People v. Superior Court

HERNDON, J.

The People filed a petition for writ of mandate pursuant to the provisions of subdivision (o) of Penal Code section 1538.5 seeking appellate review of the order of the superior court granting the motion of the real parties in interest to suppress evidence in a criminal ease. We granted the alternative writ and after hearing we have concluded that the peremptory writ should be granted.

The evidence is not in dispute and the trial court expressly announced its acceptance of the credibility of the testimony of the People’s witness introduced at the hearing below. Officer Haldi of the Narcotics Division of the Los Angeles Police Department testified that at approximately 6:30 p.m. on October 30, 1967, he received a telephone call from an unknown informant who declined to identify himself. This person advised the officer that “there were two females living at the rear house at 5732 La Mirada, one female by the name of Carole. The two females living at this residence were using a drug known as methadrine, or called ‘speed’; that they were shooting this, injecting this into their arms. ’ ’

This caller further informed Officer Haldi that the girls “were also using dangerous drugs, barbiturates. Tuinol was named to me at that time, and that they were users of marijuana and that they had a quantity of marijuana in their possession on this date.” By way of explaining the source of his knowledge, the informant told the officer that he had observed Carole inject a substance into her arm on one occasion and that on that very day he had been at the residence and ‘ ‘ had observed the marijuana in the house. ’ ’

Officer Haldi and his partner proceeded immediately to the designated address to investigate this charge. After an initial brief surveillance, which the court below correctly determined to have been proper in every particular, the officers walked to the front door of the residence and knocked. When the door was opened by one of the defendants the officers identified themselves as policemen. Through the open door, on a table only 10 feet inside the premises, Officer Plaldi could see “a clear plastic bag, sandwich bag” that contained “green plant material” which he believed to be marijuana. He testified that as a result of his work on the Narcotics Division, he had seen

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