Court Opinion

ID: 9773123
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:37:55.993238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:50.257549
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge,
dissenting.
No amount of legalistic mumbo jumbo can change the facts to show that officers stopped the appellant when she was already stopped before they arrived. Her son stopped the car in which she was riding of his own accord without any order or signal on the part of an officer.
The only way there could have been a stop by the officers was that the majority *853says there was a stop without any factual basis. Then after the majority says there was a stop of the appellant, through some sort of strange reasoning, they discuss two kinds of stop.
The majority also ignores the record which shows that there was no search, no pat down and no frisk of the appellant. The pistol which formed the basis of this prosecution was seen after appellant opened the door and gave consent to a search. The officers did not search but saw the pistol on the seat of the car where appellant had been seated.
There was no stop, halt or arrest until after the sheriff saw the pistol. The pistol was not seized by an illegal arrest or any sort of illegal stop, real or fancied. There was no illegal detention.
The majority of the panel opinion held that the officers obtained the pistol as a result of an investigatory stop. The question is who stopped appellant? The answer is that her son stopped the car in which she was riding. Let us look to the facts to determine the validity of the officers obtaining the pistol.
Officers received information that appellant was selling pills, uppers and downers, to children and that she had a pistol. Sheriff Maddox testified that, after looking for the car, he never got within a half block of it until it stopped in a driveway at a garage apartment and he drove up to the side of the car and asked if he could search. She said, “Certainly.” He made no search but saw the pistol on the seat where she had been sitting.
The majority on rehearing writes that the dissenting opinion in the panel confused “two distinct meanings of the word ‘stop’ ”. What are the two meanings? If one is a halt and the other is a detention, where is either shown in this case?
If there was a detention, there was sufficient reason shown in the record for an officer to investigate one reported of carrying a pistol and selling pills to children. See the dissent to the panel opinion discussing the right of an officer to investigate.
Further, if there were any error it was made harmless when appellant’s son testified that the gun belonged to appellant and it was in the car when it was seen by the officers. This is also discussed in the dissenting opinion on original submission.
What the officers did was good police work. They should be commended, not criticized. Only unreasonable searches and seizures are prohibited by the Constitutions of the United States and Texas. There was no unreasonable search or seizure in this case. Officers should not be deterred from making proper investigations to deter the commission of crimes.
The key to the illogical opinion on rehearing is quoted as follows: “The appellant was detained as soon as the sheriff approached her car . . . .” The majority opinion says that the officers blocked the car in which she had been riding from leaving. The evidence shows that the occupants were not trying to leave in the car. They were in the process of leaving the car to go into the garage apartment.
This case should be controlled by what the officers did, not what they might have done later.
The motion for rehearing should be granted and the judgment should be affirmed.
W. C. DAVIS, J., joins in this dissent.