P. v. Santoyo
Filed 7/23/12 P. v. Santoyo CA2/3
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California
Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or
relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except
as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This
opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for
purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF
APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE
DISTRICT
DIVISION THREE
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff
and Respondent,
v.
ENRIQUE SILVA
SANTOYO,
Defendant and Appellant.
B233850
(Los
Angeles County
Super. Ct.
No. PA068738)
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior
Court of
County, Harvey Giss, Judge. Affirmed.
Rachel Lederman, under appointment
by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General,
Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Assistant
Attorney General, Victoria B. Wilson and Viet H. Nguyen, Deputy Attorneys
General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
_________________________
Defendant and appellant, Enrique
Silva Santoyo, appeals the judgment entered following his plea of no contest to
cultivating marijuana and theft of services over $950 (Health & Saf. Code,
§ 11358; Pen. Code, § 498, subd. (b)). He was sentenced to state prison for a term
of 16 months.
The
judgment is affirmed.
On September 10, 2010, Los Angeles
Fire Captain Randall James Beach responded to a 911 call about a structure
fire. Upon arriving at the location,
Beach smelled burning marijuana and saw smoke coming from the backyard of a
house. The front door of the house
was open. Beach went through the house
and into the backyard where he saw the building that had burned, a small
detached garage. Beach saw “a haze
of smoke . . . but no active burning.
There was nothing that was still on fire.” Beach later learned a bystander had poured
water on the fire.
Beach entered the
garage. The temperature inside was warm,
and one of the walls was charred and burned.
He saw many marijuana plants. The
fire apparently started when one of the heavy grow lights hanging over the
marijuana plants short-circuited and overheated a plug. The combination of water and electricity in
the garage had created a very hazardous situation: “Many of these lights were still on. The breakers did not blow for these other
lights. . . . I had to have my
firefighters go in and find the electrical panel in the back of this room so we
could actually turn these . . . lights off individually or unplug
them from their little transformers which again was dangerous. I was afraid of electricity and water because
they were walking on water where the hose had been put in through the
window.” “[T]here was still a lot of
hazard to us because we had water now in the room and we had electricity in the
room. Those are a bad combination.”
Because of the marijuana
plants, Beach asked for a police unit to be dispatched to the scene. Officers arrived within 20 minutes. Beach’s fire crew was still working when the
police arrived: “We were still putting
holes in the walls and checking for any fires that might be behind any
electrical plug to make sure there was no hidden fire. [¶]
The Court: So the fire
wasn’t over – [¶] The witness:
The fire is not over until we’re actually leaving.”
Beach testified
that although there were no visible flames when he first arrived at the scene,
the situation constituted a continuing danger:
“Q. When a fire is out is there still a continuing danger
that embers from a recently put out fire will ignite again and start further
fire damage [¶] A. Sure. We . . . had to open up the
wall. We made holes [with hatchets] to
make sure there was no fire burning inside the wall which . . . is
part of our job, is to make sure the fire is completely out. So we actually tore open the wall and made
sure that there was no unseen fire burning still. We made sure it was completely out before we
left the scene.”
Beach also noticed
conduit coming out of one of the walls, which indicated the occupants might
have bypassed the electrical meter in order to obtain power to run the grow
lights. This was also a dangerous
condition because the bypass “can overload [and] there is really no way to turn
it off. . . . So even if
the whole house was on fire, we could not turn the detached garage off. It’s a very dangerous situation if the fire
had gotten bigger.”
Los Angeles Police
Officer Nelson Ramaya responded to the call for police assistance. He did not know the assistance call had
anything to do with marijuana.
Upon arrival, he saw firefighters inside the detached garage, and
he smelled smoke and marijuana. Beach
met him in the backyard. Through a
broken window in the side of the garage, Ramaya could see numerous marijuana
plants. He entered the garage and saw
tables with fire-damaged marijuana plants on them. There was an elaborate lighting system, a
ventilation system, and a large air conditioning system. There were nine
1000-watt lights and nine ballasts. A
ballast is a form of lighting used for marijuana grow operations; “[i]t
amplifies the electrical current that’s going to the thousand watt
lightbulb.” There were 216 marijuana
plants in the garage.
Ruben
Chacon, a theft investigator with the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power, testified he was called to the scene to investigate a possible illegal
electrical bypass and to rule out any safety hazards it might be causing. When he arrived, police and firefighters were
at the scene. He pulled the electrical
meter, which was attached to the house, and confirmed there was an illegal
bypass. Chacon testified this kind of
bypass might cause a fire due to an overload of electrical output, and that
“[i]t appeared there was more electricity being used than could be handled by
the system at the house.” For safety
reasons, Chacon “had a crew come out and climb[] the pole and cut the wires to
the property.”
The
trial court erred when it denied Santoyo’s motion to suppress evidence.
Santoyo
moved to suppress all the evidence flowing from the warrantless observations
Ramaya and Chacon made at the fire scene.
In denying the motion, the trial court concluded the plain-view
observations of both men were admissible because they had been made during
exigent circumstances. The trial court
was right.
1. Legal
principles.
“The
Fourth Amendment provides ‘[t]he right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated . . . .’ (U.S. Const., 4th Amend.) This guarantee has been incorporated into the
Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution and is applicable to the
states. [Citation.] A similar guarantee against unreasonable
government searches is set forth in the state Constitution (Cal. Const., art.
I, § 13) but, since voter approval of Proposition 8 in June 1982, state and
federal claims relating to exclusion of evidence on grounds of unreasonable
search and seizure are measured by the same standard. [Citations.]
‘Our state Constitution thus forbids the courts to order the exclusion
of evidence at trial as a remedy for an unreasonable search and seizure unless
that remedy is required by the federal Constitution as interpreted by the
United States Supreme Court.’
[Citation.]” (
829-830, fn. omitted.) “In reviewing the
action of the lower courts, we will uphold those factual findings of the trial
court that are supported by substantial evidence. The question of whether a search was
unreasonable, however, is a question of law.
On that issue, we exercise ‘independent judgment.’ [Citations.]”
(Id. at p. 830.)
“It
is a ‘basic principle of Fourth Amendment
law’ that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are
presumptively unreasonable.” (Payton
v. New York (1980) 445 U.S. 573, 586 [63 L.Ed.2d 639, 100 S.Ct. 1371], fn.
omitted.) However, the “warrant
requirement is excused . . . when exigent circumstances
require prompt action by the police . . . .”
(People v. Bacigalupo (1991) 1 Cal.4th 103, 122.) “ ‘[E]xigent circumstances’ means an
emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to life
or serious damage to property, or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect
or destruction of evidence. There is no
ready litmus test for determining whether such circumstances exist, and in each
case the claim of an extraordinary situation must be measured by the facts
known to the officers.” (People v.
Ramey (1976) 16 Cal.3d 263, 276.)
One
well-recognized exigent circumstance is a fire.
“Our decisions have recognized that a warrantless entry by criminal law
enforcement officials may be legal when there is compelling need for official
action and no time to secure a warrant.
[Citations.] Similarly, in the
regulatory field, our cases have recognized the importance of ‘prompt
inspections, even without a warrant, . . . in emergency situations.’ [Citations.]
[¶] A burning building clearly presents
an exigency of sufficient proportions to render a warrantless entry
‘reasonable.’ Indeed, it would defy reason
to suppose that firemen must secure a warrant or consent before entering a
burning structure to put out the blaze.
And once in a building for this purpose, firefighters may seize evidence
of arson that is in plain view.” (
509 [56 L.Ed.2d 486, 98 S.Ct. 1942].)
circumstance does not automatically cease “with the dousing of the last
flame”: “Although the Michigan Supreme
Court appears to have accepted this principle [i.e., that a fire constitutes an
exigent circumstance], its opinion may be read as holding that the exigency
justifying a warrantless entry to fight a fire ends, and the need to get a
warrant begins, with the dousing of the last flame. [Citation.]
We think this view of the firefighting function is unrealistically
narrow, however. Fire officials are
charged not only with extinguishing fires, but with finding their causes. Prompt determination of the fire’s origin may
be necessary to prevent its recurrence, as through the detection of continuing
dangers such as faulty wiring or a defective furnace. Immediate investigation may also be necessary
to preserve evidence from intentional or accidental destruction. And, of course, the sooner the officials
complete their duties, the less will be their subsequent interference with the
privacy and the recovery efforts of the victims. For these reasons, officials need no warrant
to remain in a building for a reasonable time to investigate the cause of a
blaze after it has been extinguished.
And if the warrantless entry to put out the fire and determine its cause
is constitutional, the warrantless seizure of evidence while inspecting the
premises for these purposes also is constitutional.” (Michigan
v. Tyler, supra, 436 U.S. at pp. 509-510, fn. omitted.)
“Both
fire and police personnel are agents of the state; both are subject to Fourth
Amendment requirements. [Citation.] Once a fireman has lawfully entered a burning
building, ‘the invasion of privacy is not increased by an additional officer,
albeit a [police] officer,’ entering the edifice to seek out the fire’s
genesis. [Citation.] [¶] . . . [¶]
This is not to say there are no limits on what police may do once inside
a fire-damaged structure. ‘In essence,
they step into the shoes of the fire fighters. They cannot enter any area that
the fire fighters were not justified in entering . . . .’ [Citation.]
They cannot search any area the fire fighters were not justified in
searching. They may only venture into
areas affected by the flames and places where evidence of arson might
reasonably be found.” (
836, 845-846.)
2. Discussion.
Santoyo contends Ramaya and
Chacon’s observations should have been suppressed because they did not fall
within the exigent circumstance exception set forth in Michigan v. Tyler. We
disagree.
Santoyo
cites United States v. Hoffman (9th
Cir. 1979) 607 F.2d 280, as demonstrating the trial court here erred. However, his reliance on that case is misplaced. In Hoffman,
a police officer arrived at the scene of a trailer fire after it was already
under control. When one of the
firefighters told the officer there was a sawed-off shotgun inside the
trailer’s bedroom, the officer entered the trailer with the express purpose of
seizing the weapon. Hoffman held the trial court should have suppressed the
shotgun: “Officer Heiden did not enter
the trailer to aid in extinguishing the blaze or to investigate its cause. His only purpose in entering appellant’s trailer
. . . was to seize evidence of an unrelated federal crime. The fact that the police officer’s actual
physical intrusion was no greater than that of the firemen does not control our
examination of appellant’s Fourth Amendment claims.” (Id.
at p. 284, fn. omitted.)
Santoyo
argues the same analysis applies here because “the fire was undisputedly out
before” Ramaya arrived at the scene, and “Chacon also entered the yard well
after the fire had been put out and the firefighters had eliminated any hazard
by turning off and unplugging the lights and other appliances in the
garage. Chacon did not assist in safety
efforts in any way, but was clearly there only to document utility theft.”
These
arguments are without merit. The
evidence clearly showed both Chacon and Ramaya made their observations while
engaged in fire-related activities undertaken while the firefighters were still
making sure the fire would not be rekindled.
observations were pertinent, the marijuana operation and the illegal utility
bypass, appeared to be directly related
to the cause of the fire. Hence, this
was very different from the illegal weapon in Hoffman, which was unrelated to the cause of the fire.
As
the Attorney General points out, “the trial court expressly found that the
firemen were still determining whether the fire was completely out when the
police arrived, i.e., the firefighters ‘were still knocking holes in the
wall.’ ” Hoffman is distinguishable on this point as well because there the
evidence tended to show all firefighting efforts had ceased
to seize the shotgun. “According to some
evidence introduced in the suppression hearing, firemen were still going in and
out of the trailer, but it was not clear what they were doing inside the
trailer at that time. There is no
intimation in the record that the firemen were continuing to fight a
blaze.” (United States v. Hoffman, supra, 607 F.2d at p. 282.) Here, when Officer Ramaya arrived, the
firefighters were still chopping holes in the walls and checking electrical
plugs for hidden flames.
The
trial court did not err by denying Santoyo’s suppression motion.
The
judgment is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
KLEIN,
P. J.
We concur:
KITCHING,
J. ALDRICH,
J.
name="_ftn1" title="">[1]
The background facts are taken
from evidence presented at the suppression hearing.
title="">[2]
For instance, as to Chacon the
trial court ruled: “To the court it
looks like he’s there for the same reason the fire department is there. He’s there to correct the situation that
could cause damage to the entire neighborhood.
He’s got to decide whether people have to come out and disengage the
electricity. If he doesn’t do that the
DWP is grossly negligent. [¶] So it’s like an ongoing fire. Until they get it corrected I think he has
every right to be there, and it’s an emergency.”
