Court Opinion

ID: 9777426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:10:54.901522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:53.993574
License: Public Domain

ODOM, Judge
(dissenting).
The majority concede, and the record reflects, that the arresting officers in this case had no idea that the search warrants with which they were armed may have commanded them to arrest appellant. The mere issuance of a proper arrest warrant, without more, does not place the accused outside the law, subject to arrest by any officer, even those ignorant of the command to arrest. An arrest warrant confers authority upon an individual officer only after the command of the warrant is communicated to him. Since it is undisputed *406that the commands to arrest of the warrants in this case were never effectively communicated to the arresting officers,1 how can the majority say these unknown commands gave any authority to the officers?
Although the authority to base an arrest upon a warrant may be challenged by calling into question the magistrate’s determination of probable cause, the question of whether the command was effectively communicated to the officer so as to confer that authority is a separate inquiry. The majority side-step the issue by assuming that since the warrant, unknown, was in the physical possession of the officers, the arrest was made “under the warrants.” Every probative bit of evidence on the issue refutes the conclusion of the majority that the arrest was made “under the warrants.” The fact that an arrest could have been made under the warrants does not validate an arrest not made thereunder any more than the fact that a warrant could have been obtained would validate an arrest made without one.
Extended to its logical conclusion, the majority’s position would hold that any arrest made subsequent in time to the issuance of a valid arrest warrant will in contemplation of law be an arrest under that warrant. It is clear that the officers in this case were no more acting “in obedience to the command of said warrant” than they were to some unknown arrest warrant issued in El Paso or Brownsville. And yet, despite this fact that the command to arrest was never communicated, the majority hold as a matter of law that the arrest was made “under the warrant.”
The concurring opinion incorrectly asserts that I dissent because the police officer gave the “wrong reason” for making the arrest. I dissent because the officer had no authority to make the arrest since tile command of the magistrate was never communicated to him. If the officer had testified: Yes, I knew the warrant commanded me to arrest this person but I saw her committing an offense so I relied upon my statutory authority to arrest, not upon my authority under the warrant, the concurring opinion would be relevant. Here, however, since the command was never communicated to the officer, he derived no authority from it.
No command to arrest having been communicated to the arresting officers, the mere existence of the warrants conferred no authority to arrest. I therefore dissent.

. The first suggestion that the State was relying upon the arrest provision of the search warrants as authority for the arrest is raised in the State’s appellate brief. Not at the examining trial, not at the hearing on the motion to suppress, not at the trial on the merits was it contended by the State or the arresting officers that the arrest was made upon the warrants.