Court Opinion

ID: 9770346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:59:28.539781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:16.683827
License: Public Domain

BRIAN QUINN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s opinion. The circumstances upon which it relied, when viewed in their totality, and coupled with the rational inferences therefrom, cannot support the conclusion that Stephen Christian Sanders had, was, or was about to be engaged in unusual, much less criminal, activity. The only rational conclusion which I can draw from the record is that someone may have been involved in criminal conduct at some time or another in the same neighborhood through which appellant happened to be driving. Such does not amount to reasonable suspicion. That this is the only logical interpretation of the record is best illustrated by an analysis of the record and factors cited by the majority.

Standard of Review

Before turning to the record, I am compelled to discuss my frame of reference. Reasonable suspicion depends upon the totality of the circumstances existent prior to the officer engaging in the detention. Woods v. State, 956 S.W.2d 33, 38 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). Those circumstances are viewed from the perspective of a mythic reasonable man present at the scene. Rhodes v. State, 945 S.W.2d 115, 118 (Tex.Crim.App.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 118 S.Ct. 236, 139 L.Ed.2d 167 (1997); see Davis v. State, 947 S.W.2d 240, 242-43 (Tex.Crim.App.1997) (applying an objective test focusing upon the facts available from the perspective of a “man of reasonable caution”). At the very least, those circumstances must consist of specific articulable facts which, when taken together with rational inferences therefrom, lead that mythic man to conclude that the person detained “actually is, has been, or soon will be engaged in criminal activity.” Woods v. State, 956 S.W.2d at 38. In other words, the articulable facts must be enough to permit one to rationally conclude that the person stopped “actually is” linked to the potential criminal activity. Id.; Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91,100 S.Ct. 338, 342, 62 L.Ed.2d 238, 245 (1979) (involving probable cause, but nevertheless recognizing that it must be “particularized with respect to [the] person” in question).
It is not enough that the detainee merely be in the geographic area wherein criminal activity occurs or occurred. Id. Again, not only must the detainee be reasonably linked to the activity, id., but the indicia relied upon to justify the stop must exist beforehand. Woods v. State, 956 S.W.2d at 38; Flores v. State, 967 S.W.2d 481, 484 (Tex.App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 1998, no pet.).
Additionally, while Woods dispensed with the “ ‘as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity5 construct,’ ” 956 S.W.2d at 38, that does not grant the officer carte blanche to detain someone for engaging in purely innocent conduct. If this were not true, then everyone out in the public would be susceptible to being stopped and frisked, as suggested by Judge Overstreet in his dissent in Woods. Id. at 39 (dissenting opinion). Further, I do not believe that such was what the majority in Woods intended. Rather, while the circumstances unfolding and acts perceived by the officer may be innocent, they must nevertheless reasonably suggest that “there is something out of the ordinary occurring” which is related to a crime. Davis v. State, 947 S.W.2d at 244. More importantly, if the activity cannot be so construed from the perspective of the reasonable man, then neither the officer’s hunch nor speculation can fill the void. See id. at 243 n. 3 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1883, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 909 (1968) (recognizing that hunch or speculation is not enough basis for reasonable suspicion). Nor can inference arising from an officer’s ever-changing experience suffice in the absence of facts indicating unusual activity.
*751Finally, because the officer at bar seized appellant without a warrant, the burden lay with the State to prove the validity of the seizure.1 Russell v. State, 717 S.W.2d 7, 9-10 (Tex.Crim.App.1986). Thus, it was incumbent upon the prosecutor to elicit from the witnesses evidence of the articu-lable facts founding the seizing officer’s claim of reasonable suspicion. With this said, I now turn to the record at bar.

Application of Standard to Evidence of Record

Officer LaVigne received a dispatch around midnight instructing him to proceed to 2835 Bowie to investigate an attempted burglary. He was told that the suspects were two males with flashlights and running on foot in a northerly direction down an alley. According to the officer, the dispatcher said nothing else. Officer LaVigne had no information about the purported suspects’ 1) age (whether juveniles or adults), 2) race, 3) nationality, or 4) physical characteristics. Similarly unmentioned by the dispatcher and unknown to LaVigne was anything about the suspects’ use of a vehicle in the attempted burglary or to make their escape. Nevertheless, within two minutes of hearing the dispatch that two men were running away, LaVigne spied a car containing “two peo-pie” and heading away from the “general direction” of 2835 Bowie. Though neither occupant of the car was seen running down the street or violating any traffic regulation or acting in an unusual manner, according to LaVigne, he decided to stop and detain them. His reasons for doing so were: 1) a “hunch” that appellant and his passenger were the suspected burglars, 2) the number of occupants within the car, 3) its general direction, 4) its relative proximity to the site of the supposed crime, 5) the brief time lapse between receiving the call and seeing the car, 6) the absence of any other vehicles in the neighborhood, which is noted for little traffic at midnight, and 7) his supposition that potential burglars have ears parked somewhere nearby. Although these indicia appear many, their analysis and sum do not support the existence of reasonable suspicion.
The first indicia considered, and that which I believe to be most important given the circumstances involved, is that of time.2 Again, Officer LaVigne testified that less than two minutes had lapsed between receiving the dispatch and seeing appellant. Though he and the majority place emphasis on this brief time lapse, in actuality it means nothing without its antecedent. The antecedent to which I refer is the time between the call to the police *752initially reporting the supposed burglary and the dispatch to LaVigne. The record is completely silent on that period. Whether an hour passed is unknown, as is whether a minute passed. And, to the extent that finding an individual within the vicinity of a crime scene somehow links him to the crime, logic dictates that the strength of the link is inversely related to the passage of time. That is, the more time that lapsed between the initial call to the police and the dispatch, the less the likelihood that someone found in the area would be linked to the crime. This is especially true when, as here, the party committing the crime was last seen rapidly fleeing the area. Therefore, because the record fails to show what this antecedent time period was, it matters little how quickly the officer saw appellant in the area upon receiving the call.
Next, authority and logic indicate that proximity to a crime scene may be a factor influencing the existence of reasonable suspicion. Indeed, the majority cites case law, e.g., Brooks v. State, 830 S.W.2d 817 (Tex.App. — Houston [1st Dist.] 1992, no pet.), supporting the view. Yet in Brooks, the pertinent indicia consisted of: 1) a report that the burglary was “in-progress,” 2) the officer seeing the suspect at the apartment complex where the burglary was occurring, and 3) the suspect attempting to drive away as the officer approached him. Id. at 819. To the extent that the suspect’s proximity to the crime was of importance, it was so because the suspect was in the “immediate area of a burglary in progress,” that is, the suspect was at the actual site of the complex where the burglary was occurring. ' Id. at 821. At bar, however, appellant was not seen at the site of the burglary, as was the appellant in Brooks. Nor was there a “burglary in progress” here, as there was in Brooks; our burglars were seen fleeing before the crime was reported to the police. Nor did our appellant attempt to evade the investigating officer, as did the one in Brooks. Thus, as can be readily seen, Brooks involved much more than mere proximity. It encompassed indicia which are totally absent here.
Additionally, the closest point to the scene at which the officer could place our appellant was three to four blocks away. How close this actually was to the purported crime scene is unknown, given the record before us. No one testified about the length on any particular block. Whether they were 50 feet long or 1000 is open for conjecture, and we cannot answer the question by merely choosing a particular length.3 Simply put, a block is not a block is not a block. They vary in size depending upon the whim of the developer and the governmental entity approving the plat which demarcates them. So, it is rather suspect to say that appellant was found in the vicinity of the supposed crime when the record fails to show how close he actually was and the amount of time which passed between the report to the police department and the officer’s arrival in the area.
That the area was known for little traffic at midnight was also a factor relied upon by both the officer and majority. Yet, I cannot see how appellant’s driving in the neighborhood is indicative of unusual activity. Indeed, the officer himself said that he would expect to see some cars in the neighborhood at that hour, though not many. That is exactly what he saw; few cars in the neighborhood. Thus, seeing the neighborhood in just the way one expects can hardly be indicative of unusual activity linking someone to a crime. And, just maybe that is why the officer conceded (which concession the majority recognized) that there was nothing unusual *753about a car being driven there at that time.
The officer and the majority also make much of the premise that the officer’s experience indicated that burglars parked cars near crime scenes to make their escape.4 Yet, there is no evidence of a car being used by the supposed burglars here. There is no evidence of anyone hearing a car start or drive away after the attempted burglary. There is no testimony about anyone seeing a car parked in the vicinity, not even from Officer LaVigne who supposedly was assigned to patrol the area prior to receiving the dispatch.5 Nor is there a smattering of evidence, as mentioned infra, that these supposed burglars were even old enough to have, much less drive, a car. Again, no one informed Officer LaVigne of the potential age, race, ethnicity, or physical characteristics of those whom he sought. Nor is there evidence that when he first saw appellant and his companion in the car he recognized them as two males, as opposed to two females, or a male and female. He merely described those he saw (when he first saw them) as two “people.”6
Unlike the plethora of cases in which a momentary stop was upheld, there is no evidence at bar of appellant performing a furtive gesture in the presence of Officer LaVigne, of appellant attempting to flee the scene, of appellant being seen at the location of the criminal act, of appellant committing any criminal violation or even acting in an unordinary manner in the presence of the officer, of appellant driving in any questionable manner, or even of appellant being seen possessing a flashlight or other tools utilized by a burglar prior to the stop.7 See, e.g., Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 5-7, 88 S.Ct. at 1871-72, 20 L.Ed.2d at 896-98 (wherein the officer actually saw the suspects acting unusually by “casing” a store); Davis v. State, 794 S.W.2d 123, 126 (Tex.App. — Austin 1990, pet. ref d) (wherein the defendant’s “suspicious movements” were consistent with participation in drug transaction); James v. State, 629 S.W.2d 92, 93 (Tex.App.— *754Dallas 1981, pet. refd), overruled on other grounds by Woods v. State, 956 S.W.2d 33 (Tex.Crim.App.1997) (wherein the defendant walked away from an area of suspected crime at rapid pace and then entered car and drove away at excessive speed); Bobo v. State, 805 S.W.2d 493, 496 (Tex.App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 1991), rev’d in part on other grounds, 843 S.W.2d 572 (Tex.Crim.App.1992) (wherein the defendant and other occupant of vehicle, which officers observed running stop sign, matched description of “ ‘suspicious individuals’ ” reported earlier); Reyes v. State, 910 S.W.2d 585, 590 (Tex.App. — Amarillo 1995, pet. refd) (wherein an automobile drove away from an area of suspected crime at high rate of speed and failed to stop at stop sign).
Not even do the cases which the majority believe highly analogous permit detention and frisk on the basis of the de min-imis criteria present here, since each has more. As previously noted, in Brooks v. State, supra, the burglary was said to be “in-progress,” the detainee was found on the grounds of the apartment complex being burglarized, and the detained tried to flee as the police approached. None of these factors were present here. In Flores v. State, supra, the officer had information about the age and ethnicity of the purported burglars and compared that information to the physical characteristics of those she stopped. 967 S.W.2d at 484. Yet, Officer LaVigne had nothing akin to that. His dispatcher simply told him that the suspects were “two males.” Whether those two males were white, black, brown, or puce or 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, or 80 years of age went utterly unmentioned to, and unknown by, him. Furthermore, the officer in Flores also relied upon (and the appellate court also found persuasive) the facts that: 1) the detainees were juveniles, 2) these juveniles were in the parking lot of a bar; an establishment open only to adults, and 3) the detainees tried to evade the officer. Id. Yet again, none of those indi-cia were present at bar. We only have evidence of adults driving in a normal manner, through a neighborhood wherein adults live, at a time when adults would be expected to be outside, and stopping when directed to stop. Simply put, our circumstances are not comparable to those in Flores.
Nor is our situation akin to that in United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981), another case relied upon by the majority. Unlike the circumstances in Cortez, we have no officer who set up surveillance of the area or who monitored the ingress and egress of a specific type of vehicle. Nor do we have a vehicle: 1) meeting the predetermined specifications, 2) being seen by a law enforcement officer conducting surveillance, 3) traveling to and from an abandoned location having little purpose other than one involving criminal activity, or 4) returning from that location within a known time frame, which time frame happened to coincide with that estimated by the officer as the time needed by Cortez to sojourn to the crime scene and commit the particular criminal act. In effect, the officers in Cortez saw their prospective detainee participate in unusual conduct. Our officer did not. He not only failed to see appellant do anything unusual but also admitted that appellant had not done anything unordi-nary.
The majority’s caveat about being “mindful that officer LaVigne was investigating a reported crime” and that his “stop of the vehicle ... was to investigate and to gather information about persons who might have been involved in a crime that had already occurred” does not justify the stop. Its statement can only be interpreted in either of two ways. The first is that an officer who is investigating a crime can stop anyone as long as he is investigating a crime. The second is that an officer can stop anyone he chooses in order to investigate and gather information about some person who “might” have been involved in a crime that occurred. Yet, neither interpretation comports with the law. Simply put, an officer cannot lawfully seize *755and temporarily interrogate anyone just because a crime occurred. Rather, before the stop is lawful, he must have reasonable suspicion, based on pre-existing articulable facts, illustrating that the person to be seized is linked to the unordinary or criminal activity he is investigating. Woods v. State, supra; Ybarra v. Illinois, supra. In other words, there must be a nexus between the person stopped and the unor-dinary or criminal activity and the nexus must illustrate that the person stopped is involved in the criminal or unordinary activity. That the officer is merely investigating a crime does not establish the requisite link or justify a completely random stop.
The record before me merely illustrates that an officer, who candidly admitted to acting on a “hunch,” decided to stop the first and only car he saw proceeding in an orderly and lawful fashion. Despite having no physical description of the suspects, despite knowing that the suspects he sought were afoot, and despite knowing that appellant had acted in an ordinary lawful way, the officer acted as he did because the car was in a neighborhood at an hour when he expected to see some but not many cars, because the car had two “people” in it, because the car was heading in the same polar direction as the two males who were seen running away sometime earlier that night (how much earlier was and is unknown), and because the car was in the same neighborhood where someone reported an attempted burglary that occurred at sometime or another that night. I find this to be far short of the articulable facts necessary for a mythic reasonable man to suspect that appellant was involved in unusual activity relating to crime. What I do find it to be is nothing more than an officer acting upon a hunch and stopping the first vehicle he saw, contrary to Rhodes, Davis, Woods, and Ybar-ra. It was the State’s burden to prove the reasonableness of the officer’s stop, Russell v. State, 717 S.W.2d at 9-10, and it did not.
The majority opinion here, and that in Glenn v. State, 967 S.W.2d 467 (Tex.App. — Amarillo 1998, pet. dismissed as improvidently granted), provide an interesting scenario. Now, an utterly innocent person who happens to be driving through a neighborhood where crime has occurred may be stopped, bodily frisked, and briefly interrogated. During the interrogation, the officer may ask for consent to search the detainee’s vehicle. If consent is refused, the officer can place this innocent person into a locked squad car for at least three-quarters of an hour while the officer obtains the means necessary to search the vehicle without entering it (such as through the use of a drug dog) in an effort to find evidence that would give him probable cause to arrest the innocent person. It is doubtful that a majority of our current criminal court of last resort in Texas will prevent such treatment of the innocent given its recent pronouncements on search and seizure. I find this quite spooky.
In sum, the Fourth Amendment is the standard to which police conduct must conform. It is not to be conformed to police conduct. Unfortunately, I believe that is what is occurring of late. Due to the fear of crime, the judiciary slowly succumbs to public pressure and chisels away at the bastion protecting the innocent from overzealous governance. With this opinion, we have gone from a situation where a brief investigatory detention is permitted because an officer sees someone commit strange acts that are consistent with criminal behavior to one where anyone can be searched for merely being in a neighborhood where a crime occurred at some time or another. While the former circumstances evince reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk, the latter do not. Thus, I vote to prevent the government from intruding upon one’s privacy based upon de minimis factors like those here and to reverse the order denying appellant’s motion to suppress and the judgment convicting him of criminal misconduct.

. The majority insinuates that this is inaccurate because no one proved that the officer stopped appellant without a warrant. Yet, that he had no warrant is obvious from the facts of the case. First, the seizure in question was allegedly a Terry stop, which does not necessitate a warrant. This, coupled with the fact that the State endeavored to validate the seizure pursuant to Terry, would allow one to rationally infer from the record that no warrant was involved. Nevertheless, more evidence exists bolstering my conclusion. For instance, the officer who eventually seized appellant testified that he proceeded to the area where the burglary allegedly occurred upon receiving the dispatch to do so, not to his own office nor that of the prosecutor to obtain an affidavit supporting issuance of a warrant nor to that of a neutral magistrate to obtain a warrant. So too did the officer testify that he arrived in the neighborhood within two minutes of the radio broadcast, hardly time within which to draft an affidavit prerequisite to obtaining an arrest warrant and to trouble the magistrate for the warrant. In sum, the record sufficiently illustrates not only that the officer lacked a warrant when he seized appellant but also that the State had the burden to justify the stop.

. I deem this factor to be of utmost importance because of the absence of a substantive description of the burglary suspects. When an officer does not know who he is looking for, what that person looks like, or whether the' suspect even has a car to make his getaway, the likelihood of his capturing the right person is dependent upon the officer’s arriving upon the scene or its immediate vicinity to observe the presence of the unknown person. In that case, the person's proximity to the crime scene increases the probability that he is the one who is involved in the crime or unordinary activity.

. The majority attempts to minimize this absence of actual geographic measurement by stating that the distance consisted of only two blocks if one were to draw a straight line between the house where the burglary attempt supposedly happened and the stop occurred. However, this effort still fails to inform us of the size of the blocks or provide an accurate depiction of the distance involved.

. What the officer actually said was that "it’s not unusual for burglary suspects to park [a car] a couple of blocks away, commit the crime, go back to their vehicle with the goods and leave.” Interestingly, no one tested this supposition by asking the officer how many burglaries he had experienced wherein the suspect carried booty such as televisions, stereos, and the like under his arm for a "couple of blocks” to effectuate his escape in a motor vehicle. Nevertheless, to simply act upon his avowed "hunch” and stop the first car he saw, the officer undoubtedly rejected the likelihood that the suspected burglars remained afoot, were too young to own or operate a car, or were merely neighborhood pranksters afoot terrorizing their neighbors.

. Interestingly, if the area was as small as the majority, prosecutor, and officer want the reader to believe, one could reasonably ask why the officer did not see a strange car parked in the area. After all, the officer indicated that a spate of burglaries had been occurring in the neighborhood and that he was patrolling it for that reason.

. That burglars drive cars means nothing when considered in the context of the standard of review. While Woods holds that the indicia relied upon need not be inherently criminal, it must nevertheless be unusual or unordinary. Given this, I am left to question how the inference that burglars drive cars evinces unusual activity since most everyone in our society old enough to drive a car does so. Indeed, it is just as reasonable to conclude that burglars live in houses. Would that provide indicia to allow the officer to detain those living in the houses within a four block radius of 2835 Bowie? After all, burglars have houses and the houses holding the potential detainees would be in the same proximity of 2835 Bowie as was appellant. Though I submit that the answer is no, the manner of deduction utilized by the officer and approved by the majority would suggest an affirmative response.

.I concede that discovery of burglar’s tools is something more likely to occur after an investigative detention and, if so discovered, would not support the initial detention. It is worth noting, however, that the record lacks any indication that such tools were recovered from appellant, despite the report that the burglary suspects carried flashlights. This further demonstrates the minimal value and accuracy of a police officer acting upon a "hunch.”