Filed 6/30/17 P. v. Hackler CA3
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.



IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT
(Sacramento)
----



THE PEOPLE,

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.

SCOTT NELSON HACKLER,

Defendant and Appellant.
C082796

(Super. Ct. No. 15F04602)





After the trial court denied his motion to suppress, defendant Scott Nelson Hackler pleaded guilty to five narcotics trafficking felonies and a misdemeanor and admitted to being personally armed with a firearm during the commission of a narcotics trafficking felony. Defendant was sentenced to an aggregate prison term of 3 years eight months.
On appeal, defendant contends the trial court erred when it denied his motion to suppress.
We affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Defendant filed his motion to suppress before the preliminary hearing alleging that law enforcement conducted a warrantless search of his car without justification.
The People opposed the motion and alleged the warrantless search of defendant’s car was justified by probable cause. Specifically, the People argued that information provided to law enforcement by a confidential informant, which was sufficiently corroborated, provided law enforcement with a reasonable belief that defendant was “transporting, possessing, and selling narcotics.” Defendant’s motion was heard together with the preliminary hearing.
Officers Kyle McGill and Christopher Jensen testified as follows: On July 27, 2015, while responding to a separate call, Officers McGill and Jensen saw a woman slumped over in the driver’s seat of a car. The car was stopped in the middle of an intersection. The woman appeared to be unconscious. Next to her was a piece of aluminum foil with burn marks, consistent with heroin use. The officers searched her car and found a syringe containing what appeared to be heroin, two scales, and 0.7 grams of methamphetamine.
Upset about the possibility of being arrested and going to jail, the woman offered to act as a confidential informant. She offered to give them information about another person. Neither officer had worked with her as a confidential informant before.
The confidential informant gave Officer Jensen the name “ ‘Scott.’ ” She told Officer Jensen that Scott’s home address was 3328 San Jose Way and said he was selling methamphetamine and heroin. She also told Jensen that Scott was driving home from Carmichael that day with narcotics, and he would be driving a “silver/purplish Mitsubishi Eclipse.” According to the confidential informant, Scott also owned a Ford Mustang and a Dodge pickup truck, both of which would be in the driveway at his house.
The officers confirmed that a Ford Mustang and a Dodge pickup truck were parked in the driveway at 3328 San Jose Way, both were registered to defendant at that address. With defendant’s first and last name in hand, the officers “pulled up” a photo of defendant, and the confidential informant identified him as Scott. The officers also looked into defendant’s criminal history and found an “extensive narcotics history” of arrests but no convictions.
Officer Jensen also read several text messages between the confidential informant and a phone number she said belonged to defendant. Three of the text messages were from four days earlier. The first said, “ ‘Bring foil.’ ” The confidential informant responded, “ ‘Gotcha.’ ” The next text message gave the confidential informant defendant’s address. The fourth text message was to the confidential informant and it was sent the same day she was talking to Officers McGill and Jensen. That message read, “ ‘ I’m in Carmichael.’ ”
Based on this information, Officer Jensen believed defendant was at that moment transporting narcotics. Accordingly, the officers set up a perimeter around defendant’s home in order to intercept defendant’s vehicle “prior to him getting to the residence.”
About two hours after the officers’ initial contact with the confidential informant, officers stopped a purple Mitsubishi Eclipse. The Eclipse was registered to defendant and he was driving. Officers searched the Eclipse and found 5.69 grams of heroin, 70.44 grams of methamphetamine, five hypodermic needles, two phones, and a stun gun. They also found $291 in cash on defendant’s person.
Officers subsequently obtained a search warrant and searched defendant’s home. In defendant’s home, they found 1.5 grams of marijuana, 1.35 grams of powdered marijuana, 3.7 grams of methamphetamine, a tourniquet, scales, a loaded Glock 17 handgun, and a loaded Ruger P98 handgun.
In the trial court defendant argued the confidential informant, who was previously unknown to either Officers McGill or Jensen, was apparently high on heroin at the time she spoke with them and desperate to avoid jail. Thus, according to defendant, she was an untested informant and her statement was inherently unreliable. Her statement could not “vitiate” the defendant’s Fourth Amendment protections.
The prosecutor argued the text messages demonstrated an existing relationship between the confidential informant and defendant, one which was at least in part drug-related. The confidential informant also provided them with very specific information related to defendant’s name, appearance, home address, and the make and model of three cars owned by defendant. Each of these facts was separately corroborated.
Moreover, the confidential informant told Officers McGill and Jensen what car defendant was driving that day, which proved correct, and she said he was in Carmichael that day, a fact which defendant himself corroborated in a text message to the confidential informant. Thus, although she was untested, the confidential informant’s statement to Officers McGill and Jensen was sufficiently corroborated to constitute probable cause to stop and search defendant’s car.
The trial court denied the motion to suppress evidence, finding “the confidential informant provided information which was objectively verifiable.” That information included defendant’s address, the make and model of three cars registered in his name, the exact car he would be driving that day, defendant’s location on the day in question, and the evidence that defendant was not a stranger to the confidential informant but someone with whom she appeared to have a relationship that included narcotics.
Defendant thereafter entered pleas of guilty to all counts and admitted he was personally armed with a firearm during the commission of the crime alleged in count one, possession of methamphetamine for purposes of sale.
DISCUSSION
Defendant’s sole contention on appeal is that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence because officers McGill and Jensen relied solely on the purportedly unreliable statement of an untested confidential informant as the basis for probable cause to search defendant’s car.
“The standard of appellate review of a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress is well settled. We view the record in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling and defer to its findings of historical fact, whether express or implied, if they are supported by substantial evidence. We then decide for ourselves what legal principles are relevant, independently apply them to the historical facts, and determine as a matter of law whether there has been an unreasonable search and/or seizure.” (People v. Knight (2004) 121 Cal.App.4th 1568, 1572.)
The warrantless search of an automobile is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when an officer has probable cause to believe the vehicle contains contraband. (United States v. Ross (1982) 456 U.S. 798, 824 [72 L.Ed.2d 572, 593].) “If probable cause justifies the search of a lawfully stopped vehicle, it justifies the search of every part of the vehicle and its contents that may conceal the object of the search.” (Id. at p. 825.) Whether there is probable cause to search a car is governed by the same standards as any other probable cause determination: could a neutral and detached magistrate make a decision, considering the totality of the circumstances, “including the ‘veracity’ and ‘basis of knowledge’ of persons supplying hearsay information, [that] there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place[?]” (Illinois v. Gates (1983) 462 U.S. 213, 238 [76 L.Ed.2d 527, 548] (Gates).)
Defendant argues probable cause to search his vehicle did not exist because the information that he was transporting narcotics that day came from an unreliable and untested informant. Defendant relies on People v. Lissauer (1985) 169 Cal.App.3d 413 (Lissauer) to support his contention. In Lissauer, an untested informant provided information concerning the defendant’s involvement in drug sales. (Id. at p. 417.) Law enforcement officers set up surveillance on the defendant’s house, followed his car, stopped and searched his car, and found contraband in the backseat. (Id. at p. 418.) The defendant pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana after the trial court denied his motion to suppress the evidence found in his vehicle during the warrantless search. (Id. at p. 416.)
The Lissauer court stated that in determining whether “ ‘there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place[,]’ ” “the ‘veracity’ and ‘basis of knowledge’ of [an] informant must be assessed” alongside any corroboration of an untested informant’s tip. (Lissauer, supra, 169 Cal.App.3d at p. 422, quoting Gates, supra, 462 U.S. at p. 238.) The court held probable cause to search the defendant’s vehicle did not exist, reasoning the circumstances known to officers did not establish the reliability of the informant, despite the information being corroborated. (Lissauer, at p. 423.) The court noted the informant’s information was “such as could be acquired by any casual observer” and the basis of the informant’s knowledge and the informant’s relationship with the defendant was never determined. (Ibid.)
While it is true that neither officer here had prior interaction with the confidential informant, thereby making her an untested informant, we disagree that the confidential informant was unreliable and the information provided could not serve as a basis for probable cause.
In contrast to Lissauer, where the untested informant provided only a vague statement that the defendant was engaged in selling drugs, the confidential informant here had detailed and specific information about defendant, information that could not be acquired by a casual observer. The confidential informant knew defendant’s home address. She knew the make and model of all three cars that he owned, she knew he was driving the Mitsubishi that day, and she knew he was driving from Carmichael that day.
The basis of the confidential informant’s information also was known to Officers McGill and Jensen. That she knew defendant was demonstrated by the text messages between them. She told Officers McGill and Jensen that defendant was driving from Carmichael, which was confirmed by defendant’s text message to her. Carmichael does not, as defendant notes, have “a reputation as an import center for narcotics.” (See Gates, supra, 462 U.S. at p. 243 [finding Florida to have a reputation as an import center for narcotics].) The status of Carmichael as a drug import center, however, is not why this fact supports the confidential informant’s reliability. The fact of defendant’s presence in Carmichael that day supports her reliability because (1) she knew where defendant was that day, and (2) defendant reached out to the confidential informant to tell her where he was. Thus, establishing that the confidential informant had specific, verifiable information about defendant not available to a casual observer, and she had enough of a relationship with him that he texted her to tell her where he was.
The text messages also corroborated defendant’s participation in the confidential informant’s drug use. It is true the text messages do not expressly refer to the use or sale of narcotics, but defendant texted the confidential informant to “ ‘[b]ring foil’ ” and gave her his home address. As the officers were aware, foil is used as a surface on which to heat heroin to smoke it. And, the confidential informant was a heroin user, in whose car burnt foil was found.
Moreover, Officers McGill and Jensen checked defendant’s criminal history. His arrest record for narcotics was characterized as “extensive.” Defendant’s history of arrests for narcotics violations, combined with the text messages, his relationship with the confidential informant, her knowledge of his whereabouts that day, and her verifiable and specific information regarding his three vehicles and home address, are sufficient to support the court’s finding that she was a reliable informant.
The totality of the circumstances support a finding of probable cause. Defendant has shown no error in the trial court’s ruling denying his motion to suppress.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.



MURRAY , J.



We concur:



RAYE , P. J.



BUTZ , J.