the parole search was narrowly confined to the parolee’s person and the seat he occupied. It reasoned that only persons with “ ‘common or superior authority’ ” over an area can authorize a search, and that “that rule means the police may ‘only search those portions of the [property] they reasonably believe the probationer has complete or joint control over.’ ” It observed that “there was no evidence that Schmitz, merely by allowing a parolee to ride as a passenger in his car, ceded to that parolee any authority over the car at all, let alone the authority to permit inspections of the vehicle’s interior ‘in his own right.’ ” Accordingly, it concluded that “[a] mere passenger in a vehicle, who claims neither a possessory nor property interest therein, lacks the ‘common authority’ over the vehicle which would allow him either to consent or object to its search.”
The Court of Appeal’s reliance on Woods led it astray. We conclude the rationale employed in Woods, justifying a search based on advance consent by a cohabitant probationer “with common or superior authority over the area to be searched” (Woods, supra, 21 Cal.4th at p. 675), is unworkable when applied to this parolee, who was a mere passenger in defendant’s automobile. There are significant distinctions between the residential probation search in Woods, and the search of defendant’s car based on his passenger’s parole status.
One reason the defendant objected to the search of his car was because he “did not know” of his passenger’s probation status. The Court of Appeal agreed. But the Supreme Court says:
The Court of Appeal’s focus on defendant’s ignorance of his passenger’s parole status when admitting him to the car is misplaced. We have never suggested that a probation or parole search of a house would be unlawful unless a defendant knew his or her cohabitant was a probationer or a parolee. No good reason appears to create such a rule for vehicle searches. Because the primary purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter unlawful police conduct, the operative question is whether the officer knew of the passenger’s parole status before conducting the search.
As to the scope of the search, the Court also rejects the “small bubble” approach used by the Court of Appeal.
[W]e hold that a vehicle search based on a passenger’s parole status may extend beyond the parolee’s person and the seat he or she occupies. Such a search is not without limits, however. The scope of the search is confined to those areas of the passenger compartment where the officer reasonably expects that the parolee could have stowed personal belongings or discarded items when aware of police activity.
Compendium Press 