People v. Mathews

229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 879, 21 Cal. App. 5th 130
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal, 5th District
DecidedMarch 9, 2018
DocketA146652
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 879 (People v. Mathews) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal, 5th District primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Mathews, 229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 879, 21 Cal. App. 5th 130 (Cal. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

Humes, P.J.

*881*132A jury convicted defendant Damari Mathews of second degree robbery and firearms offenses and found true the allegation that a principal personally used a firearm during the robbery after Mathews robbed the victim and shot himself as he was trying to escape. The trial court sentenced him to 13 years in prison. On appeal, Mathews contends that the court erroneously (1) refused to suppress evidence obtained from the hospital where he was being treated, allegedly in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights; (2) denied his request for personnel information about two police witnesses under Pitchess v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 531, 113 Cal.Rptr. 897, 522 P.2d 305 ( Pitchess ); and (3) calculated his presentence credits.

This court ordered the correction of a clerical error but otherwise affirmed the judgment on October 25, 2017. ( People v. Mathews (2017) 16 Cal.App.5th 601, 224 Cal.Rptr.3d 469.) In December 2017, Mathews filed a petition for review in the California Supreme Court, contending that the matter should be remanded to the trial court in light of S.B. 620 (Stats. 2017, ch. 682). This legislation took effect on January 1, 2018, and vests sentencing courts with discretion to strike or dismiss firearm enhancements, including the one imposed in this case, in the interest of justice. On February 14, 2018, the Supreme Court granted the petition and remanded the matter to us with directions to vacate our prior decision and reconsider the matter in light of S.B. 620. The Attorney General concedes that S.B. 620 applies retroactively and that the matter should be remanded for the trial court to consider whether to strike or dismiss the firearm enhancement.

Accordingly, we vacate our decision of October 25, 2017, and remand for the trial court to exercise its discretion under amended Penal Code section 12022.53, subdivision (h).1 The Supreme Court's order does not affect the issues we previously considered. Thus, in the published portion of this *133decision, we again conclude that the court properly denied the motion to suppress based on the estoppel principle announced in People v. Watkins (2009) 170 Cal.App.4th 1403, 89 Cal.Rptr.3d 135 ( Watkins ). We hold that when a probationer gives a false name to a police officer, and a record check of that name fails to reveal that the probationer is in fact subject to a search condition, the probationer is estopped from challenging the legality of an ensuing search or seizure that would have been authorized had the officer been aware of the condition. We also again reject Mathews's remaining claims and identify a clerical error that must be corrected in the new abstract of judgment.

I.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Shortly before 6:00 p.m. on the evening of September 21, 2013, the victim, a man in *882his early sixties, was walking in San Leandro with his grandson and their family dog. As the victim was throwing away some garbage, he noticed two men standing nearby. One of them, whose face was mostly covered, approached the victim and "tried to grab [the victim's] things." The victim surrendered the contents of his pockets, which included $38, a phone card, and an identification card, and the man then struck the victim on the head with a gun and fled with his companion.

After the two men were out of the victim's line of sight, the victim heard a "boom sound" like a "gunshot." Other witnesses also heard the sound of a gunshot from the direction of the scene of the robbery. Witnesses then saw two men, one of whom appeared to have an injury to his lower body and was holding a gun, running through the neighborhood. Some of the witnesses remembered seeing the same two men get out of a light-colored sedan a few minutes earlier. The same sedan picked the men up and drove off. No witness was ultimately able to identify Mathews as either suspect.

At around 5:50 p.m., a silver sedan was recorded dropping Mathews off at Highland Hospital in Oakland. The timing of some of the subsequent events at the hospital is unclear, and we discuss these timing issues in more detail when addressing Mathews's Fourth Amendment claim. Generally, however, Officer Keith Ballard-Geiger and Officer Pantoja of the San Leandro Police Department arrived at the hospital within minutes and made contact with Mathews in a trauma room. Officer Ballard-Geiger observed a perforation in Mathews's scrotum and a wound to his shin. The officer also searched a bag of Mathews's clothing, which included a pair of jeans with blood in the crotch area and a small, bloodstained hole in the shin area.

*134Officer Ballard-Geiger also seized some possessions of Mathews's, including a cell phone, that hospital staff had stored in a safe. A subsequent forensic examination of the phone demonstrated that it was used in the vicinity of the robbery to make a call at 5:40 p.m. and "traveled east from the location ..., got on the freeway on [Highway] 580, traveled northbound, and terminated somewhere near Highland Hospital."

Mathews was charged with one count of second degree robbery, with an accompanying allegation of a principal's personal use of a firearm, one count of possession of a firearm by a felon, and one count of carrying a loaded firearm on one's person in a city.2 Before trial, he filed a motion under section 1538.5 to suppress the clothing, Officer Ballard-Geiger's observations of his wounds, and the cell phone and evidence derived from it. He argued that the evidence was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Mathews also filed a Pitchess motion to obtain discovery of the personnel files of Detective Joshua Brum, who wrote a police report that referred to the events at Highland Hospital, and Officer Ballard-Geiger. The trial court denied both motions, and the jury convicted Mathews of all the charges and found true the enhancement allegation.

The trial court sentenced Mathews to 13 years in prison, comprised of a term of three years for robbery and a consecutive term of ten years for the accompanying enhancement, a concurrent term of eight months for firearm possession by a felon, and a term of eight months, stayed, for *883

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 879, 21 Cal. App. 5th 130, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-mathews-calctapp5d-2018.