Opinion ID: 2791509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Officer Barrientos’ Mistake of Fact

Text: The remaining question is whether Officer Barrientos possessed a reasonable suspicion that Alvarado-Zarza failed to activate his turn signal 100 feet prior to making a turn. McKay, Alvarado-Zarza’s expert witness, testified that Alvarado-Zarza activated his signal approximately 200 feet before changing lanes and 300 feet before turning. The court found that this testimony lacked credibility because McKay could not answer certain questions relating to the speed of the vehicles and the effects the video recording would have on a viewer’s depth perception. McKay based his testimony on physical measurements of the distance between the crosswalk sign where Alvarado-Zarza activated his turn signal and the spot where he ultimately turned. It is unclear whether the district court’s findings were intended to indicate that McKay incorrectly determined 6 Case: 13-50745 Document: 00512994045 Page: 7 Date Filed: 04/06/2015 No. 13-50745 the points at which Alvarado-Zarza activated his turn signal or turned, erred in measuring the distance between those points, or both. The video, though, plainly supported McKay’s conclusions regarding the points at which Alvarado-Zarza activated his turn signal and later turned. The government has not challenged the accuracy of the measurement of the distance between those locations. As McKay noted, the factors identified by the court were irrelevant to his distance calculations. Those calculations only required him to measure the distance from one point to another; the speed of the cars did not matter. Additionally, no distortions appear on the video. As a result, the district court clearly erred in determining that McKay’s testimony lacked credibility. The final question is whether it was objectively reasonable for Officer Barrientos to conclude that Alvarado-Zarza failed to signal 100 feet prior to turning when he in fact signaled 300 feet prior to turning. See Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 185. We have not previously addressed questions about the reasonableness of errors in estimating distances. Other courts have held that the government failed to demonstrate reasonable suspicion when the actual distance between the signal and the turn was unknown and the only evidence that the turn occurred less than 100 feet after the activation of the signal was the officer’s conclusory statements. See United States v. Gipson, No. 3:12-CR393-K, 2013 WL 6027908, at  (N.D. Tex. Nov. 14, 2013); State v. Hneidy, No. 04-12-00692-CR, 2013 WL 3279743, at  (Tex. App.—San Antonio June 26, 2013 pet. denied); cf. Ford v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488, 493 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005). The conclusion in those cases comports with the requirement that reasonable suspicion be supported by “specific and articulable facts.” See Terry, 392 U.S. at 21; see also Cortez, 449 U.S. at 417-18. 7 Case: 13-50745 Document: 00512994045 Page: 8 Date Filed: 04/06/2015 No. 13-50745 In this case, Officer Barrientos conceded that he acted quickly and could not “really be measuring” the exact signaling distance. Because of his mistaken assumption about the application of the 100-foot requirement, his estimations of distance related to the point where Alvarado-Zarza changed lanes rather than the point where he turned. Taken as a whole, Officer Barrientos’ testimony did not provide the sort of specific, articulable facts which would allow a court to determine that he possessed a reasonable suspicion that Alvarado-Zarza had committed a traffic violation. The fact that the actual distance between the signal and the turn was approximately 300 feet, and that Officer Barrientos provided no explanation as to why he might have thought the distance was less than 100 feet, only reinforces this conclusion. The district court clearly erred in concluding that Alvarado-Zarza’s stop was justified by reasonable suspicion. Accordingly, the evidence obtained pursuant to that stop must be suppressed. REVERSED and REMANDED. 8