Court Opinion

ID: 9777353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:07:57.7579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:52.774866
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
In Stewart v. State, 611 S.W.2d 434, 441 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), concurring in the judgment of the Court, I pointed out that the Supreme Court of the United States had not yet construed the phrase “immediately associated with the person of the arrestee” to include a purse. Nor has it applied the phrase to a wallet. Indeed, the Supreme Court never explained what it understands the phrase to mean or suggested how it may be applied.1 Thus, that the rule the *935majority fashioned in Stewart is all that authoritative is still open to question.2
The majority opinion in the cause at bar cites Stewart and “sees” Robinson v. U. S., supra, following the statement: “A search incident to a lawful arrest requires no warrant if it is restricted to a search of the person or of objects immediately associated with the person of the arrestee.”3 While Stewart does, Robinson does not contain the underscored language — certainly not in the paragraph which ends with the holding, viz:
“... It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a ‘reasonable’ search under that Amendment.”4
Though the officers in Robinson and Gus-tafson were said to be entitled to inspect the crumbled cigarette package and the B & H cigarette box, carte blanche has not been given to rummaging through a wallet or purse.5 The majority opinion extracts from Stewart v. State, supra, its discussion of and quotes from several federal cases to support the search of Stewart’s purse at the station house. As to the reproduced excerpts, United States v. Passaro and United States v. Ziller, I note that in each instance the search which produced a wallet occurred away from the scene of arrest, either at a place of detention or an office of the arresting officers preparatory to booking.6
The Constitution of the State of Texas mandates that citizens “shall be secure in their ... possessions ... from all unreasonable seizures or searches ...,” Article I, § 9, Bill of Rights. It is difficult to conceive of a “possession” more imbued with a reasonable expectation of privacy than a wallet on the person of one away from his house. Without some indication that a seizure of that wallet came within the scope of the purposes which make initiating a search of the person permissible, I would hold un*936der the Constitution of this State that a seizure and search of an otherwise innocuous wallet are constitutionally impermissible.7
ROBERTS, J., joins.

. The phrase appears in a sentence at the end of a paragraph in the opinion of the Supreme Court in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), while the *935Court is in the course of rejecting an argument advanced by the Government, viz:
“Once law enforcement have reduced luggage or other personal property not immediately associated with the person of the arres-tee to their exclusive control, and there is no longer any danger that the arrestee might gain access to the property to seize a weapon or destroy evidence, a search of that property is no longer an incident of the arrest.”
Id., 433 U.S. at 15, 97 S.Ct. at 2485.

. In a strikingly similar situation, the attention of the Supreme Court was drawn to a passage in Peters v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 67, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 1904-1905, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968) that the Court of Appeals had relied on in coming to a conclusion that the Supreme Court would reject in United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973). Wrote Justice Rehnquist for the Court:
“We do not believe that the Court in Peters intended in one unexplained and unelaborat-ed sentence to impose a novel and far-reaching limitation of the authority to search the person of an arrestee incident to his lawful arrest.”
Id., 414 U.S. at 229, 94 S.Ct. at 474.

. All emphasis is mine throughout unless otherwise indicated.

. What the officer came across in his incident search was an object in a left breast pocket of a coat Robinson was wearing that turned out to be a crumpled up cigarette package containing still other objects that by feel the officer could tell were not cigarettes — they were 14 gelatin capsules of heroin. In the companion decision, Gustafson v. Florida, 414 U.S. 260, 94 S.Ct. 488, 38 L.Ed.2d 456 (1973), the officer felt and then took from the left front coat pocket and later opened a Benson and Hedges cigarette box containing instead several handrolled marihuana cigarettes.

. The Robinson opinion acknowledges that the “authority to search the person incident to arrest ... [is] based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence,” but it holds a search incident to arrest does not have to be justified by a factual showing of such need. In Texas so far as I can ascertain, only Stewart v. State, supra, has accepted this relatively new notion, and it was not submitted to the Court En Banc for consideration, a motion for rehearing never being presented for that purpose.

. The majority also mentions Brown v. State, 594 S.W.2d 86 (Tex.Cr.App.1980), but the decision went off on the proposition that though Chadwick “seems to support” the argument that the officers needed a warrant to search the purse one had taken from Brown, the Chadwick holding was of no avail since it is not applied retroactively in this jurisdiction.

. The presentation of testimony of the arresting officer by Judge Teague in his dissenting opinion demonstrates beyond peradventure that intrusion into appellant’s wallet was not rationally justified. Dissembling by the officer is so transparent that he reveals an inability to articulate facts that made his seizure and search of the wallet reasonable in the constitutional sense. Only by fashioning and woodenly applying a “bright line” rule which abolishes need for a factual showing of “reasonableness” may what occurred here be upheld. I would adhere to the settled principle restated in Beck v. State, 547 S.W.2d 266, 267 (Tex.Cr.App.1976), and continue to protect against invasion of privacy until the invader factually justifies his intrusion.