Court Opinion

ID: 9661532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:41:48.309065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:29.713431
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
Simply stated, the majority would have it that every night a peace officer sees an airplane “circling low overhead” near a private landing strip where there are flares and flashlights and several persons in and about motor vehicles, he may later intrude into the personal security of the driver and occupants of the vehicles without violating constitutional and statutory restraints against unreasonable seizures.
Calling it “the intrusion of an investigative stop,” the majority says that it was warranted by a rational inference drawn “from specific and articulable facts” that “illegal activity might be occurring and investigation was necessary.” However, the majority does not consider “the whole picture,” and even the “facts” selected by the majority are consistent with innocent behavior of persons involved in any other midnight arrival of an airplane on a private landing strip.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), is the source for the general proposition stated by the majority. Id., U.S. at 21, S.Ct. at 1879. But the Supreme Court of the United States and this Court as well have since made clear that an investigative stop must be justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped “is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity.”1 United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 695, 69 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981); Hull v. State, 613 S.W.2d 735, 739 (Tex.Cr.App.1981); Armstrong v. State, 550 S.W.2d 25, 31 (Tex.Cr.App.1977). “That a generalized suspicion will not suffice” was demonstrated by this Court in Hull v. State, supra, relying large part on teachings by the unanimous Supreme Court in Cortez, supra.
First off, writing for the Supreme Court the Chief Justice noted past usage of “a variety of terms to capture the elusive concept of what cause is sufficient to authorize police to stop a person,” including terms like “articulable reasons” and “founded suspicion;” but they are not “self-defining” and, more to the point, “they fall short of providing clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations that arise.” 449 U.S. at 417, 101 S.Ct. at 695. Thus, that proposition which the majority is today applying is passe.
Continuing the Chief Justice said:
“But the essence of all that has been written is that the totality of the circumstances — the whole picture — must be taken into account. Based upon that whole picture the detaining officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. [Citations omitted.]” Ibid.
Turning to explicate what had just been established, the Chief Justice pointed out:
“The idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield particularized suspicion contains two elements, each of which must be present before a stop is permissible. First, the assessment must *682be based upon all the circumstances. ****** 2
“The second element contained in the idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion is the concept that the process just described must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing. Chief Justice Warren, speaking for the Court in Terry v. Ohio, supra, said that ‘[tjhis demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. ’ [Citations omitted.]” Id., 449 U.S. at 418, 101 S.Ct. at 695.3
The opinion of the Supreme Court then demonstrates that the principles just discussed are implicated in that cause by pointing out in meticulous detail how “fact on fact and clue on clue afforded a basis for the deductions and inferences that brought the officers to focus on [a suspect].”
Since the majority does not — indeed cannot — follow the Cortez formulation, I respectfully dissent.
TEAGUE and MILLER, JJ., join.

. All emphasis is supplied throughout by the writer of this opinion unless otherwise indicated.

. In making that assessment a trained officer will draw inferences and make deductions from available data such as objective observations, police reports and consideration of modes or patterns of operation of kinds of lawbreakers.

. Emphasis is by Chief Justice Burger.