Court Opinion

ID: 9647235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:27:46.816479+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:46.828253
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the reversal of this conviction, but not entirely upon the reasoning of my Brother Odom. As I see it, the probable cause to search the truck ended at noon. Up until that time the officers were seeking to determine if the truck was stolen, and they had ample probable cause to pursue their search to that point. However, they were never able to establish that the truck was stolen.
When the officers branched off on a new and independent narcotics investigation *242with no more information than they had, their original probable cause came to an end and any search thereafter was illegal. It is important to note that up until noon of the day of appellant’s arrest the motor vehicle theft investigator had found nothing about the appellant or about the truck to alert him in any way to the probability that the truck was being used for narcotics.
Shortly after noon the motor theft investigator went to San Antonio and returned with a Texas Ranger and a narcotics investigator and the search was reinstituted. This was done upon the scant information, from someone the motor theft investigator did not know, “that trucks in the past of this type had been used to transport narcotics”.
The officers’ original probable cause will not carry over to this second search. It is obvious that we do not have in the case at bar “the same continuity of purpose” discussed in our opinion on rehearing in Taylor v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 421 S.W.2d 403, 408.