Trenton Marcus Brown v. State ( 2019 )

In the
Court of Appeals
Second Appellate District of Texas
at Fort Worth
___________________________
No. 02-18-00507-CR
___________________________
TRENTON MARCUS BROWN, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS
On Appeal from County Criminal Court No. 7
Tarrant County, Texas
Trial Court No. 1545505
Before Sudderth, C.J.; Kerr and Womack, JJ.
Memorandum Opinion by Justice Kerr
MEMORANDUM OPINION
A jury convicted Trenton Marcus Brown of theft of property valued between
$750 and $2,500 and assessed his punishment at 180 days’ confinement in the county
jail. After the trial court sentenced Brown, he appealed and, in one issue, asserts that
the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress. We affirm.
Evidence
Luis Mejia and his neighbor, Juan Tovar, lived on Stanley Avenue. Mejia
testified that during the early morning hours on May 9, 2018, he saw some people
removing the wheels from his neighbor’s vehicle and putting them in a white pickup,
so he instructed his wife to call the police. After the white pickup left, the police
arrived. Mejia did not know in which direction the white pickup had driven after
leaving, and he denied pointing to help the police locate the suspect vehicle.
Tovar, Mejia’s neighbor, testified that in the early morning hours of May 9,
2018, Mejia knocked on his door and woke him up. Once outside, Tovar discovered
his 2018 Chevy Silverado on bricks; Tovar denied giving anyone permission to take
his wheels.
Officer Jeremy Mendoza testified that on May 9, 2018, around 1:50 a.m., he
was dispatched to a burglary call involving a white pickup, and on his way to the
scene, he saw a white pickup with something—he could not tell what—in its back.
After arriving at the scene on Stanley Avenue, Officer Mendoza saw some people
pointing toward James Avenue, which was the next street running parallel to Stanley
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Avenue. Officer Mendoza then radioed Officer Jackson, who was in a separate vehicle
behind Officer Mendoza, to stop the white pickup, and Officer Jackson did so.
Officer Mendoza maintained that he had reasonable suspicion to detain the white
pickup because (1) there were no other vehicles in the area, (2) people were pointing
in the direction in which Officer Jackson stopped the white pickup, and (3) the white
pickup was the only vehicle coming from the scene of the offense. Officer Mendoza
acknowledged that it was possible that another white pickup was in the area but added
that Brown’s vehicle was the only one he was aware of.
On the video showing the stop, though, Officer Jackson stated that the reason
he detained the white pickup was because its license plate was obstructed. At trial,
Officer Mendoza acknowledged that the license plate was not obstructed.
Brown’s Issue
Brown contends that Officer Jackson individually and Officers Jackson and
Mendoza collectively did not have reasonable suspicion to pull him over and that the
trial court thus erred by denying his motion to suppress.
Standard of Review
We apply a bifurcated standard of review to a trial court’s ruling on a motion to
suppress evidence. 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). In reviewing the trial
court’s decision, we do not engage in our own factual review. Romero v. State,
800 S.W.2d 539, 543 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990); Best v. State, 118 S.W.3d 857, 861 (Tex.
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App.—Fort Worth 2003, no pet.). The trial judge is the sole trier of fact and judge of
the witnesses’ credibility and the weight to be given their testimony. Wiede v. State,
214 S.W.3d 17, 24–25 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). Therefore, we defer almost totally to
the trial court’s rulings on (1) questions of historical fact, even if the trial court
determined those facts on a basis other than evaluating credibility and demeanor, and
(2) application-of-law-to-fact questions that turn on evaluating credibility and
demeanor. Amador, 221 S.W.3d at 673; Montanez v. State, 195 S.W.3d 101, 108–09 (Tex.
Crim. App. 2006); Johnson v. State, 68 S.W.3d 644, 652–53 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002). But
when application-of-law-to-fact questions do not turn on the witnesses’ credibility and
demeanor, we review the trial court’s rulings on those questions de novo. Amador,
221 S.W.3d at 673; Estrada v. State, 154 S.W.3d 604, 607 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005);
Johnson, 68 S.W.3d at 652–53.
Stated another way, when reviewing the trial court’s ruling on a suppression
motion, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the ruling. Wiede,
214 S.W.3d at 24; State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 818 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). When the
trial court makes explicit fact findings, we determine whether the evidence, when
viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling, supports those findings.
Kelly, 204 S.W.3d at 818–19. We then review the trial court’s legal ruling de novo
unless its explicit fact findings that are supported by the record are also dispositive of
the legal ruling. Id. at 818.
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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
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 trial court’s ruling, supports those findings. State v. Garcia-Cantu, 253 S.W.3d 236,
241 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008); see Wiede, 214 S.W.3d at 25. 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. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d at 819.
Applicable Law
A detention, as opposed to an arrest, may be justified on less than probable
cause 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 reasonably suspects 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, when
combined with rational inferences from those facts, 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 the
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detaining officer’s subjective intent and looks solely to whether the officer has an
objective basis for the stop. Id.
The collective-knowledge doctrine (also known as the fellow-officer rule) is the
principle that an investigative stop or an arrest is valid even if the law-enforcement
officer lacks personal knowledge to establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause,
provided the officer is acting on another officer’s knowledge and law enforcement’s
collective knowledge. O’Bryan v. State, 464 S.W.3d 875, 879 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth
2015, pet. ref’d) (relying on Fellow-Officer Rule, Black’s Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014)).
The United States Supreme Court first discussed this doctrine in 1971 in the context
of probable cause to support an arrest and later extended it to encompass reasonable
suspicion to detain a person briefly when attempting to obtain further information. Id.
(relying on Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 568, 91 S. Ct. 1031, 1037 (1971), abrogated
on other grounds by Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 13, 115 S. Ct. 1185, 1193 (1995), and
United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 229, 105 S. Ct. 675, 680 (1985)).
Discussion
Brown contends that the officer who actually detained him—Officer
Jackson—did not have reasonable suspicion. Specifically, he asserts that Officer
Jackson’s stated reason for stopping him—an obstructed license plate—turned out to
be wrong. But Officer Jackson was not working alone; rather, he was working with
another officer, so whether Officer Jackson individually had reasonable suspicion is
not dispositive. See O’Bryan, 464 S.W.3d at 879 (quoting Fellow-Officer Rule, Black’s Law
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Dictionary, for the proposition that “an investigative stop . . . is valid even if the law-
enforcement officer lacks personal knowledge to establish reasonable suspicion . . . as
long as the officer is acting on the knowledge of another officer . . . .”).
Next, Brown argues that Officers Jackson and Mendoza, even acting together,
did not have reasonable suspicion. Brown contends that the only identifying
information that Officer Mendoza had was a white pickup and that such information
was too generic to provide reasonable suspicion.
But Officer Mendoza was looking for more than just a generic white pickup.
He was looking for the white pickup with items in its truck bed coming from the
scene of a theft that Officer Mendoza himself had passed while en route to the
offense location and that persons at the scene (even if Mejia was not one of them) had
indicated to him was the pickup involved in the theft. And Officer Mendoza was
looking for a white pickup that was still in the immediate area and that was
fortuitously heading toward Officer Jackson, who was following Officer Mendoza in
another patrol car. The time was around 1:50 a.m.—a time consistent with very light
traffic—and Officer Mendoza denied seeing any other white pickups in the area.
Based on Officer Mendoza’s testimony that he instructed Officer Jackson to detain
Brown’s white pickup, we hold that the trial court did not err by ruling that Officers
Mendoza and Jackson collectively had reasonable suspicion to stop Brown’s vehicle.
See Kelly, 204 S.W.3d at 818–19; O’Bryan, 464 S.W.3d at 879.
We overrule Brown’s issue.
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Conclusion
Having overruled Brown’s sole issue, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.
/s/ Elizabeth Kerr
Elizabeth Kerr
Justice
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)
Delivered: August 22, 2019
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