Court Opinion

ID: 9777681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:19:47.059899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:59.244788
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
After appellee was arrested and charged for Driving While Intoxicated and in a cause styled “The State of Texas vs. William Harold Brabson”, the Texas Department of Public Safety attempted to revoke appellee’s drivers license. In order to do so, the administrative court held a hearing in which it considered, among other things, whether ap-pellee had been arrested and whether probable cause had existed that appellee was driving or in actual control of a motor vehicle in a public place while intoxicated. Tex. Civ. Stat. art. 6701Í-5, § 2. Although the administrative court found that appellee had been arrested, it also found, “based on the pleadings, evidence and arguments of counsel”, a lack of the requisite probable cause. Appel-lee’s driver’s license was therefore not revoked.
Later on, in a cause styled “The State of Texas vs. William Harold Brabson”, the Dallas County District Attorney sought to prosecute appellee on the charge that he had been Driving While Intoxicated. Appellee moved to suppress evidence which he claims was seized as a result of his illegal arrest based upon a lack of probable cause. In so doing, he averred that collateral estoppel barred the District Attorney from litigating whether there was probable cause to arrest him since that issue had been decided previously in the administrative hearing. The trial court agreed and granted his motion.
On appeal from the State, the court of appeals addressed the issue of collateral es-toppel in two ways. First, it relied on Burrows v. Texas Department of Public Safety, 740 S.W.2d 19, 20-21 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1987, no pet.), for the proposition that criminal collateral estoppel cannot arise from an administrative license suspension proceeding. Alternatively, the court held that even if collateral estoppel could have applied to this case it would not bar a prosecution in the instant cause. This, because the court of appeals concluded that appellee had not proven at the suppression hearing that he had been arrested, only detained. Thus, the court of appeals opined, the only question before the trial court was whether the police *189officer had reasonable suspicion to justify appellee’s warrantless detention, a question different from any litigated at the administrative hearing.
We granted this petition for discretionary review on three grounds. The first deals with whether the court of appeals was correct to hold that, in Texas, we do not recognize the doctrine of administrative collateral estoppel in criminal cases. The second addresses whether or not the court of appeals erred in holding that appellee was not arrested despite an explicit finding by the administrative court that he had been arrested. The third ground does not touch upon collateral estoppel at all.
The majority dismisses the last two grounds for discretionary review as improvidently granted. Therefore, the only question for the Court is that presented in ground for review one; namely, whether Burrows, supra, is still the applicable law in this State. This issue is answered on the second page of the majority’s opinion where it states, citing Ex Parte Tarver, 725 S.W.2d 195, 199 (Tex.Crim.App.1986), that, contrary to anything Burrows might have said on the matter, when two parties have litigated an issue in an administrative hearing those same parties are collaterally estopped from re-litigating the same issue in a subsequent criminal proceeding. Nothing else is raised in ground for review one. I join this portion of the majority’s opinion.
The majority goes on to further discuss collateral estoppel and the applicability of the elements thereof to the facts in this case. But the court of appeals has not addressed these issues, nor are they addressed or argued in either the petition for discretionary review or any of the briefs before this Court.
Assuming the majority somehow reaches these issues via ground for review two and did not mean to dismiss that ground, I dissent to affirming the court of appeals on this issue. This is so because the court of appeals’ entire opinion rests on the premise that the trial court should not have considered the probable cause issue when deciding whether collateral estoppel applied to this case because, according to the court of appeals, appellee did not prove that he was arrested but only detained. If the trial court concluded that appellee had been detained rather than arrested, then it would not have been concerned with collateral es-toppel at all since the issue before it would have been reasonable suspicion, an issue different from probable cause which was before the administrative court. There can be no doubt, therefore, that in deciding that collateral estoppel precluded a re-litigation of the probable cause issue such that the motion to dismiss had to be granted, the trial court implicitly accepted that appellee had been arrested. But did the trial court have any choice but to accept that appellee was arrested if, as the record reflects, the administrative court explicitly said so? The answer, of course, is only if collateral estoppel does not preclude the trial court from litigating the arrest issue. If collateral estoppel barred the trial court from doing anything other than accepting that appellee had been arrested, as the administrative court found, then how could the trial court have erred? The trial court cannot err when it follows the only path the law allows. But, instead of analyzing whether collateral estoppel required that the trial court accept the administrative court’s finding on whether appellee was arrested, the court of appeals conducted its own analysis of whether appellee had been arrested and, from its conclusion that he was not arrested, addressed the trial court’s collateral estoppel finding on the probable cause issue. Even if the court of appeals disagrees with the administrative court’s finding that appellee was arrested, it cannot say the trial court erred to accept that finding unless it is willing to engage in a conversation about collateral estoppel as to the arrest issue.
Thus, the court of appeals should have either (1) accepted that appellee was arrested and discussed whether the trial court erred to hold that collateral estoppel barred it from litigating the probable cause issue or (2) discussed why the trial court erred to accept that appellee had been arrested. In discussing the effect of collateral estoppel on either the arrest or the probable cause issue, the court of appeals should have asked, as to either, whether that issue had been litigated *190by the same parties in the previous administrative proceeding. Because the court of appeals did nothing of the sort, I would remand the case to them so that they may have an opportunity to do so. To do more, as the majority does, goes beyond the scope of the question upon which we granted review.1
I concur and join the Court’s opinion as to ground for review one but otherwise dissent.

. In analyzing the collateral estoppel issue, the majority makes the bare proclamation that ‘‘[t]he Texas Department of Public Safety and the Dallas County District Attorney are not the same parties” and therefore collateral estoppel does not apply here. This statement is embarrassing in its unsupportable assumption that the district attorney is a party in the criminal proceeding at issue, or for that matter, in any criminal proceeding. A district attorney is an elected official. It is the job of the district attorney to represent the State of Texas in criminal prosecutions. See Tex. Const, art. 5, § 21; Tex.Code Crim. Proc. arts. 2.01, 2.02. The DPS and the district attorney are merely agents or agencies of the same entity — the State of Texas. Thus, the case slyles in both matters properly reflect the parties as the "State of Texas” versus appellee.