People v. Cartwright ( 2024 )

Filed 1/25/24
CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION
COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION ONE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
THE PEOPLE, D080606
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v. (Super. Ct. No. SCD279043)
KEVIN EUGENE CARTWRIGHT,
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of San Diego County,
Frederick L. Link and Eugenia Eyherabide, Judges. Affirmed.
Thomas E. Robertson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for
Defendant and Appellant.
Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant
Attorney General, Charles C. Ragland, Assistant Attorney General, Eric A.
Swenson, Junichi Semistu and Felicity Senoski, Deputy Attorneys General,
for Plaintiff and Respondent.
A jury convicted Kevin Eugene Cartwright of first degree murder with
special circumstances (Pen. Code,1 §§ 187, subd. (a), 190.2, subd. (a)(17)),
robbery (§ 211), burglary (§ 459), being a felon in possession of a firearm
(§ 29800, subd. (a)(1)), and being a prohibited person owning or possessing
ammunition (§ 30305, subd. (a)(1)). Cartwright admitted to eight strike
priors and received a sentence consisting of an indeterminate prison term of
life without the possibility of parole plus 50 years to life, and a determinate
prison term of 20 years four months.
The sole issue on appeal is whether the trial court erred in denying
Cartwright’s motion to suppress video footage from the City of San Diego’s
(City) “City IQ” streetlight camera program and evidence derived from that
footage. We conclude that it did not and affirm the judgment.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In the early morning on October 9, 2018, Cartwright entered an adult-
content store and theater in San Diego with a firearm drawn, directed the
cashier to open the register, and stole the money it contained. When he was
unsuccessful in restraining the cashier with zip ties, Cartwright sent him
into the theater room. There, the cashier opened the emergency exit, ushered
customers outside, and called the police.
The following day, October 10, Lorena Espinoza2 got out of
Cartwright’s gold GMC Yukon wearing a purple wig and dark sunglasses.
She entered a flooring store in downtown San Diego and led G.R., the owner
1 All undesignated references are to the Penal Code.
2 Espinoza, Cartwright’s codefendant, entered a plea of guilty to second
degree murder and admitted a firearm allegation to be true; the court
sentenced her to a term of 15 years to life plus one year.
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and operator, towards the back of the store. Shortly thereafter, Cartwright
emerged from the Yukon wearing a granny mask and sunglasses. He entered
the store and incapacitated G.R. first by kicking him and then shooting him
three times, inflicting two gunshot wounds and one graze wound. G.R. died
as a result of these wounds.
Cartwright returned to the front of the store with a prybar, which he
used to open the register. Cartwright and Espinoza then left the flooring
business. Espinoza returned to the Yukon and drove it away. Cartwright
walked behind a nearby clothing store and removed his mask, an action
captured by the store’s security camera. He then used two different white
sedans to leave the area.
An investigating detective accessed the City IQ streetlight camera
footage. The cameras are not “situated so they could peer into businesses or
residences” and capture only the “public right of way.” They are fixed
position and located throughout downtown San Diego and other parts of the
city. The devices capture “environmental data, like temperature, humidity,
pressure, . . . traffic data, like car speeds, car counts, pedestrian data, bicycle
data, and even video data.” The video feature creates high quality wide lens
footage, but the devices do not record sound and do not act as gunshot
detectors because the City did not “enable the microphones.” Footage is
stored on each camera’s hard drive for five days; if it is not retrieved within
five days, the camera records over the footage.
Video from the streetlight cameras revealed which vehicle Cartwright
and Espinoza drove to the flooring store. Querying Department of Motor
Vehicle records disclosed Cartwright as the owner of the vehicle. Police
arrested Cartwright and, in a subsequent search, found evidence linking him
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to both the robbery of the adult store, and the robbery and homicide at the
flooring store.
Cartwright moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the
streetlight camera footage. The trial court denied his motion.
DISCUSSION
Cartwright contends the police conducted a warrantless search when
they accessed streetlight camera footage maintained by City. He further
asserts that, but for this alleged improper search, the police would not have
learned his identity and, consequently, evidence that resulted from the
streetlight camera footage is fruit of the poisonous tree.
The standard of review of a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress
is well established. (People v. Glaser (1995) 11 Cal.4th 354, 362.) On appeal,
we examine whether the trial court’s factual findings are supported by
substantial evidence. (Ibid.; People v. Camacho (2003) 23 Cal.4th 824, 830.)
We then exercise our independent judgment in determining whether a search
occurred and was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. (Camacho, at
p. 830.)
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects
against unreasonable searches and seizures. (U.S. Const., 4th Amend.)
It “protects an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy against
unreasonable intrusion on the part of the government.” (People v. Jenkins
(2000) 22 Cal.4th 900, 971.) To successfully claim Fourth Amendment
protection, “ ‘a defendant must demonstrate that he personally has an
expectation of privacy in the place searched, and that his expectation is
reasonable.’ ” (Jenkins, at p. 972.) “ ‘In other words, the defendant must
show that he or she had a subjective expectation of privacy that was
objectively reasonable.’ ” (People v. Ayala (2000) 23 Cal.4th 225, 255.)
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Applying these principles, we conclude Cartwright did not have an objectively
reasonable expectation of privacy when he traversed a public right of way in
downtown San Diego in the middle of a business day.
Cartwright relies upon Carpenter v. United States (2018) 138 S.Ct.
2206 (Carpenter) and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Balt. Police Dep’t (4th
Cir. 2021) 2 F.4th 330 (Beautiful Struggle) to argue that he had an objectively
reasonable expectation of privacy. He suggests that accessing the recordings
from the City’s streetlight cameras amounted to a search within the meaning
of the Fourth Amendment and, consequently, required a warrant.
Cartwright’s reliance on this precedent is misplaced.
The United States Supreme Court in Carpenter court addressed the
warrantless collection of cell-site location information and its subsequent use
in reconstructing a suspect’s movement over the course of 127 days.
(Carpenter, supra, 138 S.Ct. at p. 2212.) This information linked Carpenter
to a series of robberies and led to his conviction. (Id. at p. 2213.) The Court
held that the government’s acquisition of the cell-site records invaded
Carpenter’s reasonable expectation of privacy and constituted a search in
violation of the Fourth Amendment. (Id. at pp. 2219, 2223.) Maintaining the
special level of privacy for cell phones set forth in Riley v. California (2014)
573 U.S. 373, 403, which held cell-site records “hold for many Americans ‘the
privacies of life’ ” (id. at p. 2213, quoting Boyd v. United States (1886) 116
U.S. 616, 630), the Court concluded that a person “does not surrender all
Fourth Amendment protecting by venturing into the public sphere.”
(Carpenter, at p. 2217.)
In Beautiful Struggle, the Fourth Circuit’s en banc decision applied the
United States Supreme Court’s reasoning in Carpenter to an aerial
surveillance program operated by the city of Baltimore. (Beautiful Struggle,
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supra, 2 F.4th at pp. 339–345.) The city of Baltimore collected both
traditional surveillance data and aerial photographs. (Id. at p. 334.) When
combined, the police could effectively track someone’s every movement
throughout the city retroactively over a 45-day period. (Id. at pp. 345–346.)
This integrated surveillance, the Fourth Circuit concluded, was an incursion
into privacy directly comparable to the cell-site location information accessed
in Carpenter. (Beautiful Struggle, at pp. 345–348.)
Neither Carpenter nor Beautiful Struggle can be read to indicate that
the review of footage from the streetlight cameras in this case amounts to a
search subject to a warrant requirement. The United States Supreme Court
in Carpenter specifically indicated that its holding was intended to be narrow
and did not extend to “conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as
security cameras.” (Carpenter, supra, 138 S.Ct. at 2220.) Recordings from
cameras, such as the ones that captured Cartwright’s movements in the
downtown urban environment in the middle of a weekday, do not rise to the
same “unique nature of cell phone location records.” (Carpenter, at p. 2217.)
Indeed, “ ‘[a] person traveling . . . on public thoroughfares has no reasonable
expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.’ ” (Id. at
p. 2215, quoting United States v. Knotts (1983) 460 U.S. 276, 281, 282.)
Indeed, as the court in Beautiful Struggle acknowledged, “People understand
that they may be filmed by security cameras on city streets.” (Beautiful
Struggle, supra, 2 F.4th at p. 345.) This is effectively the same principle
Cartwright now argues against.
When Cartwright drove his gold Yukon downtown and parked, “the
movements of the vehicle and its final destination had been ‘voluntarily
conveyed to anyone who wanted to look,’ ” and Cartwright cannot “assert a
privacy interest in the information obtained.” (Carpenter, supra, 138 S.Ct.
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at 2215.) Further, the still images included in the record from the City’s
cameras are remarkably similar in scope to the views obtained from the
private security camera behind the clothing shop:
We note this to demonstrate that Cartwright could not maintain an
objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the downtown, urban public
spaces when any number of private businesses may have maintained similar
cameras that capture similar images.
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Stationary pole cameras, much like streetlight cameras, only capture
“short term” movements rather than “everyone’s movements across the city.”
(Beautiful Struggle, supra, 2 F.4th at p. 345.) They are “fixed in place,” “only
capture individual trips,” and do not create “a retrospective database of
everyone’s movements across the city.” (Ibid.) Due to these inherent
limitations, stationary cameras merely “augment[ ] ordinary police
capabilities.” (Ibid.) They modestly supplement and enhance, “to a
permissible degree, warrantless capabilities the police had even before the
technology.” (Id. at p. 340, citing United States v. Knotts (1983) 460 U.S. 276,
281–282 and Kyllo v. United States (2001) 533 U.S. 27, 33–35.)
We distinguish the cameras in the case before us from both the aerial
surveillance images and the integrated Baltimore Police Department systems
addressed in Beautiful Struggle. There, Baltimore used software to integrate
the “camera network, license plate readers and gunshot detectors” with the
challenged aerial surveillance to “reveal where individuals come and go over
an extended period.” (Beautiful Struggle, supra, 2 F.4th at p. 346.) Here, the
City’s camera program stands alone; there is no aerial surveillance or even
audio to integrate with the recordings captured by the streetlight cameras.
The cameras, by their very nature and limitations, do not reveal the transit
patterns of people throughout the county. The information they capture is all
information voluntarily conveyed to anyone in a public space who cares to
look—something any police officer could have done without a warrant.
Cartwright had no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy when
he used the public streets and sidewalks downtown in a manner readily
observable to passersby. We therefore conclude the police did not conduct a
“search” when they accessed footage from City’s streetlight cameras and,
accordingly, there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment.
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DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
DATO, J.
WE CONCUR:
HUFFMAN, Acting P. J.
CASTILLO, J.
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