Court Opinion

ID: 9768767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:47:50.62068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:44.580231
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Judge
(dissenting).
It should be noted that Preston v. United States, supra, said that in cases involving the search of motor vehicles, “the test still is, was the search unreasonable.” This is consistent with the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Texas. In simple traffic violations there are no fruits of the crime, and a search can be justified only as a means of affording protection to the arresting officer. To say that the officer who turns his back on the driver whom he has arrested, while he first searches the driver’s automobile is conducting a reasonable search incident to the arrest and not conducting an exploratory search staggers the credulity of anyone who pauses to examine the reasoning.
We quote from “Constitutional Limitations on Evidence in Criminal Cases”, Institute of Continuing Legal Education Handbook No. 16: “Very few drivers can traverse any appreciable distance without violating some traffic regulation.” Such violations under the arrest laws of most states give police officers the right to arrest the driver without a warrant, but “the overwhelming weight of case law holds that there is no right to search either the occupants of the car or the car itself when arrest is made for an ordinary traffic offense.”
A relatively new annotation titled “Lawfulness of Search of Motor Vehicles Following Arrest for Traffic Violation” may be found in 10 A.L.R.3rd, at page 314. It is interesting to note that of the approximately seventy cases from this and other jurisdictions there collated and discussed, only one case is found which would possibly authorize a search of this appellant’s auto*929mobile under the meager stipulations which form the facts of this case.
I am not prepared to stand alone against this great weight of authority in such a sensitive area of constitutional law.
I respectfully dissent.