P. v. Bradley



Filed 3/9/11 P. v. Bradley CA2/4




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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION FOUR

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JONATHAN BRADLEY, Defendant and Appellant.

B222012 (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. Nos. TA108724/TA103843)

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court for Los Angeles County, Kelvin D. Filer, Judge. Affirmed.
Linda L. Gordon, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Paul M. Roadarmel, Jr., and Eric E. Reynolds, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant Jonathan Bradley, who was on probation following his conviction for corporal injury to a spouse/cohabitant (Pen. Code,[1] § 273.5, subd. (a)), was charged with possession of an assault weapon (§ 12280, subd. (b)) and three counts of possession of a firearm by a felon (§ 12021, subd. (a)(1)). After his motion to suppress evidence under section 1538.5 was denied, he entered a plea of nolo contendere to the first count (possession of an assault weapon), and was sentenced to a three-year prison term on that count, plus a concurrent three-year term for his probation violation. He appeals, arguing that the trial court erred by denying his suppression motion. We affirm.

BACKGROUND
In January 2009, Bradley entered a plea of nolo contendere to one count of infliction of corporal injury to a spouse or cohabitant in case No. TA103843. Imposition of sentence was suspended, and Bradley was placed on formal probation for a period of five years.
At 8:30 p.m. on September 30, 2009, Deputy Penelope Armstrong of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department gang enforcement team was working with her partners Danny Martinez and Rick Cordero near the Clover Motel in Lynwood on a matter unrelated to Bradley or this case. Deputy Armstrong had made several arrests for narcotics, burglaries, robberies, and prostitution in the area around the motel, which was a known gang area. As she was standing on the sidewalk, backing up her partners, she saw a man walking out of the driveway of the motel. The man was holding his waistband as though he was concealing a weapon. When he looked up and saw the uniformed deputies he looked startled, stopped suddenly, and turned to walk in the opposite direction. Believing that the man might be concealing a weapon, Deputy Armstrong detained him for a pat down search.
As she was patting him down, she asked him for his name. He hesitated, and said his name was Franklin Monte. She continued the pat down while she asked for his birth date and whether he was on probation or parole. He hesitated again, then gave a birth date and said he was not on probation. She relayed the information to Deputy Cordero, who was in the patrol car, and he entered the information into the computer. Although the name came up on the computer, the birth date was different, so she asked him to repeat his name and birth date several times. Each time she asked, he hesitated before answering, and the birth date was a little off. She continued to ask him questions, including his address, but the information he provided was always different than the computer records.
While Deputy Armstrong was asking him questions, one of her partners asked him if he was staying at the motel. He said he was, so Deputy Cordero went to the motel office and got a photocopy of the man's identification. When Deputy Armstrong confronted him with the photocopy, the man admitted that he was Jonathan Bradley, and said that he did not give his real name because he had an outstanding warrant and did not want to go to jail. He told the deputies that there were citations in his room, and gave them permission to search the room. During the search, the deputies found four guns, including an Uzi, and several rounds of ammunition. Bradley admitted that the guns were his. The detention, from the time Deputy Armstrong saw Bradley until the deputies searched his motel room, lasted about 30 minutes.
Bradley was charged by information in case No. TA108724 with one count of possession of an assault weapon (§ 12280, subd. (b)) and three counts of possession of a firearm by a felon (§ 12021, subd. (a)(1)). Bradley moved under section 1538.5 to suppress evidence related to the guns and ammunition, on the ground that there was no legally sufficient reason for the deputies to stop and detain him, and even if the detention initially was lawful, it was illegally prolonged. Based upon Deputy Armstrong's testimony at the suppression hearing, the trial court denied Bradley's motion. The court then held a probation violation hearing in case No. TA103843 immediately following the suppression hearing, and found that Bradley had violated his probation.
The next day, Bradley entered a nolo contendere plea to the first count in case No. TA108724, possession of an assault weapon. The court sentenced him to the upper term of three years on that count and dismissed the remaining counts. The court then sentenced him to the mid-term of three years in case No. TA103843, to be served concurrently with the sentence in case No. TA108724. Bradley timely filed a notice of appeal in both cases, and the trial court issued a certificate of probable cause.

DISCUSSION
On appeal, Bradley challenges the denial of his suppression motion, arguing that his initial detention was unlawful because there were insufficient facts to give rise to a reasonable suspicion that he was concealing a weapon, and that even if the detention was lawful at its inception, it became unlawful when it extended beyond that which was necessary to determine that he was not concealing a weapon. We disagree.
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