Court Opinion

ID: 9661709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:47:11.789091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:32.858165
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority, on appellant’s motion for rehearing, reversed this case and in doing so overlooked a critical fact. The contraband was not found as a result of a search.
After Officer Dunahoe searched the interior of Branch’s car, including the glove compartment, he got out of the car, having found no contraband whatsoever. It was only after Dunahoe had shut the car door and was standing outside the car that he saw, in plain view, the tin foil packet that appeared to be a container for heroin. Regardless of the constitutional infirmities attributed by the majority to Dunahoe’s initial search, there was simply no evidence seized in that search that can be the subject of suppression.
It is an elementary principle of Fourth Amendment analysis that only evidence seized by unconstitutional means is subject to exclusion. Mapp v, Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). In Silverthorne Lumber Company v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920), the Supreme Court stated the policy behind the exclusionary rule:
“The essence of a provision forbidding the acquisition of evidence in a certain way is that not merely evidence so acquired shall not be used before the court but that it shall not be used at all. Of course this does not mean that the facts thus obtained become sacred and inaccessible. If knowledge of them is gained from an independent source, they may be proved like any others, but the knowledge gained by the Government’s own wrong cannot be urged by it in the way proposed.” 251 U.S. at 392, 40 S.Ct. at 183. (Emphasis supplied).
In McCall v. State, 540 S.W.2d 717 (Tex.Cr.App.1976), we held that a search means “a quest for, a looking for, or a seeking out of that which offends against the law.” It *328is “a prying into hidden places for that which is concealed.” To observe contraband in plain view is not a search. See also Sherer v. State, 502 S.W.2d 143 (Tex.Cr.App.1973); Coleman v. State, 500 S.W.2d 472 (Tex.Cr.App.1973). In the present case, the tin foil packet of heroin was not discovered until Officer Dunahoe had removed himself from the car and shut the door. The packet was on the front seat of Branch’s car in plain view. It is irrelevant to ask, as does the majority, what “brought Officer Dunahoe back from their (sic) location to the door of appellant’s vehicle and impelled him to open it and then conduct a search of the front interior.” When Duna-hoe discovered the packet, he was where he had a right to be.
There is no error. The judgment should be affirmed.