Court Opinion

ID: 9642790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:09:07.877399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:52.576960
License: Public Domain

RICHARD H. EDELMAN, Justice,
concurring.
I would overrule appellant’s third and fourth points of error on the ground that: *731(1)the police officers had reasonable suspicion to make an investigatory stop of appellant’s vehicle based on the radio dispatch; (2) the challenged evidence of his intoxication would have been readily apparent in the course of such a lawfully conducted investigative detention; (3) the evidence was therefore not obtained as a result of any conduct in making the stop that could have gone beyond an investigative detention and thereby amounted to an arrest; and, therefore, (4) the challenged evidence was either not within the scope of the exclusionary rule or was subject to the inevitable discovery exception to that rule.1

. In response to this reference to the inevitable discovery rule, appellant’s motion for rehearing en banc states that the federal constitutional law of inevitable discovery has no place in Texas search and seizure law, citing State v. Daugherty, 931 S.W.2d 268 (Tex.Crim.App.1996). However, this contention ignores the fact that appellant’s challenge on appeal to the denial of his motion to suppress was based exclusively on the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution (without any mention whatever of the Texas Constitution). While a State is free to provide greater restrictions on police activity under its own state law than is imposed under federal law, it may not impose any greater restrictions as a matter of federal law. Arkansas v. Sullivan, 532 U.S. 769, 772, 121 S.Ct. 1876, 149 L.Ed.2d 994 (2001). Therefore, to the extent inevitable discovery has no place in Texas search and seizure law, Texas search and seizure law has no place in this appeal.