Court Opinion

ID: 9767765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:26:07.18919+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:32.810782
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Justice.
Believing that the trial court and the majority opinion requires too much evidence to justify an investigative detention, I respectfully dissent.
The salient facts are simple. Minutes before 2 a.m. on the day in question, two Chambers County deputy sheriffs were on patrol on Interstate Highway 10 near Winnie. They observed a pick-up truck parked on the darkened side of a rural gas station/store on the opposite side of the freeway. The truck was parked on the side of the building opposite to where parking spaces were provided and, at that time, providing some minimal light. The lights on the pick-up were turned off and the driver’s side door was open. Since “it was suspicious to me that it was parked on the west side of the building at this time of the morning when the place of business was closed,” Deputy Yeager stated they decided to investigate and as they maneuvered their patrol car so they could approach the station/store, (they were on the other side of the divided 1-10) the pick-up left the station and the deputies pursued and stopped it within a short distance. Appellant was alone in the truck. Deputy Yeager asked for and received appellant’s driver’s license and insurance card. The insurance card appellant presented showed his insurance “was expired.” The officer returned to his patrol car and checked out appellant’s driver’s license, and it “came back expired.” Appellant was then placed under arrest and, since there was no one to whom the pick-up could be released, the officer called for a wrecker and, consistent with department policy, the officers began an inventory of the contents of the pick-up. After they inventoried the cab and were about to begin an inventory of the rear of the truck, Deputy Wheat announced he smelled marijuana coming from a large tool box in the bed of the truck. The keys to the box were secured from appellant and marijuana was recovered from the tool box.
At the conclusion of the motion to suppress evidence hearing, the trial judge stated: “I feel the officer testified truthfully about the return on the expired driver’s license, return on the insurance, that certainly that arrest would be lawful in the Court’s mind, taking this point in time that the procedure used to inventory would be a lawful search and seizure....” Further on, the trial judge stated “I think that one thing officers can do if they see something suspicions like that, the first thing is to check the premises to see if there had been a burglary; otherwise, the activity of Mr. Gilliam in this case is just as consistent with innocent activity as it is with criminal.” Finally, in granting the motion to suppress the trial judge stated, “I have a further finding that from the testimony of Deputy Yeager that nothing suggests that the defendant was engaged in any criminal activity nor was Deputy Yeager able to testify and/or articulate any suspicions from the Court’s recollection of the evidence that would indicate a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct or activity to justify the stop....”
While the majority opinion correctly points out that the court’s findings in a pretrial hearing will not be disturbed absent an abuse of discretion and that we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling, by the above-quoted findings, the trial judge “painted himself into a corner” such that the rules announced by the majority do not control the disposition of this case.
It seems clear that the trial judge determined that if the initial stop was valid, then the search was valid because the search followed a legal arrest for driving both without a valid operator’s license and proof of insurance. However, the trial judge invalidated the initial stop because the deputy was unable to articulate any “reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct or activity.”
Whether the officers were justified in deciding to make an investigatory stop of appellant did not require probable cause to believe that an offense had been commit*125ted. The only question before the trial court was whether the deputy sheriff was “able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant” the investigatory stop. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). In making this assessment, the court there stated “it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search ‘warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that the action taken was appropriate?” (emphasis supplied). Probable cause “does not demand any showing that such a belief be correct or more likely true than false.” Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 742, 103 S.Ct. 1535, 1543, 75 L.Ed.2d 502 (1983). Finally, the court, in making the decision whether an investigatory stop was proper, “should take care to consider whether the police are acting in a swiftly developing situation, and in such cases the court should not indulge in unrealistic second-guessing.” United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 686, 105 S.Ct. 1568, 1575, 84 L.Ed.2d 605 (1985). (emphasis supplied). The court there said “[a] creative judge engaged in post hoc evaluation of police conduct can almost always imagine some alternative means by which the objectives of the police might have been accomplished.” Id. at 686-687, 105 S.Ct. at 1575-1576 (emphasis in original).
The evidence is undisputed that Deputy Yeager knew from his years of experience that burglaries of businesses commonly occurred during the hours of closure; that this business normally closed by midnight each night; that when he saw the pick-up truck parked on the darkened side of the building at 2 a.m. it was “suspicious” to him and that he should investigate. Before he could reach the station, however, appellant drove off. It certainly was not unreasonable for the deputy to stop appellant in order to detain him while they further investigated a possible burglary. It was not necessary for the deputies to check to see if there had been in fact a burglary of the business prior to stopping the departing appellant. It was totally immaterial that there had not been, in fact, a burglary of the business. The search was not dependent upon probable cause to believe that a burglary had been committed. That simply is not the question presented. The search was justified as incident to the lawful arrest for driving without an operator’s license and proof of insurance.
The trial judge clearly abused his discretion in applying the undisputed facts to the well-established law regarding investigative stops. The majority errs in misapplying the law. I dissent.