California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Lorenzen v. Superior Court In and For City and County of San Francisco, 150 Cal.App.2d 506, 310 P.2d 180 (Cal. App. 1957):
An additional contention made by petitioner is answered in People v. Garnett, supra, 148 Cal.App.2d 280, 306 P.2d at page 574: 'Appellant assumes that police officers would, to suit their convenience, make use of fictitious informants as bases for illegal searches and seizures. Such assumption is unauthorized and is contrary to statutory presumptions that official duty has been regularly performed and that the law has been obeyed. * * * When an officer has in good faith testified that he had acted upon the information of an unnamed person and that such informant was reliable, he has thereby established a firm basis for his search of a suspect's premises. Pen.Code, 836. * * * So long as the good faith of the arresting officer with respect to the reliability of his informant satisfies the scrutiny of the trial judge, he is in substantially the same position as if he had come with a warrant of arrest.'
2. Delay.
Approximately two weeks elapsed between the receipt of information by the officers and the arrest. The leading case upon the question of the effect of failure to get a search warrant where there is time to get one seems to be United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653. There was a warrant of arrest issued in that case. The contention was made that it was not sufficient. The court held that it was, but went on to state that, assuming it to be insufficient, the officers nevertheless were justified in making the arrest. The further contention was made that a delay of some five days in obtaining it after information of the crime was received, and particularly in not getting a search warrant at all, made the search and seizure illegal. Concerning the failure to
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'It is appropriate to note that the Constitution does not say that the right of the people to be secure in their persons should not be violated without a search warrant if it is practicable for the officers to procure one. The mandate of the Fourth Amendment is that the people shall be secure against unreasonable searches. It is not disputed that there may be reasonable searches, incident to an arrest, without a search warrant. Upon acceptance of this established rule that some authority to search follows from lawfully taking the person into custody, it becomes apparent that such searches turn upon the reasonableness under all the circumstances and not upon the practicability of procuring a search warrant, for the warrant is not required. To the extent that Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 68 S.Ct. 1229, 92 L.Ed. 1663, requires a search warrant solely upon the basis of the practicability of procuring it rather than upon the reasonableness of the search after a lawful arrest, that case is overruled. The relevant test is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable. That criterion in turn depends upon the facts and circumstances--the total atmosphere of the case.'
In Trowbridge v. Superior Court, supra, 144 Cal.App.2d 23, 300 P.2d 229, the court answered a similar contention to the one made here: 'It was also contended that there was no good reason why the officers should not have waited and secured a search warrant in this particular case. No one would fairly argue that a magistrate would have refused to issue a warrant if the same facts and statements had been presented to him as were presented to the officer. It was recently appropriately [150 Cal.App.2d 512] said in People v. Allen, 142 Cal.App.2d , at page , 298 P.2d 714, at page 722:
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