People v. Guess CA3

Filed 3/3/14 P. v. Guess CA3 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published,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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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 THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT (Sacramento) ----

THE PEOPLE, C073648

Plaintiff and Respondent, (Super. Ct. No. 13F00949)

v.

PAUL THOMAS GUESS,

Defendant and Appellant.

Police contacted defendant Paul Guess after a neighbor reported him sleeping in front of a home. During their conversation with defendant, the officers requested permission to search him. He consented; they found methamphetamine and Ambien on him. After the magistrate denied his motion to suppress, he pled no contest to possession of methamphetamine for the purposes of sale. He now appeals, arguing the officers unlawfully detained him and his consent to be searched was a product of the unlawful detention. We disagree and affirm.

1

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND Around midnight on a night in February, a neighbor called police to report a man sleeping in front of a house; two officers were sent to check out the situation. The officers were in standard uniforms with guns on their utility belts. The officers arrived at the home in separate vehicles and saw a man sitting in front of the house with his face down. The officers parked a couple of houses down from where the man was sitting, walked up to the house, and asked him why he was there. The man said that his friend lived there and that he was waiting for her to return home. One of the officers asked the man for his name and the man responded that his name was Paul Guess (defendant). The officer then asked defendant for his identification and defendant pulled his identification from his pocket and handed it to the officer. The name defendant gave and the name on his identification were consistent. The officer then asked defendant if he was on probation or parole and defendant said he was not. The officer asked if he could search defendant for anything illegal and defendant said, “ ‘[g]o ahead.’ ” The officer found a bag with two and one-half white pills; the pills were Ambien. The officer also found another bag with a white crystalline substance that turned out to be methamphetamine. Defendant did not have a prescription for the Ambien. Defendant was charged with possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of sale and possession of zolpidem tartrate (Ambien). He filed a motion to suppress. The magistrate denied the motion, finding that defendant was detained relying on People v. Castaneda (1995) 35 Cal.App.4th 1222 but was still able to consent and had validly consented to the search. Defendant pled no contest to possession of methamphetamine for the purposes of sale and was sentenced to county jail for two years. DISCUSSION Defendant argues that “[u]nder the totality of the circumstances, [he] was unlawfully detained -- a reasonable person would not have felt free to terminate the