Court Opinion

ID: 9774194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:11:02.900065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:01.814396
License: Public Domain

ONION, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
If you’ll pardon an expression I use “Col- or me amazed one more time.” The majority holds that the appellant, a fare in a taxicab, had a legitimate expectation of privacy in, and hence standing, to challenge the search of the area of the front seat of the taxicab, even though he disclaimed ownership of the heroin found there.
Prior to trial appellant filed a motion to suppress evidence claiming his arrest was without warrant or probable cause and the evidence seized was obtained illegally. At the hearing on said motion the State asked that the appellant first establish his “standing” to assert that his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated as alleged in the motion. Appellant was sworn and testified that about 9 or 9:30 p.m. on August 10, 1984 he was in the vicinity of Fulton and Booth Streets in Houston with his wife waiting for a bus. While there a friend, Reyna, came by and borrowed ten dollars from the appellant. When the bus did not come after about twenty minutes, appellant and his wife went across the street to a lounge, drank a few beers and called a cab. Reyna reappeared at the lounge and needed a place to stay so appellant offered him a place to stay. When the taxicab arrived, Reyna and appellant’s wife got in the back seat and appellant got in the front passenger seat and gave “Texas State Hotel” as their destination. As the cab pulled out of the driveway of the lounge, police officers drove up and stopped the cab, and asked appellant to get out. He was searched, but no contraband was found on his person. An officer then began to search the cab, looked through some books of the cab driver in the front seat, looked under the floor mats, and reached under the front seat and retrieved a piece of aluminum foil. The officer opened it up, smelled it and said it was heroin. Appellant’s wife and Reyna were then searched but no contraband was found.
On cross-examination appellant stated he did not put the tin foil and its contents under the seat of the cab, had no idea how it got there, and that the tin foil and its contents were not his. On re-direct examination appellant stated he had never seen the taxi driver before and “did not know him from Adam.”
At the conclusion of appellant’s testimony1 the prosecutor urged that appellant had denied the “property” was his and that he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the location where the property was *730found and under all the circumstances he had not established “standing.” The motion to suppress was then denied.
Thereafter on the same day appellant entered his plea of nolo contendere in a bench trial after the State moved to dismiss the allegations of two prior felony convictions alleged for enhancement of punishment. The appellant’s sworn judicial confession admitted the allegations of the indictment as to possession of heroin were true and correct. As a result of a plea bargain the court assessed punishment at sixteen years’ imprisonment.
Despite his plea of guilty and his judicial confession, appellant was still able to appeal the ruling on the pre-trial motion to suppress. Article 42.02, V.A.C.C.P.; Morgan v. State, 688 S.W.2d 504 (Tex.Cr.App.1985).
Citing Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), and California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985), the Court of Appeals held under the circumstances appellant had no legitimate expectation of privacy and had not established “standing” to assert that his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. The court found that the trial court did not err in overruling the pre-trial motion to suppress.
To invoke the exclusionary rule, a defendant must establish his own Fourth Amendment rights were violated by an unlawful search and seizure. Attempts to vicariously assert violations of the Fourth Amendment rights of others have been repeatedly rejected. See, e.g., United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 86, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 2550, 65 L.Ed.2d 169 (1980); Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 174, 89 S.Ct. 961, 966, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969). See also United States v. Vicknair, 610 F.2d 372, 377 (5th Cir.1980), cert. den. 449 U.S. 823, 101 S.Ct. 83, 66 L.Ed.2d 25 (1981); United States v. Byers, 600 F.2d 1130, 1132 (5th Cir.1979).
In Rakas v. Illinois, supra, the United States Supreme Court held that individuals, who assert neither a property nor a posses-sory interest in the automobile searched nor an interest in the property seized, and who fail to show that they had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the glove compartment or the area under the seat of the vehicle in which they were merely passengers, were not entitled to challenge the search of those areas.
The Court wrote:
“Judged by the foregoing analysis, petitioners’ claims must fail. They asserted neither a property nor a possessory interest in the automobile, nor an interest in the property seized. And as we have previously indicated, the fact that they were ‘legitimately on [the] premises’ in the sense that they were in the car with the permission of its owner is not determinative of whether they had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the particular areas of the automobile searched. It is unnecessary for us to decide here whether the same expectations of privacy are warranted in a car as would be justified in a dwelling place in analogous circumstances. We have on numerous occasions pointed out that cars are not to be treated identically with houses or Apartments for Fourth Amendment purposes. See United States .v Chadwick, 433 U.S., at 12, 97 S.Ct., at 2484; United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 561, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3084, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976); Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590, 94 S.Ct. 2464, 2469, 41 L.Ed.2d 325 (1974) (plurality opinion). But here petitioners’ claim is one which would fail even in an analogous situation in a dwelling place, since they made no showing that they had any legitimate expectation of privacy in the glove compartment or area under the seat of the car in which they were merely passengers. Like the trunk of an automobile, these are areas in which a passenger qua passenger simply would not normally have a legitimate expectation of privacy. Supra, [99 S.Ct.] at 430.” (Footnote omitted.) (Emphasis supplied.)
“Rakas shifted the focus of the standing question from whether an individual was an object of a search or seizure to whether the individual’s right to privacy *731in either the place searched or in the repository of the seized evidence was violated by the warrantless search and seizure. This focus requires a determination of ‘whether the disputed serach and seizure has infringed an interest of the defendant which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.’ 439 U.S. at 140, 99 S.Ct. at 429, 58 L.Ed.2d at 399.” United States v. Torres, 720 F.2d 1506 (11th Cir.1983).
As Rakas noted, the question of whether a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights have been violated by an illegal search pivots on the defendant’s “legitimate expectation of privacy” in the area search. 439 U.S. at 143, 99 S.Ct. at 430. “While an ownership or possessory interest is not necessarily required, the mere legitimate presence on the searched premises by invitation or otherwise is insufficient in itself to create a protectable expectation.” United States v. Meyer, 656 F.2d 979, 981 (5th Cir.1981).
In Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980), the Court held that Rawlings’ admission at the suppression hearing that he did not believe that a purse belonging to a female acquaintance would be free from governmental intrusion supported the conclusion that Rawlings did not meet his burden to prove that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse in which certain drugs were found by the officers. The court also held that the mere fact that Rawlings claimed ownership of the drugs found in the purse did not entitle him to challenge the search of the purse.
In Curren v. State, 656 S.W.2d 124 (Tex.App.—San Antonio 1983), the court found that the defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of a purse of a woman passenger found on the dashboard of a car “parked suspiciously alongside a median in the street” with the appellant outside the car near an area where heavy equipment was stored. At the suppression hearing appellant offered no evidence establishing a proprietary interest in the purse containing the contraband.
There the court, speaking through Justice Cantu, wrote:
“Under Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), a defendant who seeks to suppress evidence of crime must show that some personal Fourth Amendment right of his was implicated in the police actions leading to seizure of the evidence. He must show that he himself had some ‘legitimate expectation of privacy’ that was improperly intruded upon by agents of the government. United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980). This now applies with equal force to possessory offenses. The ‘automatic standing’ rule of Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960) was expressly abandoned in Salvucci and was not available to appellant at his hearing held on November 9, 1981, after the effective date of the Salvucci ruling.
“In the absence of some showing that appellant entertained a legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse and its contents, appellant is without standing to challenge the legality of the search. Goehring v. State, 627 S.W.2d 159 (Tex.Cr.App.1982); Manry v. State, 621 S.W.2d 619 (Tex.Cr.App.1981).”
In the instant case a taxicab was involved. A taxicab is still a highly mobile motor vehicle subject to the same, if not more, licensing and registration regulations as other vehicles and “necessarily lead to reduced expectations of privacy.” California v. Carney, supra, 471 U.S. at 392, 105 S.Ct. at 2070, 85 L.Ed.2d at 414 (1985).
In the instant case appellant claimed no possessory interest in the taxicab and specially denied ownership of or interest in the contraband, asserting that it was not his and he had no idea how the item got under the front passenger seat. Appellant made no claim that he had used or attempted to use or expect privacy in the area under the seat even to deposit his chewing gum, an area in which the majority acknowledges that the cab driver, a perfect stranger, may also have had a degree of privacy. Appellant made no showing and did not establish *732a legitimate expectation of privacy in the particular area.
Believe it or not, the majority reverses the trial court and the Court of Appeals, under the facts here presented, holding appellant had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the area under the front seat of the cab2 and had standing to challenge the search of that area which revealed contraband he claimed under oath he did not own. Hogwash. The trial court did not err in overruling the motion to suppress. The judgment of the Court of Appeals was correct.
I dissent.
W.C. DAVIS, J., joins this dissent.

. Appellant was the sole witness at the hearing on the motion to suppress. No Houston City Ordinance was offered and proven. At the time the court could not have taken judicial notice of such ordinance. Peach v. State, 498 S.W.2d 192 (Tex.Cr.App.1973); Cole v. State, 556 S.W.2d 343 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Green v. State, 594 S.W.2d 72 (Tex.Cr.App.1980); Lange v. State, 639 S.W.2d 304 (Tex.Cr.App.1982); Howeth v. State, 645 S.W.2d 787 (Tex.Cr.App.1983); Lalande v. State, 676 S.W.2d 115 (Tex.Cr.App.1984).

. It is most interesting to observe that the majority seeks to bolster its position by quoting from "Houston Tex. Code, Sec. 46.29 (1985)" which may or may not have been in effect at the time of the 1984 offense, and which was not offered and proven at the suppression hearing which at the time was required before the trial court or this Court could consider the same. Judicial notice could not be taken of municipal ordinances at that time. See footnote # 1. Further, neither party relies upon such ordinance, only the majority imports the same into the case.