People v. Allen

JEFFERSON, J. Defendant, after a jury waiver and submission on the transcript of his preliminary hearing, was found guilty by the court of possession of heroin. (Health & Saf. Code, § 11500.) Criminal proceedings were suspended and he was committed (pursuant to Welf. & Inst. Code, § 3051), to the California Rehabilitation Center for treatment. He was subsequently found by the Director of Corrections (under Welf. & Inst. Code, § 3053) not to be a fit subject for treatment and was returned to the trial court where criminal proceedings were resumed. The court denied probation and sentenced him to prison. In this appeal from the judgment of conviction, defendant contends (1) that the evidence which convicted him was the product of an illegal arrest and search and (2) that the Director of Corrections abused his discretion in rejecting him for treatment at the rehabilitation center.

Deputy Sheriff Hollis, on the afternoon of August 4, 1965, received a radio dispatch to investigate “suspicious persons and possible narcotic suspects’’ in a house at 132d and Mona. The officer had been to this residence two weeks before. It was then unoccupied with the windows boarded up. He drove to the vicinity of the house and parked. He noted that [10]the windows of the residence were still boarded up and that it was without furnishings. Wine bottles and paper were strewn about and there were 2-foot high weeds outside. Hollis heard voices inside the house. He walked toward the rear door and saw a man standing in the open doorway. Behind him, inside the house, he could see two more men. One of them, defendant, was squatting on the floor lighting a match. As Hollis stepped inside, defendant and one of the other men turned and ran. The officer caught and detained them before they could leave the house. He then observed that, on the floor in the center of the room near where he had first seen defendant, was a cigarette package with a small amount of a brownish sticky substance on top of it. A hypodermic needle was stuck into the brownish substance. An eye dropper, match covers and a bottle of water were also on the floor nearby. At this point, defendant and the other man the officer had detained were taken outside and searched. Defendant had seven balloons filled with heroin in his pocket. After finding the heroin, the officer arrested defendant and advised him of his constitutional rights. The next day, after again being advised of his rights, defendant confessed to another officer that the balloons of heroin belonged to him; he took about four grams of heroin a day and used the vacant house three or four times a week as a place to take it.