Court Opinion

ID: 9779336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:47:31.751667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:25.425982
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting.
I am compelled to dissent because the majority opinion implicitly puts its seal of approval on a legal concept that is alien to me: that probable cause to arrest the driver of a motor vehicle will justify a warrant-*50less search of a locked glove compartment of the vehicle as an incident to the arrest.
The First Court of Appeals at Houston ordered appellant’s conviction reversed after it expressly and correctly found that the trial court erred in overruling appellant’s motion to suppress. Guillett v. State, 651 S.W.2d 902 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st] 1983). Justice Levy, who authored the unanimous panel opinion for the Court of Appeals, which panel consisted of himself and Justices Smith and Duggan, correctly interpreted what Judge Roberts, who wrote the original majority opinion in Gill v. State, 625 S.W.2d 307 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), stated therein, and what this writer stated in the unanimous opinion on State’s motion for rehearing. The State’s petition for discretionary review should be dismissed because it was improvidently granted.
The proposed majority opinion correctly points out in succinct fashion what happened in this cause:
[Officer] Pennington took appellant’s car keys [from the ignition switch], unlocked and searched the locked glove compartment of the car, and seized an open bank bag containing, inter alia, methaqualone, for which appellant was prosecuted.
The majority opinion, however, apparently to justify upholding the warrantless search that Pennington conducted, recklessly, see V.T.C.A., Penal Code, Section 6.03(c), invokes and applies to this cause the legal concept of “an inventory search.”
When the facts of a case have called for it, this Court in the past has invoked and applied the legal concept of "an inventory search.” However, that legal concept is inapplicable to the factual situation at bar because the facts reflect, pure and simple, nothing less than that a warrantless search occurred without probable cause.
I find the majority opinion implicitly holds that the expression, “an inventory search,” is a talisman in whose presence the provisions of Art. I, Section 9, Texas Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, and Article 38.23, Y.A.C.C.P., fade way and disappear.
The search that was made by Pennington is, however, actually proscribed and condemned by the Texas Constitution, Texas statutory law, and Texas case law, upon which appellant relies, as well as being proscribed and condemned by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, upon which appellant also relies, and, perhaps, by decisions of the United States Supreme Court, upon which he does not rely, as authority in support of the motion to suppress he urged in the trial court. The majority opinion errs in not adhering to the precepts of the respective Constitutions, as well as the statutory law of this State, and the case law of this Court.
Contrary to the decision of the Court of Appeals, the majority opinion reflects a total lack of understanding what this Court’s unanimous opinion on rehearing in Gill v. State, supra, stated and held. Most important, what is overlooked by the majority opinion is the very simple fact that the sole purpose of the unanimous opinion on rehearing in Gill v. State, supra, was to explain to all concerned, affected, and reasonable persons why the legal concept of “an inventory search” was inapplicable to that cause.
In all due respect to Judge Campbell, the author of the majority opinion, he has totally failed to place in the opinion sufficient facts which would justify invoking and applying to this cause the legal concept of “an inventory search.” After having read the record, I understand why Judge Campbell has failed to state sufficient facts: because no facts were presented in the trial court which would justify invoking and applying to this cause the legal concept of “an inventory search”! Failing to find sufficient facts which would support “an inventory search,” Judge Campbell, nevertheless, implicitly, opts to apply to this cause the inapplicable principle of law that a search incident to a lawful arrest is permissible. See, however, Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969).
By approving the unlawful warrantless search that occurred in this cause, the ma*51jority opinion denigrates the rights the Texas and Federal Constitutions guarantee our citizenry. By approving the unlawful search that occurred in this cause, the majority opinion moves the citizens of this State one notch closer to what the writer George Orwell wrote 40 years ago, when he stated the following:
I do not believe that the kind of society I describe will arrive, but I believe ... that something resembling it could arrive ...
Also see Convery and Cheever, “Orwellian Nightmare: Fact or Fiction?,” The Champion, December, 1983, (a publication of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers).
I dissent to the “arrival.”