Court Opinion

ID: 9661684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:46:24.099061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:32.450310
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON STATE’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
PHILLIPS, Judge.
The State files a motion for rehearing urging that the panel on original submission erred in holding Officer Holland’s action did not fall within the plain view exception to the search warrant requirement. The State also reurges the doctrine of curative admissibility, as initially set forth in the dissent to the panel opinion. For the reasons that follow, we overrule these contentions.
It is well established that an officer may not seize contraband that falls within his view unless he is legitimately in a position to view the substance, and it is immediately apparent to him that the substance is contraband. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); Duncan v. State, 549 S.W.2d 730 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Nicholas v. State, 502 S.W.2d 169 (Tex.Cr.App.1973). The latter requirement is not always mentioned in conjunction with the former, because in many, if not most cases, the incriminating nature of the substance viewed is immediately obvious to all. In this case, however, the “immediately apparent” requirement is critical, and ultimately fatal, to the State’s case.
Officer Holland testified that when he shined his flashlight into appellant’s car as appellant got out, he observed on the floorboard in front of the driver’s seat an unlabeled brown plastic prescription bottle full of tablets. Holland testified: “This drew my attention. So, I reached in the vehicle and recovered [the bottle].” Holland admitted that he could not determine what type of tablets were contained in the bottle until he took off the cap and observed the interior of the bottle. Only at that time did. Holland form an opinion, based on his experience as a law enforcement officer, that the tablets were Preludin, a controlled substance. It was not immediately apparent to Holland that the bottle contained a controlled substance. That fact did not become apparent until Holland, his curiosity or suspicions aroused, seized the bottle from the car, opened it, and peered inside.
In Nicholas, supra, we held that a seizure of photographic negatives could not be justified under the plain view exception because the incriminating nature of the negatives (which depicted a rape) did not become apparent until the officers held the negatives to a light. In Kolb v. State, 532 S.W.2d 87 (Tex.Cr.App.1976), police officers, after entering the defendant’s storage locker, viewed suitcases and garbage bags that were found to contain marihuana. In holding the marihuana inadmissible at trial, we stated:
., we cannot conclude that evidence showed contraband in plain sight. There were no lights inside the locker. Only by a flashlight could the officers see *604the suitcases and garbage bags. It was not until the contents thereof were examined that it was determined that the contents were contraband.
In Duncan, supra, a police officer saw a plastic baggie protruding from the defendant’s back pocket. He seized the baggie “to see what was in it,” and found that it contained marihuana and heroin wrapped in tinfoil. We stated:
In the instant case, the officer was legitimately in position to view any contraband; however, by his own testimony, he did not know what the plastic baggie contained and he expressed no suspicion as to what it might contain. Even though we are aware of the popular use of plastic bags as containers for controlled substances, we cannot hold that the bag itself is contraband in the absence of some showing that the officer saw what appeared to be a contraband substance in the bag.
Finally, in DeLao v. State, 550 S.W.2d 289 (Tex.Cr.App.1977), we held that an officer’s seizure of a balloon that contained heroin was not justified under the plain view exception, stating
., the testimony taken at the examining trial establishes that the officer was not aware that incriminatory evidence was before him when he seized the balloon. Williams testified that he returned to the open window, saw a red balloon, and seized it.
The State urges that it is a well known fact that heroin is kept in balloons. The officer’s testimony, however, does not demonstrate that he was cognizant of this “well known” fact or immediately aware that heroin was in the balloon at the time of the seizure. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra; Nicholas v. State, supra. The seizure must be based on what was known by the officer at the time he acted, yet this record contains not a scintilla of evidence that the officer knew what the State now alleges in its brief on appeal is a “well known” fact.

The circumstances of this case fail to establish that what was in “plain view” was evidence of any crime or criminal behavior. A red balloon in “plain view” on the window sill was not “contraband or fruits or instrumentalities” of any offense. .
These cases are dispositive of the issue in this case. Holland did not become aware of the incriminating nature of the contents of the prescription bottle until he recovered the bottle from the car, opened it, and observed its contents. There is no evidence in the record that, upon observing the bottle in the car, Holland was immediately cognizant that it contained a controlled substance, or could reliably infer from his experience as a police officer that the bottle contained controlled substances. Prescription bottles are used to carry all sorts of things, including tablets lawfully possessed. So far as we know or learn from the record in this case, it is not a well-known fact that such containers are used to carry substances that are unlawfully possessed rather than lawfully possessed. See DeLao, supra.
Nor does Holland’s testimony that he saw appellant, before stopping, “dip down in his seat down towards the steering wheel” change the result. Neither Holland nor Harrison, who also saw the movement, testified that the movement seemed furtive or suspicious, as opposed to innocent. Neither of them saw fit to mention it in their offense report. Holland did not testify that the movement had anything to do with his action in shining his flashlight in the car, or that he seized and opened the bottle because the movement led him to be suspicious of the bottle’s contents. He simply stated, as noted earlier, that the bottle drew his attention, so he reached in and opened it.
This Court has noted more than once that “furtive” gestures will not supply probable cause to search a vehicle because of the ambiguous and potentially innocent nature of such movements. Turner v. State, 550 S.W.2d 686 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Beck v. State, 547 S.W.2d 266 (Tex.Cr.App.1976); Wilson v. State, 511 S.W.2d 531 (Tex.Cr. *605App.1974); Brown v. State, 481 S.W.2d 106 (Tex.Cr.App.1972). Here, there is no evidence that the movement was even furtive. In fact, there is nothing to suggest that the movement was anything but innocent. Appellant’s movement lacked probative value, and could not justify Holland’s otherwise unlawful seizure of the bottle. See Wilson, supra, at 533-534.
Holland did not have probable cause to seize the bottle and examine its contents, and the evidence should not have been admitted. The State’s first contention is overruled.
The State urges upon us, as the dissent did upon the majority of the panel, that appellant waived the error in the admission of the tablets at trial, by testifying that he was in the car and the pills were found at his feet. Appellant testified that he borrowed the car in question in order to pick up some ice for the car’s owner, and had only been in the car for a couple of minutes when he first noticed the officers following him. According to appellant he had never seen the prescription bottle before, he had no idea it was in the car, and the tablets were not his.
As the dissent noted, the improper admission of evidence over objection is rendered harmless by the admission of other evidence of the same facts. Thomas v. State, 572 S.W.2d 507 (Tex.Cr.App.1978, Opinion on State’s Motion for Rehearing); Nicholas v. State, 502 S.W.2d 169 (Tex.Cr.App.1973, Opinion on State’s Motion for Rehearing). A corollary to this rule, however, is that the harmful effect of improperly admitted evidence is not cured by the introduction of rebuttal evidence designed to meet, destroy, or explain the improper evidence. Thomas, supra; Nicholas, supra; Alvarez v. State, 511 S.W.2d 493 (Tex.Cr.App.1973, Opinion on State’s Motion for Rehearing). Further, Thomas altered the rule as applied to evidence obtained by unlawful police practices, in light of the holding of Harrison v. United States, 392 U.S. 219, 88 S.Ct. 2008, 20 L.Ed.2d 1047 (1968). We stated:
Under Harrison, the “question is not whether the petitioner made a knowing decision to testify, but why. If he did so in order to overcome the impact of the confessions illegally obtained and hence improperly introduced,” the testimony is tainted by the same illegality that rendered the confessions themselves inadmissible.
We find that Harrison does in fact add a corollary to the doctrine of curative admissibility, i. e., the harmful effect of improperly admitted evidence which is obtained by illegal police practices is not cured when a defendant gives testimony on direct examination which establishes the same or similar facts unless the State can show that its illegal action in obtaining and introducing the evidence did not impel the defendant’s testimony. .
In Thomas police officers stopped the defendant, unlawfully searched his vehicle, and found biphetamine, a controlled substance, in a coat lying on the seat. The defendant testified that the coat belonged to someone else, and he was returning the coat. Relying on Harrison v. United States, supra, we held that the State made no showing that its unlawful action did not impel the defendant’s testimony, and in fact, it was apparent that the defendant would not have testified had the bipheta-mine not been admitted, because the biphet-amine was the only evidence the State introduced.
Subsequently, in Evers v. State, 576 S.W.2d 46 (Tex.Cr.App.1978), we held that a defendant charged with unlawfully carrying a handgun did not waive his error regarding the lawfulness of the search that produced the handgun by testifying concerning his possession of the gun in order to assert his statutory defenses of “travel” and “business.” The Evers court noted that its decision was in accord with Thomas, supra, and stated that a blanket application of the doctrine of curative admissibility
. would place a defendant in a dilemma: he could waive the search issue and assert his defense, hoping to win at *606trial; or sit mute, hoping for a reversal on the search issue. Such a result would be “an impermissible and unconstitutional chill upon Appellant’s right to author and draft his own defense.”

See also Craddock v. State, 553 S.W.2d 765 (Tex.Cr.App.1977, Opinion on Appellant’s Motion for Rehearing) (defendant’s assertion of the defense of entrapment did not waive the error in admitting evidence).
In this case, as in Thomas, supra, the State introduced only the evidence improperly seized by the officer. There is no showing by the State that the improper admission of this evidence did not impel appellant’s testimony, and, in fact, it is clear that appellant testified in order to advance his defense that he knew nothing about the tablets and did not possess them. We will not require appellant to waive his objection to the improper admission of the tablets when it is clear that he only testified because the tablets were admitted in evidence, and his testimony was necessary to assert his defense to the charges brought against him. Harrison v. United States, supra; Evers, supra; Thomas, supra; Craddock, supra.
In a supplement to its motion for rehearing, the State urges that we reconsider the modification to the rule of curative admissibility that was established in Thomas. Far from causing us to retreat from that modification, this case convinces us of its wisdom. We now reaffirm our holding in Thomas.
The State’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
DALLY, J., dissents.
ON STATE’S MOTION FOR REHEARING