Court Opinion

ID: 9659547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:49:12.836225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:05.238688
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
dissenting.
The Court ignores precedent barely one month old in its disposition of this case. I dissent.
Although this case is virtually identical in every respect to Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85 (Tex.Crim.App.1997), the two cases are not disposed of in the same manner. In both the instant case and Guzman, the Court of Appeals applied the proper standard of review by conducting a de novo *834review of the trial court’s ruling on the mixed question of fact and law raised by the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence. Guzman, at 87-88 (stating Court of Appeals decided de novo there was no probable cause); Loesch v. State, 958 S.W.2d 830, 831 (Tex.Crim.App.1997)(stating Court of Appeals conducted de novo determination of whether there was reasonable suspicion). In both cases, the Court faults the Court of Appeals’ analysis, however, because the relevant factors were considered in isolation rather than as a totality. Guzman, at 87 (criticizing Court of Appeals for failing to apply totality of the circumstances test by “examinfing] each fact independently and [finding] that none of the facts standing alone were sufficient to warrant a finding of probable cause” rather than considering the facts “taken as a whole”); Loesch, at 831 (criticizing Court of Appeals for examining factors “in isolation” rather than “look[ing] at all of the facts together”). In the instant case, the Court vacates and remands to the Court of Appeals to reconsider the issue. In Guzman, the Court specifically declined to send the matter back to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration, instead conducting our own de novo review of the issue. Compare Guzman, at 89, fii. 4 (Meyers, J., concurring and dissentingXquestioning role of this Court in “reviewing” decisions of courts of appeals and noting that “normally, when this Court determines that a court of appeals applied the wrong test or wrongly applied the proper test, we vacate and remand for that court to properly apply the proper test”) with Guzman, at 95, fn. 3 (responding to Meyers’ comments about “reviewing” decisions of courts of appeals and stating that this Court “reviews” decision by conducting de novo review and concluding “we disagree with the Court of Appeals and decide there was probable cause”).
It was my position in Guzman that when the Court of Appeals applies the wrong law or the wrong standard of review, we ought to simply point to the problem in that court’s analysis and remand the matter for reconsideration. But Guzman rejected that approach and Guzman is the law by which we are all bound.1 The majority’s opinion today makes no effort to distinguish or explain its departure from Guzman. The majority ought to offer a coherent and meaningful explanation as to when this Court will conduct its own de novo review and when we will remand for the Court of Appeals to do so. Until an explanation is provided so that I can tell how to decide which cases should be sent back and which cases should not, I will assume, per Guzman, that no such cases should be sent back.
I have no idea how this Court would decide the issue were we to conduct a de novo review. I will not invest my time, as a lone dissenter, conducting my own de novo review. However we might ultimately decide the issue, Guzman says this Court should decide it, not the Court of Appeals. I therefore dissent to the Court’s order to vacate and remand.

. Admittedly the majority in Guzman said that the courts of appeals and this Court "may" review these mixed questions of law and fact de novo, suggesting that the courts of appeals “may” also elect to review them differently or in the case of this Court, we “may” also elect not to review them at all. Guzman, at 89 ("the appellate court may review de novo 'mixed questions of law and fact’ ” and "[t]his Court may exercise its discretion to review de novo these decisions by the intermediate appellate courts”). But no guidance is provided there or in the majority opinion today as to when the courts of appeals or this Court might elect not to conduct a de novo review. Until further insight on the matter, I will assume this Court should dispose of cases in the same manner as the Court in Guzman.