Stoner v. California
Encyclopedia
Stoner v. California, , is a 1964 United States Supreme Court decision involving the Fourth Amendment
. It was a criminal case appealed from the California Courts of Appeal after the California Supreme Court denied review. The case extended the situations under which search warrant
s are required as they reversed a robbery
conviction made on the basis of evidence obtained in violation of the holding.
The petitioner, Joey Stoner, had been arrested following a 1960 supermarket robbery in the Los Angeles area. Eyewitness accounts and evidence left at the scene led the police to a hotel elsewhere in the region where Stoner was staying. Two days later, detectives went to the hotel and, with the desk clerk's permission, searched the room and found further evidence linking him to the robbery. Stoner was arrested two days later in Nevada, and extradited
. The evidence from the hotel room was used to convict him of the robbery at trial. Stoner unsuccessfully challenged the admissibility of the evidence at trial and on appeal, since police had lacked a warrant and relied on the clerk's permission. The appeals court held that the search was incident to arrest and thus permissible.
Writing for the Court, Justice Potter Stewart
reaffirmed two previous holdings: The first, 1925's Agnello v. United States held such warrantless searches are constitutional only to the extent that they take place at the same time, and in the same place, as the arrest. Two other cases established that the hotel clerk's consent did not permit police to search the room without a warrant. "[A] guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures" Stewart wrote. "That protection would disappear if it were left to depend upon the unfettered discretion of an employee of the hotel." It did not matter that hotel staff might be permitted to enter the room as that was merely for the limited purpose of cleaning and maintenance. The only other opinion was Justice John Marshall Harlan II
, who concurred in the holding but dissented from the disposition reversing the conviction. He would have left it to California's courts to decide whether the admission of the hotel-room evidence was harmless error
, as the Court had done in similar circumstances in Fahy v. Connecticut.
The reaffirmation of the earlier rulings was necessitated by the Mapp v. Ohio
decision a few years earlier, which extended the exclusionary rule
under which unlawfully obtained evidence is inadmissible at trial, to the states as well as the federal government. It came at a time when the Warren Court
was beginning to rethink and provide exceptions to the traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine that only those with a possessory or proprietary interest in what was searched had standing
to challenge the constitutionality of the search. Several years later, in Katz v. United States
, the Court abandoned that doctrine entirely in favor of the reasonable expectation of privacy test now in use.
, was robbed by two men. One was described by eyewitnesses as carrying a gun, wearing horn-rimmed glasses
and a gray jacket. A checkbook, possibly belonging to one of the robbers, was found in a nearby parking lot. It was traced to a Joey Stoner, and two stubs indicated checks drawn to a hotel in nearby Pomona
.
The Monrovia officers who investigated contacted the Pomona police. They learned that Stoner had a criminal record, and obtained a photograph of him. The eyewitnesses identified him as the man they saw. Two nights after the robbery, the officers went to the hotel in Pomona.
At the hotel they asked for Stoner. The desk clerk confirmed he was a guest but added that he was presently out. They asked if they could enter the room since they were investigating an armed robbery. The clerk let them in to Stoner's room, where they found the jacket, glasses and gun from the night of the robbery.
Stoner was arrested in Las Vegas
two days later along with his partner in the robbery. He waived extradition
to California, where he was indicted, tried and convicted. Since he had two prior convictions he was found to be a habitual criminal and sentenced to a long prison term.
On appeal to the Second District he argued that the search of his hotel room was unconstitutional since the police did not have a search warrant
. In the two days between the robbery and the search, Stoner claimed, there was enough time for the police to get one. The court responded that most of that time was spent establishing his identity and whereabouts as a suspect. He also argued that the search of his hotel room could not have incident to his arrest due to the time between it and his arrest, and the fact that the latter took place in another state. The officers were also aware he was not present, he added, so they could not have been intending to arrest him when they entered his hote room. The court cited many holdings in California case law to the extent that it did not matter whether the arrest took place before or after the search.
Stoner further claimed his confession had effectively been coerced. He claimed that he had not been arraigned
until two days after his arrest, was moved from one jail to another during that period and not allowed to speak with his wife. The court found that the record reflected that much of that two-day period was involved in transporting him back to the Los Angeles area from Las Vegas, and allowing him to speak with his parole officer per his request, who had advised him to cooperate with the police. Nor had he been prevented from calling his wife, just discouraged from doing so.
s in February 1964. It appointed an attorney, William Dempsey, to argue for Stoner. Arlo Smith
, future San Francisco district attorney
then an assistant attorney general in Stanley Mosk
's office, argued for the state. The American Civil Liberties Union
of Southern California filed an amicus curiae
brief
on Stoner's behalf. A month later the decision was handed down.
The justices had unanimously voted to reverse the appeals court, and thus the conviction. "[I]t is clear that the search of the petitioner's hotel room in Pomona, California, on October 27 was not incident to his arrest in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 29," wrote Justice Potter Stewart
. "The search was completely unrelated to the arrest, both as to time and as to place." Under the Court's holding in Agnello v. United States four decades earlier, a search incident to arrest had to be "only if it is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest, and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest" to be constitutional.
Stewart noted that even the state had declined to argue that the search was incident to the arrest, since the cases cited by the appellate court could not be taken to authorize a search so distant from the arrest. Instead, it had claimed the hotel clerk's consent was sufficient for the search. But even that, he said, was not enough. Four years earlier, he recalled, in Jones v. United States, the Court had held that "anyone legitimately on the premises" had standing
to challenge the search of the property.
"Our decisions make clear that the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment are not to be eroded by strained applications of the law of agency or by unrealistic doctrines of 'apparent authority,'" Stewart wrote. "[I]t was the petitioner's constitutional right which was at stake here, and not the night clerk's nor the hotel's. It was a right, therefore, which only the petitioner could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent." The Court had previously held it unlawful for a hotel manager or an assistant to permit a search.In Lustig v. United States, , and Jeffers v. United States, , respectively.
Stewart allowed that it was true that hotel guest could not completely isolate themselves from intrusion. It was implicit in a hotel stay that management, cleaning staff and maintenance could enter the room without a guest's permission in order to fulfill their job duties. But that privilege was limited to that purpose, and "the conduct of the night clerk and the police in the police in the present case was of an entirely different order." He did not see the case as being substantially different from Chapman v. United States, another recent Fourth Amendment case in which the Court had held that landlords' permission did not allow police to search rented premises. Similarly, McDonald v. United States had extended constitutional protection to tenants in boardinghouses.
Going back to Johnson v. United States, a 1948 case that had suppressed drug evidence obtained by police who were let in to a hotel room by the occupant after knocking on the door, the Court had held that "a guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures," Stewart wrote. "That protection would disappear if it were left to depend upon the unfettered discretion of an employee of the hotel.".
Justice John Marshall Harlan II
concurred in the holding but dissented from the disposition. He felt the Court should have merely vacated and let the California courts decide whether admission of the hotel room materials constituted harmless error
.I.e., that enough other lawfully obtained incriminating evidence (the check stubs and the eyewitness identifications) existed that a reasonable jury would have likely convicted Stoner based on that evidence alone. In Fahy v. Connecticut, another case from the previous term where the Court had suppressed illegally obtained evidence and reversed a conviction, the state courts had at least already made that finding, Harlan observed.
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause...
. It was a criminal case appealed from the California Courts of Appeal after the California Supreme Court denied review. The case extended the situations under which search warrant
Search warrant
A search warrant is a court order issued by a Magistrate, judge or Supreme Court Official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person or location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found....
s are required as they reversed a robbery
Robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear. At common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear....
conviction made on the basis of evidence obtained in violation of the holding.
The petitioner, Joey Stoner, had been arrested following a 1960 supermarket robbery in the Los Angeles area. Eyewitness accounts and evidence left at the scene led the police to a hotel elsewhere in the region where Stoner was staying. Two days later, detectives went to the hotel and, with the desk clerk's permission, searched the room and found further evidence linking him to the robbery. Stoner was arrested two days later in Nevada, and extradited
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
. The evidence from the hotel room was used to convict him of the robbery at trial. Stoner unsuccessfully challenged the admissibility of the evidence at trial and on appeal, since police had lacked a warrant and relied on the clerk's permission. The appeals court held that the search was incident to arrest and thus permissible.
Writing for the Court, Justice Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his tenure, he made, among other areas, major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.-Education:Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan,...
reaffirmed two previous holdings: The first, 1925's Agnello v. United States held such warrantless searches are constitutional only to the extent that they take place at the same time, and in the same place, as the arrest. Two other cases established that the hotel clerk's consent did not permit police to search the room without a warrant. "[A] guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures" Stewart wrote. "That protection would disappear if it were left to depend upon the unfettered discretion of an employee of the hotel." It did not matter that hotel staff might be permitted to enter the room as that was merely for the limited purpose of cleaning and maintenance. The only other opinion was Justice John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971. His namesake was his grandfather John Marshall Harlan, another associate justice who served from 1877 to 1911.Harlan was a student at Upper Canada College and Appleby College and...
, who concurred in the holding but dissented from the disposition reversing the conviction. He would have left it to California's courts to decide whether the admission of the hotel-room evidence was harmless error
Harmless error
A harmless error is a ruling by a trial judge that, although mistaken, does not meet the burden for a losing party to reverse the original decision of the trier of fact on appeal, or to warrant a new trial. Harmless error is easiest to understand in an evidentiary context...
, as the Court had done in similar circumstances in Fahy v. Connecticut.
The reaffirmation of the earlier rulings was necessitated by the Mapp v. Ohio
Mapp v. Ohio
Mapp v. Ohio, , was a landmark case in criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," may not be used in criminal prosecutions in state courts, as well as...
decision a few years earlier, which extended the exclusionary rule
Exclusionary rule
The exclusionary rule is a legal principle in the United States, under constitutional law, which holds that evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights is sometimes inadmissible for a criminal prosecution in a court of law...
under which unlawfully obtained evidence is inadmissible at trial, to the states as well as the federal government. It came at a time when the Warren Court
Warren Court
The Warren Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States between 1953 and 1969, when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren led a liberal majority that used judicial power in dramatic fashion, to the consternation of conservative opponents...
was beginning to rethink and provide exceptions to the traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine that only those with a possessory or proprietary interest in what was searched had standing
Standing (law)
In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case...
to challenge the constitutionality of the search. Several years later, in Katz v. United States
Katz v. United States
Katz v. United States, , is a United States Supreme Court case discussing the nature of the "right to privacy" and the legal definition of a "search." The Court’s ruling adjusted previous interpretations of the unreasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment to count immaterial...
, the Court abandoned that doctrine entirely in favor of the reasonable expectation of privacy test now in use.
Underlying prosecution
On the night of October 25, 1960, the Budget Town Food Market in Monrovia, CaliforniaMonrovia, California
Monrovia is a city located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 36,590 at the 2010 census, down from 36,929 at the 2000 census...
, was robbed by two men. One was described by eyewitnesses as carrying a gun, wearing horn-rimmed glasses
Horn-rimmed glasses
Horn-rimmed glasses are a type of eyeglasses. Originally made out of either horn or tortoise shell, for most of their history they have actually been constructed out of thick plastics designed to imitate those materials...
and a gray jacket. A checkbook, possibly belonging to one of the robbers, was found in a nearby parking lot. It was traced to a Joey Stoner, and two stubs indicated checks drawn to a hotel in nearby Pomona
Pomona, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Pomona had a population of 149,058, a slight decline from the 2000 census population. The population density was 6,491.2 people per square mile...
.
The Monrovia officers who investigated contacted the Pomona police. They learned that Stoner had a criminal record, and obtained a photograph of him. The eyewitnesses identified him as the man they saw. Two nights after the robbery, the officers went to the hotel in Pomona.
At the hotel they asked for Stoner. The desk clerk confirmed he was a guest but added that he was presently out. They asked if they could enter the room since they were investigating an armed robbery. The clerk let them in to Stoner's room, where they found the jacket, glasses and gun from the night of the robbery.
Stoner was arrested in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
two days later along with his partner in the robbery. He waived extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
to California, where he was indicted, tried and convicted. Since he had two prior convictions he was found to be a habitual criminal and sentenced to a long prison term.
On appeal to the Second District he argued that the search of his hotel room was unconstitutional since the police did not have a search warrant
Search warrant
A search warrant is a court order issued by a Magistrate, judge or Supreme Court Official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person or location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found....
. In the two days between the robbery and the search, Stoner claimed, there was enough time for the police to get one. The court responded that most of that time was spent establishing his identity and whereabouts as a suspect. He also argued that the search of his hotel room could not have incident to his arrest due to the time between it and his arrest, and the fact that the latter took place in another state. The officers were also aware he was not present, he added, so they could not have been intending to arrest him when they entered his hote room. The court cited many holdings in California case law to the extent that it did not matter whether the arrest took place before or after the search.
Stoner further claimed his confession had effectively been coerced. He claimed that he had not been arraigned
Arraignment
Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal complaint in the presence of the defendant to inform the defendant of the charges against him or her. In response to arraignment, the accused is expected to enter a plea...
until two days after his arrest, was moved from one jail to another during that period and not allowed to speak with his wife. The court found that the record reflected that much of that two-day period was involved in transporting him back to the Los Angeles area from Las Vegas, and allowing him to speak with his parole officer per his request, who had advised him to cooperate with the police. Nor had he been prevented from calling his wife, just discouraged from doing so.
Decision
The Court heard oral argumentOral argument
Oral arguments are spoken presentations to a judge or appellate court by a lawyer of the legal reasons why they should prevail. Oral argument at the appellate level accompanies written briefs, which also advance the argument of each party in the legal dispute...
s in February 1964. It appointed an attorney, William Dempsey, to argue for Stoner. Arlo Smith
Arlo Smith
Arlo Smith is the former District Attorney of San Francisco, California. He served from 1987 to 1996, and was succeeded by Terrence Hallinan. He lost to Dan Lungren in the 1990 race for California State Attorney General.-References:...
, future San Francisco district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
then an assistant attorney general in Stanley Mosk
Stanley Mosk
Stanley Mosk was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court for 37 years , and holds the record for the longest-serving justice on that court. Before sitting on the Supreme Court, he served as Attorney General of California and as a trial court judge, among other governmental positions...
's office, argued for the state. The American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
of Southern California filed an amicus curiae
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
brief
Brief (law)
A brief is a written legal document used in various legal adversarial systems that is presented to a court arguing why the party to the case should prevail....
on Stoner's behalf. A month later the decision was handed down.
The justices had unanimously voted to reverse the appeals court, and thus the conviction. "[I]t is clear that the search of the petitioner's hotel room in Pomona, California, on October 27 was not incident to his arrest in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 29," wrote Justice Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his tenure, he made, among other areas, major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.-Education:Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan,...
. "The search was completely unrelated to the arrest, both as to time and as to place." Under the Court's holding in Agnello v. United States four decades earlier, a search incident to arrest had to be "only if it is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest, and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest" to be constitutional.
Stewart noted that even the state had declined to argue that the search was incident to the arrest, since the cases cited by the appellate court could not be taken to authorize a search so distant from the arrest. Instead, it had claimed the hotel clerk's consent was sufficient for the search. But even that, he said, was not enough. Four years earlier, he recalled, in Jones v. United States, the Court had held that "anyone legitimately on the premises" had standing
Standing (law)
In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case...
to challenge the search of the property.
"Our decisions make clear that the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment are not to be eroded by strained applications of the law of agency or by unrealistic doctrines of 'apparent authority,'" Stewart wrote. "[I]t was the petitioner's constitutional right which was at stake here, and not the night clerk's nor the hotel's. It was a right, therefore, which only the petitioner could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent." The Court had previously held it unlawful for a hotel manager or an assistant to permit a search.In Lustig v. United States, , and Jeffers v. United States, , respectively.
Stewart allowed that it was true that hotel guest could not completely isolate themselves from intrusion. It was implicit in a hotel stay that management, cleaning staff and maintenance could enter the room without a guest's permission in order to fulfill their job duties. But that privilege was limited to that purpose, and "the conduct of the night clerk and the police in the police in the present case was of an entirely different order." He did not see the case as being substantially different from Chapman v. United States, another recent Fourth Amendment case in which the Court had held that landlords' permission did not allow police to search rented premises. Similarly, McDonald v. United States had extended constitutional protection to tenants in boardinghouses.
Going back to Johnson v. United States, a 1948 case that had suppressed drug evidence obtained by police who were let in to a hotel room by the occupant after knocking on the door, the Court had held that "a guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures," Stewart wrote. "That protection would disappear if it were left to depend upon the unfettered discretion of an employee of the hotel.".
Justice John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971. His namesake was his grandfather John Marshall Harlan, another associate justice who served from 1877 to 1911.Harlan was a student at Upper Canada College and Appleby College and...
concurred in the holding but dissented from the disposition. He felt the Court should have merely vacated and let the California courts decide whether admission of the hotel room materials constituted harmless error
Harmless error
A harmless error is a ruling by a trial judge that, although mistaken, does not meet the burden for a losing party to reverse the original decision of the trier of fact on appeal, or to warrant a new trial. Harmless error is easiest to understand in an evidentiary context...
.I.e., that enough other lawfully obtained incriminating evidence (the check stubs and the eyewitness identifications) existed that a reasonable jury would have likely convicted Stoner based on that evidence alone. In Fahy v. Connecticut, another case from the previous term where the Court had suppressed illegally obtained evidence and reversed a conviction, the state courts had at least already made that finding, Harlan observed.
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 376
- List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Warren Court