Court Opinion

ID: 9682644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:15:08.491156+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:40.567575
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
While the Court correctly sustains appellant’s first two grounds of error upon its finding that the controlled substance and hypodermic syringes were seized in an unlawful search, some of the authorities cited and discussed to support its findings were decided at a time when conventional wisdom attributed more to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972) (and other “stop and frisk” cases purporting to follow them) than was actually held in either. As was later explained in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979), for there to be even a valid patdown under Terry v. Ohio, supra, the one making it must have a reasonable belief that the citizen is armed and presently dangerous. The Terry rationale was not extended to the interior of a motor vehicle until just a few months ago in Michigan v. Long, - U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201, 33 CrL 3317 (1983).
Meanwhile the Supreme Court undertook to provide “clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations” in which a citizen is stopped by a peace officer. United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). We drew on that opinion in Hull v. State, 613 S.W.2d 735 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), to find that conduct of officers in detaining Hull “was without a particularized and objective suspicion of criminal activity on his part” and perforce “violative of the Fourth Amendment,” id., at 740. It is upon that current exposition of the law of seizure and search that I agree with the ultimate conclusion reached by the Court.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment of the Court.