Court Opinion

ID: 9777823
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:25:23.450073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:01.950072
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
May 11, 1984, in Russell v. State, 672 S.W.2d 583 (Tex.App. — Dallas 1984), a unanimous Court of Appeals concluded that “appellant was in custody and being detained against her will at the time she gave her statements,” because:
“Appellant attempted to leave the police station, but was pursued and returned by the police to the station. We hold that the pursuit and return amounted to a show of official authority such that ‘a reasonable person would have believed he was not free to leave.’ [citation omitted]. Therefore, we conclude that when the police pursued and returned appellant to the police station, she was effectively seized for purposes of the fourth amendment. We also conclude that appellant’s detention was illegal. We reach this conclusion because according to King and Graves they had no probable cause to arrest appellant until after her first oral statement. Reasonable suspicion of crime is insufficient to justify custodial interrogation even though the interrogation is investigative, [citations omitted]. It follows, and we so hold, that appellant was arrested in violation of her rights under the fourth amendment and that her statements were given during a period of illegal detention.”
Id., at 587.
Those findings and conclusions were utilized by the Dallas Court of Appeals in deciding “appellant’s challenge to the validity of appellant’s consent to search her residence” in light of same factors identified by the Supreme Court in determining whether a confession has been obtained by exploitation of an illegal arrest. See, e.g., Green v. State, 615 S.W.2d 700, 708 (Tex. Cr.App.1981) Applying to the facts of this cause, the Dallas Court of Appeals held that her consent to search “was the exploitation of an illegal arrest.” Id., at 588.
The State filed a motion for rehearing which was soon overruled by written order June 7, 1984. The State then filed its petition for discretionary review June 15, 1984.
Sans grounds for review or questions presented mandated by Tex.Cr.App. Rule 304(d)(4), the petition does give “reason for review,” but none within contemplation of Rule 302(c), as required by Rule 304(d)(5). In that shape the PDR is infirm. See Pumphrey v. State, 689 S.W.2d 466 (Tex.Cr.App.1985). Rather, the “reason” is a statement that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the trial court should have suppressed the fruits of the search of appellant’s residence, followed by two “sub-points:” the first to the effect that the Court of Appeals erred in applying the test of Brown v. Illinois to the consent to *14search;1 the second that, having done so, the Court of Appeals applied the test to the facts in an improper manner. The petition was refused November 21, 1984.
The instant motion for rehearing was filed December 6, 1984. Its “Ground for Review” in the same statement labeled “reason” in the PDR; its “Reasons for Rehearing” are the same two “subpoints.” However, subtitles are omitted and there is no argument about how the Court of Appeals had characterized the “police action,” that subject being relegated to a footnote quoted in the sentence of note 2 in the majority opinion. Though the motion presented less than what had been previously considered by this Court, on February 27, 1985 at least five judges voted to grant it.
In due course the judge who drew the cause drafted a proposed opinion for the Court in which was stated, inter alia:
“In its motion, the State argues that the Court of Appeals erred in applying the test enunciated in Brown v. Illinois _to evaluating the validity of appellant’s consent to search her home. Alternatively, the State argues that even if the Brown test is appropriate, the Court of Appeals applied the test in an improper manner.”
In framing the issues on rehearing, quite properly the proposed opinion did not allude to how the Dallas Court of Appeals addressed and resolved the matter of “police action” in pursuing, returning appellant to the station house and there detaining her. In saying, “This Court’s grant of review necessarily extended to the question of whether an arrest took place,” the majority misapprehends purpose and function of motion for rehearing.
Tex.Cr.App. Rule 309(b) dictates that a motion for rehearing “must briefly state its grounds_" Whether granting rehearing after an initial refusal of PDR amounts to a “grant of review” of a particular ground for review depends upon the grounds stated in the motion for rehearing. There is no ground in this motion for rehearing raising “the question of whether an arrest took place.” Thus to the extent it was presented in the State’s petition for discretionary review, that matter passed out of the cause when we refused the PDR. To iterate a phrase we are all wont to use if the will to enforce our own rules is strong enough, by failing to raise the ground in its motion for rehearing the State waived the question. See, again, Pumphrey, supra.
I dissent.
TEAGUE, J., joins.

. In Subpoint A are parts of the argument under subtitles, viz: The development of the Brown v. Illinois test; the totality of the circumstances test applied to the voluntariness of a consent to search; Royer v. Florida does not require an application of the Brown-Dunaway test to the custodial consent to search items or premises not associated with the person of the accused; the Court of Appeals improperly characterized the police action as an illegal arrest or detention of Appellant. In the latter the State suggested the Court "should at least order the case remanded to the trial court for further hearings on this critical issue."