Court Opinion

ID: 9885270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 07:12:16.814276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:40:00.326381
License: Public Domain

In The

                                Court of Appeals

                    Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont

                               ________________
                               NO. 09-22-00213-CR
                               ________________

                   VICTOR MONIQUE GOYENS, Appellant

                                         V.

                       THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

________________________________________________________________________

                    On Appeal from the 221st District Court
                         Montgomery County, Texas
                       Trial Cause No. 20-08-09631-CR
________________________________________________________________________

                          MEMORANDUM OPINION

      Appellant was convicted of possession of a controlled substance and

sentenced to twenty-five years in the institutional division of the Texas Department

of Criminal Justice. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 481.113(d). Goyens was a

passenger in a vehicle that was stopped by a State Trooper, who explained to the

car’s occupants that he stopped the car for an improperly placed license plate because

the car’s front license plate was on the dashboard rather than the front bumper of the

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car. The Trooper approached the car, smelled marijuana coming from inside, and

when he subsequently searched the vehicle, the trooper discovered weapons and

drugs.

         After his arrest and indictment, Goyens filed a motion to suppress a statement

that he made to the Trooper during the traffic stop and to suppress the evidence that

drugs belonging to Goyens were discovered following Goyens’ arrest. After the trial

court denied Goyens’ motion to suppress, he pleaded “guilty” subject to his right to

appeal from the trial court’s adverse ruling on his motion to suppress. In one issue

on appeal, Goyens argues the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress. We

overrule his sole issue and affirm the trial court’s judgment.

                                    I. Background

         Goyens was the sole passenger in a vehicle that was stopped by State Trooper

Royce Brown for a traffic stop. Upon approaching the vehicle on the passenger side

window, the Trooper asked the driver for his driver’s license and insurance. The

Trooper told the driver that his license plate could not be on his front windshield but

that he would only receive a warning for the violation. He then noticed the odor of

marijuana coming from inside the passenger’s side of the vehicle. After obtaining

the driver’s license from the driver, Trooper Brown asked the passenger, Goyens,

for his driver’s license. Brown asked the driver to exit the car and he questioned the

driver outside the car. The Trooper then asked Goyens, who was traveling in the

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right front seat of the car, to exit the car. In the hearing, Trooper Brown explained

he asked the occupants to step out of the car separately “for officer safety[,]

because you "[d]on’t want multiple subjects on the side of the road that can easily

take advantage of you. And to separate them in order to get -- so they don’t

collaborate their story.”

      The Trooper proceeded with routine questions about where the driver was

going and where was he coming from. The driver and the Trooper then engaged in

a conversation on the grassy area behind the driver’s vehicle about the best way to

move a trailer the driver received as a gift. The driver stated the passenger was his

neighbor, and they were originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, but were living in

Humble when they were stopped.

      When the Trooper asked the driver whether the car was his, the driver said it

was. Then Trooper Brown told the driver that he smelled marijuana when he had

approached the car and he asked the driver how recently he had smoked marijuana

and whether there was any marijuana still in the vehicle. The driver admitted the

driver and passenger had smoked marijuana and there was only a little bit in his

ashtray. The Trooper asked the driver if he had any paraphernalia or any weapons in

the vehicle. The driver responded there was no drug paraphernalia in the car, but that

he had a gun in the car by his seat. The Trooper patted the driver down and asked

that he wait there in the grassy area.

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      Then, the Trooper approached Goyens and asked him to step out into the

grassy area near the front of the car. The Trooper confirmed with Goyens that

Goyens and the driver were neighbors, and they were traveling to look at a trailer

the driver had recently acquired. He then told Goyens that the driver said they had

marijuana and they had recently smoked it. Goyens admitted they had just smoked

marijuana. Trooper Brown asked Goyens whether Goyens had any other personal

property in the vehicle and, in response, Goyens told the trooper he had nothing other

than his wallet in the car. When Trooper Brown asked Goyens whether he’d ever

been in trouble, Goyens told him that he had been in trouble for “agg. assault” about

20 years ago. Goyens denied that he had anything illegal on his person.

      After questioning the driver and passenger, Trooper Brown searched the

driver’s side of the car. He found two weapons on that side of the vehicle, and he

found marijuana in the car’s center console. Trooper Brown then searched the

passenger side of the car and found a pistol under the front passenger seat. The

Trooper returned to his patrol car, asked dispatch to run a criminal history on the

driver and Goyens, and had the serial numbers on the pistols he found in the car

checked against the records that police use to see if the weapons were stolen. The

Trooper also verified that the car was registered to the driver—not Goyens. The

dispatcher reported that the pistol under the passenger seat had been reported as

stolen.

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      The Trooper went back to the driver, who admitted the marijuana in the center

console and the two guns on the driver’s side were his. After questioning the driver,

Trooper Brown approached Goyens and asked him whether the gun under the

passenger seat was his. Goyens responded that it was, explaining that he had

purchased the gun for his safety from a friend in Houston. The Trooper then returned

to the driver and placed the driver under arrest for possession of marijuana and for

unlawfully carrying a weapon. Trooper Brown checked with dispatch and the

District Attorney’s Office and learned that Goyens had a felony criminal conviction

within the last five years. Trooper Brown arrested Goyens and charged him with

being a felon who had unlawful possession of a firearm. 1

      Trooper Brown took Goyens and the driver to jail. When the Trooper got there

with the men handcuffed in his patrol car, he asked both men whether they had

anything illegal with them. In response, Goyens disclosed that he had drugs in his

underwear. Jail personnel conducted a search at the jail and discovered

methylenedioxy methamphetamine (MDMA), a controlled substance, in Goyens’

underwear. Goyens was indicted for knowingly possessing with intent to deliver a

controlled substance, namely, Methamphetamine, in an amount of four grams or

      1
        Goyens has previous felony convictions for possession with intent to deliver
a controlled substance in 2005 and a prior conviction for murder in 1993. Goyens
was on probation for a 2019 felony conviction for possession of a forged instrument.
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more but less than 400 grams, by aggregate weight, including adulterants and/or

dilutants.

      Goyens moved to suppress his statement acknowledging that the gun found

under the passenger seat was his gun, contending that he was in custody, but had not

been “mirandized,” when he told Trooper Brown the gun under the passenger seat

was his. Goyens argued that because his arrest is based on his statement the gun was

his, that his arrest was illegal and that his subsequent admission that he had drugs in

his underwear and subsequent search that led to the discovery of the MDMA was

“fruit of the poisonous tree,” subject to his motion to suppress. See Wong Sun v.

United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88 (1963); State v. Story, 445 S.W.3d 729, 733

(Tex. Crim. App. 2014). After a hearing on the motion to suppress, the trial court

denied Goyens’ motion, and Goyens pleaded guilty subject to his right to appeal the

trial court’s pretrial ruling on his motion to suppress. The trial court sentenced

Goyens to twenty-five years in prison, and this appeal ensued.

      A. The Hearing on the Motion to Suppress Goyens’ Statement

      Texas Department of Public Safety officer Mackenzie Brown was the sole

witness at the hearing the trial court conducted on Goyen’s motion to suppress.

Brown authenticated the recordings from his body camera and his dashboard camera,

both of which were admitted into evidence. He described the traffic stop, the search

of the car following the stop, and his brief conversation with Goyens, noting that

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Goyens was not in custody when Goyens admitted possessing the gun. Because

Trooper Brown didn’t consider Goyens under arrest, Trooper Brown testified that

he did not need to read Goyens the Miranda warnings. He did, however, confirm

that Goyens was not free to leave the scene of the traffic stop and would have been

forcibly prevented from leaving had he tried to do so.

                               II. Standard of Review

      We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress under a bifurcated

standard of review. State v. Torres, 666 S.W.3d 735, 740 (Tex. Crim. App. 2023);

Lopez v. State, 610 S.W.3d 487, 494 (Tex. Crim. App. 2020). In conducting our

review, “[w]e afford almost total deference to the trial court’s findings of historical

facts that are reasonably supported by the record and to its resolution of mixed

questions that turn on credibility or demeanor[.]” Lopez, 610 S.W.3d at 494. “We

review de novo a trial court’s legal conclusions and its resolution of mixed questions

that do not turn on credibility and demeanor.” Id. As the judge of the credibility of

the witnesses in a hearing on a motion to suppress, the trial court is the sole judge of

the credibility of the witnesses. State v. Ross, 32 S.W.3d 853, 855 (Tex. Crim. App.

2000).

      When, as here, the trial court makes findings of fact, we determine whether

the evidence when viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling

supports the trial court’s findings. State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 818 (Tex. Crim.

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App. 2006); see also State v. Duran, 396 S.W.3d 563, 571 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013).

We will reverse the trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress “only if it is arbitrary,

unreasonable, or ‘outside the zone of reasonable disagreement.’” Story, 445 S.W.3d

at 732 (quoting State v. Dixon, 206 S.W.3d 587, 590 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006)). In

our review, we afford the party that prevailed on the motion the strongest legitimate

view of the evidence and give that party all inferences that may be reasonably drawn

from the evidence. Duran, 396 S.W.3d at 571. We will uphold the trial court’s ruling

if it is reasonably supported by the record and is correct on any theory of law that

applies to the case. Story, 445 S.W.3d at 732. The party that prevailed in the trial

court is afforded the strongest legitimate view of the evidence and all reasonable

inferences that may be drawn from that evidence. State v. Garcia-Cantu,

253 S.W.3d 236, 241 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008).

                                     III. Analysis

      It is undisputed that Brown did not read Goyens’ Miranda warnings before

Goyens admitted that the gun under the car’s passenger seat was his. See Miranda

v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 476-79 (1966). The dispositive question, then, is whether

Goyens was in custody when Brown questioned Goyens about the gun. Id. at 545;

Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22 § 3(a).

      Citing State v. Ortiz, 382 S.W.3d 367, 372 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012), Goyens

contends that because a reasonable person in his position would not have felt free to

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leave, he was in custody for purposes of Miranda, and therefore should have been

properly cautioned against self-incrimination. Although we agree that a reasonable

person in Goyens’ position would not have felt free to leave the scene of the stop,

our inquiry does not end there. See Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 113-14

(1995). We examine “the circumstances surrounding the interrogation[]” to

determine whether there was “a ‘formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement’

of the degree associated with a formal arrest.” Id. at 112 (quoting California v.

Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125 (1983)). Evaluating the surrounding circumstances

enables us to determine whether Goyens was “temporarily detained rather than under

arrest when [he] made the statement.” Wexler v. State, 625 S.W.3d 162, 166 (Tex.

Crim. App. 2021).

      In Berkemer v. McCarty, the Supreme Court held that a typical traffic stop “is

more analogous to a so-called ‘Terry stop’ . . . than to a formal arrest.” 468 U.S. 420,

439 (1984) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30-31 (1968)). It is a brief detention

conducted “in order to ‘investigate the circumstances that provoke suspicion.”’

Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 439. “Typically, this means that the officer may ask the

detainee a moderate number of questions to . . . try to obtain information confirming

or dispelling the officer’s suspicions.” Id. “[P]ersons temporarily detained pursuant

to such stops are not ‘in custody’ for the purposes of Miranda.” Id. at 440. In this

case, for example, the questions that Trooper Brown asked about the ownership of

                                           9
the gun he found under the passenger’s seat were important because that gun might

have belonged to the driver.

      In Wexler, the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the defendant’s argument

that she was subjected to a custodial interrogation even though she was questioned

while detained outside her house in a police car as police executed a search warrant

looking for drugs inside the home. 625 S.W.3d at 168. The Wexler court drew

parallels between being detained during a search and being detained during a traffic

stop. Id. at 170-71 (citing Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 436-40). It observed that like a

traffic stop, the challenged detention was not only brief and public, the appellant

“was not told that her detention would not be temporary.” Wexler, 625 S.W.3d at

169-70. Wexler’s detention, although it curtailed her freedom of movement, did not

reach “the functional equivalent of a formal arrest[.]” Id. at 170.

      Here, as in Wexler, Goyens was briefly detained in daylight, in public, and

was never told that his detention was not temporary. Id. at 169-70. In fact, Goyens

and the driver of the vehicle were told the driver was to be given a warning only for

the license plate violation and then they could get on their way. When he was

questioned, Goyens’ freedom of movement was diminished, but not to the degree

associated with a formal arrest, as Goyens and the driver were both standing in a

grassy area off the roadside during the relevant portion of the trooper’s investigation.

Goyens did not own the car and he could see that Trooper Brown’s attention was

                                          10
focused initially on the car’s driver. The gun Goyens said belonged to him was found

under the seat where Goyens had been sitting before he got out of the car. While the

driver told Trooper Brown the men had been smoking marijuana and there were two

guns in the car before Trooper Brown found marijuana in the center console and

three guns in the car, the discovery of the third gun raised a question about whether

the driver also owned the third gun and whether the third gun was registered to him.

For that reason, it was reasonable for Trooper Brown to ask Goyens if he owned the

gun since the question may fairly be categorized as an attempt “to obtain information

confirming or dispelling the officer’s suspicions.” Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 439. It was

not, as Goyens argues, a custodial interrogation that required a Miranda warning.

       In Wexler, the Court of Criminal Appeals examined the four factors set out in

Dowthitt v. State, 931 S.W.2d 244 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996), which outlined four

general situations that may constitute custody: (1) the suspect is physically deprived

of her freedom of action in any significant way; (2) a law enforcement officer tells

the suspect that she cannot leave; (3) law enforcement officers create a situation that

would lead a reasonable person to believe her freedom of movement has been

significantly restricted; or (4) there is probable cause to arrest, and law enforcement

officers do not tell the suspect that she is free to leave. Id. at 167-68 (internal citation

omitted). In the first three situations, the restriction upon freedom of movement must

amount to the degree associated with an arrest as opposed to an investigative

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detention. Id. at 168. In Goyens’ case, Goyens was told to stand on the side of the

road in a grassy area away from traffic with minimal deprivation of freedom. Goyens

was not told that he could not leave, he wasn’t handcuffed, and he wasn’t told he

was going to be arrested or charged with a crime. As in Wexler, when viewing the

evidence from the hearing on the motion to suppress as a whole, the trial court could

have reasonably concluded that a reasonable person at that time and place would not

have believed that his freedom of movement was restricted to the degree associated

with an arrest. Id. at 168. We find no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s denial

of the motion to suppress. There was no unreasonable seizure of the drugs

subsequently found on Goyens’ person upon entry into the jail as it was a lawful

search incident to arrest. See Price v. State, 662 S.W.3d 428, 435 (Tex. Crim. App.

2020).

      We overrule Goyens’ sole appellate point.

                                   IV. Conclusion

      Because Goyens was not in custody when, in response to a law enforcement

officer’s question, he acknowledged possessing a firearm, he need not have been

read his Miranda rights. Therefore, the trial court did not err in denying Goyens’

motion to suppress his statement admitting gun possession and the subsequent arrest

for possession of illegal drugs found at the jail.

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      AFFIRMED.

                                              JAY WRIGHT
                                                  Justice

Submitted on September 18, 2023
Opinion Delivered October 4, 2023
Do Not Publish

Before Horton, Johnson and Wright, JJ.

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