People v. Low

Opinion

ELKINGTON, J.

Defendant Paul Blaze Low appeals from a judgment based upon a jury’s verdict finding him guilty of possession of methamphe

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lamine (Health & Saf. Code, § 11377), and a concealable firearm by one previously convicted of a felony (Pen. Code, § 12021). He had admitted five prior felony convictions within the meaning of Penal Code section 667.5.

We find no merit in the appeal and, for reasons as follow, affirm the judgment.

It is first contended that: “The evidence, upon which appellant’s conviction depended, was clearly the product of an unconstitutional search and seizure and should have been suppressed.”

We state the relevant evidence.

Police officers observed, one and a half blocks away, a green Chevrolet, of which defendant Low was the driver, stop at the telephone booth of a parking lot. A person leaned inside the car window; the driver’s arm moved toward the other person but nothing was seen to be exchanged by them. The vehicle then drove off. Suspicious, the police officers followed. The Chevrolet was soon observed to be traveling about 20 miles per hour in excess of the speed limit. And “the vehicle kept going over the provided lane boundary markings, the solid double yellow line in the middle of the street, go over the markings and then come back within the guidelines of the markings, and then it would again traverse the double yellow line.” The police car’s red light was activated and the Chevrolet was stopped. One of the officers testified: “We were stopping the vehicle because it was our opinion at that point that the driver of the vehicle was not able to successfully operate the motor vehicle due to the speed and the erratic driving.”

When the Chevrolet stopped, Low, its driver, stepped out of it. The officer, a trained narcotics investigator, testified that he “staggered” and that: “I noticed that his speech was impaired, it was thick and slurred. I also noticed that his pupils were extremely pinpointed and that, coupled with the outward manifestations, the staggering as he got out of the vehicle and walked towards our location, at that point I checked his pupils for any reaction to sun light. . . . There was no reaction whatsoever.” Asked for his driver’s license, Low could not produce one. And on his “left arm just at the bend and located over a vein, were puncture wounds that were raised and irritated and had blood at their tips,” an indication of opiate, or heroin, usage.