People v. Groves

TRAYNOR, C. J. Defendant appeals from a judgment entered on a jury verdict finding him guilty of the second de[1197]gree burglary of a telephone booth (Pen. Code, §459). He contends that his arrest and the search incident thereto were unlawful and that the trial court therefore erred in admitting into evidence certain items seized during the search.

Late in the afternoon of December 9,1966, Mrs. Koonce and Mrs. Peters, employees at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco, heard an alarm indicating that someone was tampering with a coin receptacle in a telephone booth opposite their office. They saw a man. sitting inside the booth and another man standing outside it with an overcoat over his arm. Mrs. Koonce asked the men if they had taken money from the telephone, and one of them said “No.” As the men turned and walked quickly away, Mrs. Koonce heard a sound like jingling money coming from the overcoat. After the men left the building, she saw them running down the street. The coin receptacle was missing from the booth.

On separate occasions a San Francisco investigator for the telephone company showed three-photographs to Mrs. Koonce and Mrs. Peters. Neither was present when the investigator showed the photographs to the other. A special agent of the telephone company in Los Angeles had furnished the -photographs to the San Francisco investigator. Both Mrs. Koonce and Mrs. Peters identified the photograph of defendant as that of the man they saw in the telephone booth. That same day, they again identified defendant from a photograph at the San Francisco Police Department’s headquarters. A police lieutenant who witnessed this identification signed a complaint charging defendant on information and belief with burglary of the telephone booth. A warrant for defendant’s arrest was issued on the complaint. No evidence was presented to the issuing magistrate other than the signed complaint, and it did not set forth any of the underlying facts upon which the complaining officer’s belief was based.

The, San Francisco Police Department teletyped the Los Angeles Police Department that the arrest warrant had issued. The teletype gave defendant’s name and his physical description; it also described an accomplice and stated that the San Francisco police wanted defendant and an accomplice for the crime of telephoné burglary and that-the Los Angeles police should be on the lookout for lock-picks. A Los Angeles police officer who had defendant under surveillance and knew his Los Angeles address arrested defendant at an apartment where he was living in Los Angeles soon after the teletype came to the officer’s attention. A 20-minute search of the apartment incident to the arrest uncovered coin wrappers; a