Court Opinion

ID: 9682912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:19:24.192864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:43.064875
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
ODOM, Judge.
On rehearing the appellant argues that our opinion on original submission is in conflict with Leighton v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 544 S.W.2d 394; Smith v. State, Tex.Cr. App., 542 S.W.2d 420; and Brown v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 481 S.W.2d 106. After a review of the facts of this case, we now *55conclude that the dissenting opinion was correct on original submission.
This Court has consistently followed the rule that when a person is stopped on an inarticulate hunch, the resulting discovery of contraband is inadmissible. Hinson v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 547 S.W.2d 277 (1977); Faulkner v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 549 S.W.2d 1 (1976); Scott v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 549 S.W.2d 170 (1976); Armstrong v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 550 S.W.2d 25 (1976); Leighton v. State, supra; Smith v. State, supra; Brown v. State, supra. The only differences in the above-cited cases and the instant case are that all those cases involve the stopping of an automobile and in the instant case the appellant was not stopped and was not in an automobile but rather standing on the street. However, these are differences without a distinction.
The officer here, acting under his badge of authority, approached the appellant and his companions specifically for investigative purposes to secure information and-“to see if they had any business in the area.” Such investigations should be initiated only if the officer can give “specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience,” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, quoted in opinion on original submission, emphasis added. The only facts the officer had at the initiation of his investigation were (1) a number of recent burglaries in the area and (2) four men standing together on a sidewalk at an intersection at 10:20 in the morning. It appears the officer initiated his investigation on “his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion” (Terry v. Ohio, supra) that appellant and his companions might in some way be connected with the recent burglaries. If such a suspicion were a reasonable inference from standing on a street corner in this neighborhood, all citizens passing through victimized neighborhoods would be suspects, and pedestrian checkpoints could be set up to monitor their comings and goings. Practices of this kind are repugnant to a free society. If victimization by crime becomes the justification for indiscriminate intrusion by the state, then we forfeit the security of our persons and privacy from invasion by the police on a hope of future security from the criminal, and ultimately find ourselves the displaced refugees in a raging war on crime.
The officer’s investigative action in this case was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution of Texas. The evidence should have been suppressed.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is granted. Our prior judgment affirming the conviction is set aside. The judgment of the trial court is reversed and the cause remanded.