De Conti v. Superior Court

Opinion

ELKINGTON, J.

On these mandate proceedings petitioners De Conti

and Parlante seek to set aside an order denying a Penal Code section 1538.5 motion to suppress certain evidence. The issue is whether substantial evidence supported the superior court’s conclusion that a police officer reasonably and in good faith believed a landlord’s agent had authority to consent to his entry into a rented garage.

[909]

Following the substantial evidence rule we set forth the evidence with reasonable inferences derivable therefrom, as it reasonably tends to support the superior court’s decision. (See

People

v.

Stout, 66

Cal.2d 184, 192 [57 Cal.Rptr. 152, 424 P.2d 704];

Bergeron

v.

Superior Court,

2 Cal.App. 3d 433, 436 [82 Cal.Rptr. 711].)

One Jim Guthrie was the tenant on a month-to-month basis of a residence with a detached garage. He had been given permission to have “one couple living there” but instead other occupants, the petitioners, were brought in. Guthrie himself was in the habit of leaving for several weeks at a time. The rent being delinquent, the landlord’s agent decided to go “down there to ask them to move.” Apparently expecting trouble, before doing so she called the sheriff’s office. Officer Timmons was sent to assist her. The two first went to the house; the agent entered but found nobody there. They then “proceeded to the area of the garage” where they found the garage door closed but unlocked. She said, “I want to know what is in there. You think I can open it?” The officer replied, “I don’t care,” whereupon she opened the door. Standing before the open door the officer saw a tool box within the garage. Thinking it might be “the one taken from the Haven Nursery where [he] had just taken a burglary report,” he asked the landlord’s agent if he could look at it. She said, “Fine, look at it.” He walked in but “He didn’t move the box. He looked at it, got a number off it or a name.” He then said he believed it to be the stolen tool box “but he wanted to double check with the owner.” Checking with the owner the officer learned that it was in fact the stolen tool box. Thereafter the petitioners were arrested in the course of which search of an automobile disclosed more stolen property. It is this property and the stolen tool box that constitute the evidence which was the subject of petitioner’s unsuccessful motion to suppress.