Craig Anthony Keeton v. State ( 2014 )

COURT OF APPEALS
SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS
FORT WORTH
NO. 02-13-00598-CR
CRAIG ANTHONY KEETON APPELLANT
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE
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FROM COUNTY CRIMINAL COURT NO. 10 OF TARRANT COUNTY
TRIAL COURT NO. 1306985
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MEMORANDUM OPINION 1
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In a single point, appellant Craig Anthony Keeton appeals his conviction for
driving while intoxicated (DWI).2 Appellant argues that the trial court improperly
denied his motion to suppress because the police lacked reasonable suspicion to
1
See Tex. R. App. P. 47.4.
2
See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 49.04(a) (West Supp. 2014).
pull him over. We affirm.
Background Facts
While on patrol in December 2012, Fort Worth Police Officer Stanley
Madurski noticed an oncoming truck. Because the parked vehicles on either side
of the street made Officer Madurski fear that both he and the oncoming truck
could not comfortably pass, he pulled to the side and yielded to the other driver.
As the other driver passed, Officer Madurski heard the sound of the driver’s truck
hitting one of the parked vehicles. Officer Madurski glanced in his rearview
mirror to see if the driver had stopped. The driver, later identified as appellant,
had not. Believing appellant had just committed the offense of hit and run, 3
Officer Madurski turned his patrol car around and stopped him. The traffic stop
led to the State’s charging appellant with DWI.
Appellant moved to suppress all evidence obtained from the traffic stop,
alleging that Officer Madurski violated his constitutional rights by detaining him
without reasonable suspicion. The trial court denied the motion. In response,
appellant entered into a plea agreement; he pled guilty to the charge and
received thirty-five days’ confinement in the county jail along with a $950 fine.
The trial court certified appellant’s right to appeal from the denied motion to
suppress, and this appeal followed.
3
See Tex. Transp. Code Ann. § 550.024(a) (West 2011).
2
Reasonable Suspicion
In his sole point, appellant states that Officer Madurski violated the law by
detaining him without reasonable suspicion. See U.S. Const. amend. IV; Tex.
Const. art. I, § 9. Appellant contends that because Officer Madurski did not see
any physical evidence of damage to any of the parked vehicles––and could not
verify that the paint scrape he saw on appellant’s mirror was from one of those
vehicles––he detained appellant on less than reasonable suspicion. See Tex.
Transp. Code Ann. § 550.024(a) (stating that a driver must “collide[] with and
damage[]” an unattended vehicle before he or she has to stop (emphasis
added)).
Standard of Review and Applicable Law
We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress evidence under a
bifurcated standard of review. Amador v. State, 221 S.W.3d 666, 673 (Tex.
Crim. App. 2007); Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997).
We give almost total deference to a trial court’s rulings on questions of historical
fact and application-of-law-to-fact questions that turn on an evaluation of
credibility and demeanor, but we review de novo application-of-law-to-fact
questions that do not turn on credibility and demeanor. Amador, 221 S.W.3d at
673; Estrada v. State, 154 S.W.3d 604, 607 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005); Johnson v.
State, 68 S.W.3d 644, 652–53 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002).
When the record is silent on the reasons for the trial court’s ruling, or when
there are no explicit fact findings and neither party timely requested findings and
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conclusions from the trial court, we imply the necessary fact findings that would
support the trial court’s ruling if the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable
to the ruling, supports those findings. State v. Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d 236,
241 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008); see Wiede v. State, 214 S.W.3d 17, 25 (Tex. Crim.
App. 2007). We then review the trial court’s legal ruling de novo unless the
implied fact findings supported by the record are also dispositive of the legal
ruling. State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 819 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006).
Under the Fourth Amendment, an investigatory detention may be justified if
a person is reasonably suspected of criminal activity based on specific,
articulable facts. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1880 (1968);
Carmouche v. State, 10 S.W.3d 323, 328 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000). An officer
conducts a lawful temporary detention when he or she has reasonable suspicion
to believe that an individual is violating the law. Crain v. State, 315 S.W.3d 43,
52 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010); Ford v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488, 492 (Tex. Crim. App.
2005). Reasonable suspicion exists when, based on the totality of the
circumstances, the officer has specific, articulable facts that would lead him to
reasonably conclude that a particular person is, has been, or soon will be
engaged in criminal activity. Ford, 158 S.W.3d at 492. This is an objective
standard that disregards any subjective intent of the officer making the stop and
looks solely to whether an objective basis for the stop exists. Id.
A court should regard articulable observations made by an officer as
specific facts when performing a reasonable suspicion review. See Castro v.
4
State, 227 S.W.3d 737, 742 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007); see also Fox v. State, 900
S.W.2d 345, 347 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 1995), pet. dism’d, improvidently
granted, 930 S.W.2d 607 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996) (holding that an officer’s
specific visual observations supported his reasonable suspicions). An officer
observes an offense when any of his senses make him aware of its occurrence.
State v. Steelman, 93 S.W.3d 102, 107 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002); cf. Tex. Dep’t of
Pub. Safety v. Gilfeather, 293 S.W.3d 875, 880 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2009, no
pet.) (op. on reh’g). These observations, combined with common-sense
judgments and rational inferences, can give rise to reasonable suspicion
justifying a lawful investigatory detention. See State v. Woodard, 341 S.W.3d
404, 412 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011).
Application
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling,
we conclude that the trier of fact must have believed Officer Madurski’s testimony
that he heard the “distinct sound of [appellant’s] vehicle hitting the other vehicle.”
See Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d at 241 (allowing the reviewing court to infer
necessary fact findings to support the ruling when no explicit fact findings exist at
the trial level). The trial court could have concluded that this auditory
observation, supported by the officer’s statement to another responding officer
that “[appellant] came flying past me, clipped the mirror on that truck and kept
going,” constituted a specific, articulable fact supporting a reasonable suspicion
that appellant had committed a traffic offense. See Castro, 227 S.W.3d at 742;
5
Steelman, 93 S.W.3d at 107. See generally Tex. Transp. Code Ann. §
550.024(a). That some damage, however slight, to an unattended parked
vehicle occurred following a sound similar to that of its being hit by a moving
vehicle––when the driver of that moving vehicle was quickly negotiating a tight
space––is a common-sense, rational inference from the totality of the
circumstances. See Woodard, 341 S.W.3d at 412; see also Tex. Transp. Code
Ann. § 550.024(b) (providing that offense is a class C misdemeanor if the
damage to all vehicles involved is less than $200, without stating a minimum
amount of damage).
Furthermore, even if Officer Madurski had been mistaken about the actual
consequence of the sound he heard (i.e., if he was mistaken that damage had
occurred even when it did not), that mistake would not negate his reasonable
suspicion based on what he believed the effect of the sound he heard to be. See
Robinson v. State, 377 S.W.3d 712, 720–21 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012) (holding that
an officer’s rational mistake regarding the facts giving rise to his reasonable
suspicion will not vitiate the lawfulness of a temporary detention); see also, e.g.,
Abney v. State, 394 S.W.3d 542, 548 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013) (“The State does
not have to establish with absolute certainty that a crime occurred; it just has to
carry its burden of proving that, under the totality of the circumstances, the
[detention] was reasonable.”). Nothing in Officer Madurski’s testimony indicates
that he believed no damage had occurred to an unattended vehicle or that
6
damage to an unattended vehicle is not a required element of section 550.024.
We overrule appellant’s sole point.
Conclusion
Having overruled appellant’s point, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.
/s/ Terrie Livingston
TERRIE LIVINGSTON
CHIEF JUSTICE
PANEL: LIVINGSTON, C.J.; GARDNER and WALKER, JJ.
DO NOT PUBLISH
Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)
DELIVERED: September 18, 2014
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