People v. Bird

HERNDON, J.

After a non jury trial appellant was convicted of possession of marijuana. On this appeal from the judgment he states his basic contention as follows:

“The appellant herein does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence; and his basis for appeal is that the evidence introduced against him in the court below was obtained as the result of an illegal arrest, search and seizure. ’ ’

Shortly before midnight on July 30, 1965, Officers Moody and Ostrom of the Los Angeles Police Department were on patrol duty in their police car when they received a radio report of a robbery. According to this report the robbery had been committed on Ninth Street between Serrano and Hobart in the Wilshire district of Los Angeles just before the broadcast and the suspected robbers were described as “three, or possibly four, male negroes in a small white vehicle.”

Approximately 45 minutes later, at about 12:15 a.m., the officers observed a small white Renault automobile carrying three occupants and proceeding eastwardly on Eleventh Street in the same vicinity and only three or four blocks distant from the place of the reported robbery.

The officers testified that they stopped the Renault because it resembled the small white vehicle described in the robbery report which they had just received and because they could see three occupants in the vehicle, a number corresponding substantially with the robbery report. In the darkness the officers were unable to discern the color or appearance of the occupants of the Renault until after they had stopped it.

As Officer Moody approached the stopped vehicle on the passenger side, he observed that the right front door was open two or three inches. At about the same time he saw an object drop through the opening at the bottom of the door and fall onto the street. Appellant was seated in the passenger seat on the right side of the vehicle by the partially open door. The officer picked up the fallen object which appeared to him to be a marijuana cigarette. Thereupon Officer Moody informed his fellow officer of this fact and asked the defendants to step out

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of the car. In a cursory search of appellant and the driver of the vehicle, Officer Moody found another cigarette protruding from the inside of one of appellant’s socks.