Court Opinion

ID: 9679593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:58:05.99503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:16.195960
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge
(concurring).
The majority of the Court recognizes that it was in error in Riojas v. State, 530 S.W.2d 298 (Tex.Cr.App.1975). While the majority is modifying that decision, it should modify it completely by overruling it. When the court overruled the motion to suppress prior to trial in the present case, why was not that motion just as good and sufficient as the motion made in the Riojas case? If the majority in the Riojas case is correct, the trial court in the present case could have remembered the motion at a trial held later and, when the evidence concerning the arrest and search was adduced, the court could have acted upon the motion. The majority in the Riojas case erroneously held in effect that a trial judge must remember a motion to suppress, the evidence adduced thereon and its ruling even though it was not called to his attention during the trial on the merits some ten weeks later. The majority in Riojas held that the motion to suppress was based on a statute. In the present case the motion to suppress was based on the same statute. There is no reason for a different rule.
To make it short, there is no reason for the rule in the Riojas case. See the dissenting opinions.
For the above reasons, I concur in the affirmance of the conviction.