Court Opinion

ID: 9857959
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:10:21.411422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:01:03.231733
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
When this Court decided Wilson v. State, 692 S.W.2d 661 (Tex.Cr.App.1985) (Opinion on State’s motion for rehearing), the State did not have a right of appeal in criminal cases. Partly for that reason, we rejected as inapplicable in Texas a rationale offered by Professor LaFave for why, should the State fail to complain that standing to contest a search or seizure has not been established at the trial court level, it ought not to be permitted to raise that issue, as an appellant, for the first time on appeal. LaFave argues that, as we summarized it in Wilson, “when a prosecutor loses on the merits at the suppression hearing, he should be expected to put before the judge at that time any other basis upon which he is entitled to prevail.” Id., at 668. When the prosecutor does prevail at the trial court level, however, he cannot likewise be held accountable for failure to raise alternative bases for relief. He is not, therefore, procedurally barred from raising such an alternative basis in a reply brief on appeal. Along the way we noted in Wilson that even in some jurisdictions where the State does have the right to appeal from adverse judgments in criminal cases, it is not procedurally barred from raising standing for the first time, as an appellant, on appeal, LaFave notwithstanding.
Now, of course, the State does have a limited right to appeal in Texas. Article 44.01, V.A.C.C.P. A question not even extant at the time of Wilson therefore confronts us today in this cause: May the State also raise standing for the first time on appeal qua appellant? The court of appeals answered the question no, citing another court of appeals opinion in State v. Nolan, 808 S.W.2d 556, (Tex.App. — Austin 1991). In Nolan, the Austin Court of Appeals had earlier held, much as Professor LaFave has suggested, that the State, qua appellant, must raise an issue for the first time in the trial court, or forfeit that issue on appeal. Id., at 559. Today this Court holds our opinion in Wilson controls, without squarely addressing the procedural default argument. I write separately to do so.
In Wilson the Court noted that, since Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), what had been conceptualized as an independent issue of “standing” has become a part of the substantive question whether a Fourth Amendment violation has occurred — an issue upon which the defendant has the burden of proof. The defendant must carry both the burden of production and the burden of persuasion to establish he has an expectation of privacy in the place searched, an expectation that society recognizes as legitimate. Should the defendant fail to carry his burden of production — that is to say, should he produce either no evidence, or evidence from which no rational factfinder could find a reasonable expectation of privacy — we held in Wilson that the State, qua appellee, may complain for the first time on appeal. Id., at 671. In effect we thus held that the State was entitled to argue that the defendant’s evidence was insufficient on appeal, without having expressly challenged sufficiency at trial.
The rationale is, in essence, that by putting the defendant to his proof to establish standing, the State has done all it need to in order *113to preserve the issue for appeal.* The hearing on the motion to suppress is itself enough to put the trial court on notice that the State contests every element of the defendant’s burden of production, including the burden to show standing. There is no reason to expect the State specifically to call attention to the deficiency in order to raise it on appeal. If that is true for the State qua appellee, as the Court held in Wilson, then it logically applies to the State as appellant too. For this reason I concur in the result the Court reaches today. construed by this Court, ordinary notions of procedural default only apply to the benefit of the State, never to its detriment. See, e.g., Smith v. State, 898 S.W.2d 838, at 872, n. 16 (Tex.Cr.App.1995) (Clinton, J., dissenting).
The rule we announce today should be applied evenhandedly. To comprehend my meaning, consider a hypothetical: Suppose a defendant files a motion to suppress evidence, claiming it was the product of a warrantless search of his home. At the beginning of the hearing on the motion to suppress, the defendant requests the State to stipulate that the police officers had no warrant, and that the house they searched belonged to him. The prosecutor agrees. The defendant immediately rests on his motion to suppress. The State then rests, and both sides close. Without hearing argument or commenting on the merits, the trial court summarily denies the motion to suppress.
On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying the motion to suppress because the State failed to establish any exception to the warrant requirement, as was its burden once a warrantless search of his home was conceded. See Russell v. State, 717 S.W.2d 7, 9 (Tex.Cr.App.1986). In its reply brief, the State counters that the defendant has forfeited his contention because he did not raise it in any fashion in the trial court. Consistent with today’s ruling, the State’s procedural default argument cannot prevail. Any holding to the contrary would only cement my suspicion that, as
With these additional precatory remarks, I concur in the result.
MEYERS, J., joins.

 The rationale is analogous to that which supports our tacit assumption that a defendant need not object to the evidentiary sufficiency of the State’s evidence of his guilt in order to raise the issue on appeal:
"Specifically, the defendant need not have moved for a directed verdict at any particular time or times and need not have sought a new trial on the basis of evidence insufficiency. A defendant's insistence upon going to trial satisfies whatever need there may be to put the trial court on notice that the defendant contests the sufficiency of the evidence.”
Dix, G. & Dawson, R, 43 Texas Practice: Criminal Practice and Procedure § 43.382 (1995), at 314. Likewise, by putting the defendant to his proof at the pretrial suppression hearing, the State contests the sufficiency of his evidence to establish the elements of his Fourth Amendment claim, including standing.