Court Opinion

ID: 9764288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:18:12.318097+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:55.490714
License: Public Domain

TOM G. DAVIS, Judge,
concurring.
I write because I believe there are significant circumstances which go toward establishing probable cause for the arrest of appellant and the search of his car, which warrant further development.
It is clear that officers arriving at the victim’s apartment received most of their information from Lana Lee, the victim’s roommate. Lee was primarily reporting to the officers her recollection of what she had been told by the deceased.
Unquestionably, Lee was a credible informant.1 Though not an eyewitness, she was an earwitness to the shooting. As the victim’s roommate she possessed special information relevant to the police effort to catch the killer. She eagerly came forward with this information as a citizen-informant and freely gave her name to the police. Wood v. State, 573 S.W.2d 207 (Tex.Cr.App.1978); Avery v. State, 545 S.W.2d 803 (Tex.Cr.App.1977). See also, Jaben v. United States, 381 U.S. 214, 85 S.Ct. 1365, 14 L.Ed.2d 345 (1965); 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment, Sec. 3.4 (1978).
The hearsay information related by the victim to Lee was given credibility by events which occurred subsequent to the giving of such information and prior to appellant’s arrest. Convinced that she was marked for execution, the victim told others of her fear. She indeed was murdered, adding to her veracity on this and related points.
The Austin police officers were aware of the underlying circumstances upon which Lee based her conclusions. Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964). It was clear that Lee’s knowledge of the events related to police officers came directly from the victim.
The victim’s knowledge of these events was obtained firsthand, through her relationship with the appellant. This was the natural and obvious, indeed the only, inference to be drawn from the facts Lee told the police.
In addition to being reliable and based on sufficient knowledge, an informant’s information must itself be helpful in terms of establishing probable cause. The following information given by Lee to police officers was significant:
1. Appellant had been calling the deceased in an effort to get her to drop criminal mischief charges in Tyler where the deceased was to testify against appellant who allegedly slashed her tires. [The calls show appellant’s motive to kill the deceased. The pending charges tend to show appellant was capable of taking hostile criminal action against the deceased.]
2. Appellant had been threatening the deceased over the phone. Two of the calls that Lee knew of were received in Austin. Because of appellant’s threats, the deceased feared for her life. [The obvious inference to be drawn from the above is that the deceased feared for her life, because the appellant was threatening to kill her.]
3. Because the deceased feared appellant, she moved from Tyler to Austin, [This shows that the deceased did not consider her fears to be frivolous.]
4. Because the deceased feared for her life, she was keeping a diary to “doc: *348ument” evidence in case something happened to her. [This shows again that the deceased took the threat to her life seriously. An officer later saw the diary and some writing in it which corroborated Lee’s story about the diary.]
5. Appellant and the deceased had lived together. There was trouble over a property division when they split up, and appellant was jealous of other men.
6. Appellant drove a silver Corvette.
7. Lee showed officers a box the deceased had kept containing, inter alia, the diary, a photo of deceased and appellant together, appellant’s checkbook, a newspaper clipping from a Tyler paper about a date of the deceased who disappeared, and papers relating to the Corvette. [The material in the box corroborated Lee in her statement that appellant and the deceased had a prior relationship and that appellant drove a Corvette. The placement of all of these items in one box is further evidence of the deceased’s desire to “document” certain items in the event something happened to her.]
8. The Corvette papers contained a VIN number. Police used this to obtain a license number. A registration check revealed the Corvette registered to Woodward Homes of Tyler. [This further corroborated Lee’s information about the Corvette.]
9. Lee told officers that appellant had a criminal record, was on parole or probation, and had a reputation for being violent. [This information was of slight value in the absence of any detailed factual statements about the appellant’s past criminal activities. United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 91 S.Ct. 2075, 29 L.Ed.2d 723 (1971).]
Police officers also knew, from Lee and the discovery of appellant’s checkbook, that the appellant resided in Tyler.
Sifting through the information related by Lee to the police, it can be seen that the material most damaging to the appellant concerned: continuing threats of a serious nature made by appellant against the deceased; appellant’s upcoming trial for criminal mischief and the deceased’s expected testimony in that trial; the previous relationship that existed between appellant and the deceased and the souring of that relationship; the deceased’s real fear that appellant was capable of carrying out his threats, evidenced by her move to Austin and her efforts to “document” appellant’s actions towards her.
The murder of the deceased appeared to be an execution-style killing. She was not killed in the course of a separate criminal offense such as a robbery or a sexual assault. Further, there was no suspect other than the appellant.
The homicide occurred about 3:20 a.m. The BOLO was received in Columbus at 5:00 a.m.2 A few moments later appellant’s Corvette was seen in La Grange on Highway 71, headed toward Columbus. Appellant’s car was spotted at 5:30 a.m. in Columbus on Highway 71 between Highway 90 and Interstate 10.
Thus, before the appellant was stopped, a Colorado County Sheriff’s Deputy observed (1) the car noted in the BOLO and referred to by Lee, (2) situated 90 miles from Austin traveling away from Austin on Highway 71 (3) approximately two hours after the Austin homicide.
When these facts were added to the information the Austin police received earlier from Lee, probable cause existed to arrest appellant and to search his car. The spotting of appellant’s car in La Grange and Columbus not only tended to corroborate the tips provided by Lee, but also reasonably aroused suspicion when coupled with other circumstances known to officers. *349Polanco v. State, 475 S.W.2d 763 (Tex.Cr.App.1972).
Looking at the collective information in police hands at the moment of appellant’s arrest, we find:
1. A dead woman.
2. A victim who had feared that her ex-boyfriend (appellant) would kill her.
3. A victim who had taken her fears seriously enough to move to a new city and to “document” evidence against her ex-boyfriend in the event she was harmed.
4. The ex-boyfriend’s upcoming trial for criminal mischief against the deceased’s property. The ex-boyfriend had made more than one threatening phone call to the deceased to get her to drop charges.
5. The ex-boyfriend had made several threats of a serious nature against the deceased.
6. The deceased and the ex-boyfriend had lived together, and their breakup had not been pleasant.
7. The ex-boyfriend had a criminal record and a reputation for being violent.
8. The deceased was shot to death in an execution-style killing that had as its one purpose her death.
9. There was no suspect other than the ex-boyfriend.
10. The ex-boyfriend was discovered two hours after the shooting on a highway 90 miles from Austin at 5:30 a.m.
11. The ex-boyfriend, a resident of Tyler, was traveling away from Austin on Highway 71. The ex-boyfriend’s presence in Columbus at 5:30 a.m. was consistent with his having been in Austin at 3:20 a.m.
These facts and circumstances were sufficient in and of themselves to warrant men of reasonable caution in the belief that an offense had been committed and that appellant had committed the offense. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed.2d 1879 (1949).
There was also probable cause to search the appellant’s car for the murder weapon. Given the circumstances under which he was stopped, the search of the car was proper. Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970).
Accordingly, I concur in the majority opinion on rehearing.
McCORMICK and CAMPBELL, JJ., join in this opinion.

. In footnote number 5 of our original opinion there is a suggestion of lack of reliability of Lee’s information.

. Though the BOLO placed the time of the homicide at 2:30 a.m., the Austin police officers knew the shooting occurred at 3:20 a.m. Thus, the collective information in the hands of the police was that the homicide occurred at 3:20 a.m.