Court Opinion

ID: 9756433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:28:32.052398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:22.268604
License: Public Domain

WALKER, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
In little over a year, the Court of Criminal Appeals has twice bestowed enlightenment upon this Court in the form of complete abrogation or significant revision of decades of precedent. See Young v. State, 8 S.W.3d 656 (Tex.Crim.App.2000); and Leday v. State, 983 S.W.2d 713 (Tex.Crim.App.1998). It is therefore with extreme trepidation that I dredge up, as the bases of this dissent, law that has been part of Texas jurisprudence for a significant number of years.
The first axiom recognizes that the law requires a suppression ruling be sustained if it can be upheld on any valid theory regardless of whether the State argued it at trial or on appeal, Lewis v. State, 664 S.W.2d 345, 347 (Tex.Crim.App.1984), and regardless of the fact that the trial judge gave the wrong reason for his decision. See Villalobos v. State, 999 S.W.2d 132, 134 (Tex.App.—El Paso 1999, no pet.). The second axiom was ably set out in Hernandez v. State, 983 S.W.2d 867, 869 (Tex.App.—Austin 1998, pet. ref'd), as follows:
[A]t the suppression hearing the State had the burden of proving the reasonableness of the stop. See Russell v. State, 717 S.W.2d 7, 9-10 (Tex.Crim.App.1986); ...
A police officer can stop and briefly detain a person for investigative purposes if the officer has a reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that criminal activity may be afoot, even if the officer lacks evidence rising to the level of “probable cause.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); Woods v. State, 956 S.W.2d 33, 35 (Tex.Crim.App.1997).
[T]he reasonableness of a temporary detention must be examined in terms of the totality of the circumstances and will be justified when the detaining officer has specific articulable facts, which taken together with rational inferences from those facts, lead him to conclude that the person detained actually is, has been, or soon will be engaged in criminal activity.
Woods, 956 S.W.2d at 38. The court of criminal appeals has also stated the standard as follows: “In assessing whether the intrusion was reasonable, an objective standard is utilized: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or search warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that the action taken was appropriate.” Davis v. State, 947 S.W.2d 240, 243 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). Because the historical facts in the present case are not in dispute, we make a de novo determination of whether those facts give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. See Loesch v. State, 958 S.W.2d 830, 832 (Tex.Crim.App.1997); Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 87 (Tex.Crim.App.1997).
In Hernandez, the State raised two possible theories for the detention of the defendant, “reasonable suspicion of driving while intoxicated,” and “reasonable suspicion of traffic offense.” Id. at 870. The majority in our case relies on the Austin Court’s analysis with regard to reasonable suspicion of traffic offense. I take issue *932with the fact that the majority ignores the possibility that Officer Holley stopped appellant for suspicion of D.W.I., taking into account the following exchange between Officer Holley and appellant’s trial counsel:
Q. [Trial Counsel] Do you think perhaps that Mr. Ehrhart could have been wondering why you were stopping him?
A. [Officer Holley] I advised Mr. Ehrhart why he had been stopped and felt that the reason for stopping was to further investigate why he was failing to maintain a single marked lane.
Q. Well, he wasn’t intoxicated, was he?
A. No.
Q. You didn’t smell any alcohol on him?
A. No, sir.
Q. You didn’t say anything about him being unsteady on his feet or had the odor of alcohol about him; right?
A. He had stated that he was tired.
Q. Well, did you observe him to be tired?
A. He-just from training and experience, he looked like he may be somewhat tired from being on the road quite a bit or something.
From the fact that trial counsel was inquiring of Officer Holley as to whether or not appellant appeared to be intoxicated once Holley encountered appellant, trial counsel was virtually conceding that the stop was a reasonable one so that Holley could investigate whether or not the reason for appellant’s failure to maintain a single marked lane stemmed from appellant possibly being intoxicated. The Hernandez Court found no reasonable suspicion of D.W.I. and rightly so because the quoted testimony did not even hint at intoxication being a factor in making the stop. In our case, regardless of the fact that a traffic offense may or may not have occurred, I believe that the testimony at least gives rise to a reasonable suspicion of the possibility that appellant could have been intoxicated, and that the subsequent temporary detention of appellant was justified. Because the majority focuses only on the reasonable suspicion of the existence of a traffic offense, and finds no evidence of an offense, I must dissent to their reversal and remand. I would affirm the conviction.