Court Opinion

ID: 9644684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:01:48.541528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:16.446319
License: Public Domain

ODOM, Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent to the affirmance of this conviction.
The issue before the Court, as urged both in appellant’s brief and the State’s brief, reduces to one of statutory application. The trial court’s ruling on the admission of evidence of the seizure of marihuana from appellant’s possession is challenged on grounds of unlawfulness of the initial police stop of appellant’s car. Appellant suggests, and the State in its brief agrees, that the issue is whether the officer was authorized to stop appellant under Article 14.03 or 14.04, V.A.C.C.P.
Article 14.03, supra, provides:
“Any peace officer may arrest, without warrant, persons found in suspicious places and under circumstances which reasonably show that such persons have been guilty of some felony or breach of the peace, or threaten, or are about to commit some offense against the laws.”
Article 14.04, supra, provides:
“Where it is shown by satisfactory proof to a peace officer, upon the representation of a credible person, that a felony has been committed, and that the offender is about to escape, so that there is no time to procure a warrant, such peace officer may, without warrant, pursue and arrest the accused.”
It does not appear that Article 14.03, supra, has any application to the facts in this case. It is clear from the statement of the facts in the majority opinion that the officer was not acting on the basis of any suspicious character regarding the place appellant was found by him, nor was he acting on the basis of any committed felony or breach of the peace, or anticipated commission of some offense reasonably shown by the circumstances under which appellant was apprehended. To the contrary, the officer was acting entirely upon the basis of communications from citizen Kinkaid, rather than the place or circumstances at the time appellant was stopped. The statutory basis for the officer’s actions, therefore, must be sought in Article 14.04, supra.
In measuring the actions of a peace officer against the standards of Art. 14.04, it must be asked whether the officer was (1) presented with satisfactory proof (measured by objective standards subject to judicial review, not simply subjectively satisfactory to the officer), (2) upon the representation of a credible person, that (3) a felony was committed, and (4) the offender was about to escape.
The inquiry here may begin and end with consideration of the first question. The officer was not presented with satisfactory proof that a felony had been committed. The officer had received a report from Kin-kaid that a burglary might have been committed at his neighbor’s, the Hoffman residence. An investigation at the scene, however, did not reveal anything missing or any forced entry. The officer testified that when he stopped appellant he did not have any affirmative facts that an offense had been committed at the Hoffman residence. The requirements of Article 14.04 were not 8 met.
In Brown v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 481 S.W.2d 106, the officer knew an offense had been committed, but “had no specific knowledge connecting any of the appellants to the armed robbery.” Brown, supra, at 111. In the instant case the officer did not *397even know whether an offense had been committed.1
The stop was not authorized; the evidence should have been suppressed; the judgment should be reversed.
ROBERTS, J., joins in this dissent.

. Even at trial, twenty-one months after the arrest, there was no showing of an offense at the Hoffman residence.