The State of Texas v. Elijah Joel Robinson ( 2024 )

In the
Court of Appeals
Second Appellate District of Texas
at Fort Worth
___________________________
No. 02-23-00167-CR
___________________________
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellant
V.
ELIJAH JOEL ROBINSON
On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 2
Tarrant County, Texas
Trial Court No. 1710742
Before Kerr, Womack, and Walker, JJ.
Memorandum Opinion by Justice Walker
MEMORANDUM OPINION
The State appeals from the trial court’s order granting Appellee Elijah
Robinson’s motion to suppress all evidence stemming from a September 2021 traffic
stop. In a single issue on appeal, the State complains that the trial court erred by
misapplying Section 504.945(a)(7)(C) of the Texas Transportation Code and
concluding that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to stop Robinson. We
will reverse the trial court’s order granting the motion to suppress and remand the
case for further proceedings.
I. BACKGROUND
Robinson was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon after
Officer Hinkle of the Keller Police Department recovered a gun from his vehicle
during a September 2021 traffic stop. Robinson filed a motion to suppress, which the
trial court heard in June 2023.
At the suppression hearing, Hinkle testified that he stopped Robinson’s vehicle
after noticing a cover over his license plate that altered the plate’s color. Hinkle
understood this to be a violation of Section 504.945(a)(7) of the traffic code, even
though the cover did not impede his ability to read the plate. Hinkle testified to
having made about twenty traffic stops to enforce that Section of the traffic code over
his four years on the police force.
Hinkle’s body camera footage provides a clear view of Robinson’s visibly tinted
license plate. It also shows that, when Robinson rolled his window down, Hinkle
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explained that he had stopped Robinson because the cover on his license plate was
“illegal in the state of Texas” because drivers “can’t have anything covering or
obstructing [their] license plate.”
Hinkle then smelled marijuana emanating from Robinson’s open window.
Hinkle asked Robinson whether there was any marijuana in the vehicle. Robinson
responded by stating that he had a “sweet” in the ashtray and a weapon in the glove
box. At this point, Hinkle believed that he had probable cause to search the vehicle
and subsequently recovered both a marijuana cigarette and a handgun.
After being removed from the car, Robinson asked if he had been stopped,
“because of his rims or something,” to which Hinkle replied, “[I]t’s illegal to have
anything covering your license plate in the state of Texas. That’s the reason for the
stop.”
In his motion to suppress, Robinson argued among other things that Hinkle
did not have reasonable suspicion to stop him. The trial court granted the motion
and ordered that all evidence from the traffic stop be suppressed. The trial court’s
order contained findings of fact, including that:
The license plate of the vehicle had a hard plastic cover. However, the
license plate of the vehicle was entirely legible as Officer Hinkle could
read all of the letters and numbers on the plate while driving his
vehicle. . . .
Officer Hinkle initiated a traffic stop because the vehicle had a license
plate cover. Officer Hinkle stated to the defendant twice the reason for
the stop was because it was illegal to have a license plate cover in the
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state of Texas. Officer Hinkle also wrote in his report that the vehicle
had an illegal license plate cover, which was covering the rear and front
license plates.
Although Officer Hinkle gave testimony that the license plate was
obscure in color, he did not note or mention any obscurities at the time
of the traffic stop. Officer Hinkle testified that he could clearly read the
license plate, and that he did not note any obscurities in his report nor to
the defendant.
....
Officer Hinkle did not have reasonable suspicion nor probable cause to
stop the vehicle for violation of [Section 504.945(a)(7)(C)], because an
objectively reasonable police officer would not have viewed the license
plate as having been altered or obscured to a degree that it would violate
[that section].
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
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 facts 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).
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III. DISCUSSION
In a single appellate issue, the State contends that Hinkle had reasonable
suspicion to stop Robinson for violating Texas Transportation Code Section
504.945(a)(7)(C), arguing that the trial court erred in granting Robinson’s motion to
suppress under a misapplication of that Section. Specifically, the State argues that the
trial court essentially added an element to the statute by requiring that the license plate
have been sufficiently illegible before a reasonable officer could have believed that it
violated the statute. Robinson argues that reasonable suspicion did not exist because
a “reasonable police officer would not have viewed [his] license plate as having been
altered or obscured to a degree that it would violate” Section 504.945(a)(7)(C). We
agree with the State.
A. REASONABLE SUSPICION AND SECTION 504.945(a)(7)(C)
An officer may make a warrantless traffic stop if he has reasonable suspicion to
do so. Jaganathan v. State, 479 S.W.3d 244, 247 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015). Reasonable
suspicion exists when, based on the totality of the circumstances, the officer shows
specific, articulable facts at the suppression hearing that, when combined with rational
inferences from those facts, would lead him to reasonably conclude that a person is
engaging in criminal activity. State v. Torrez, 490 S.W.3d 279, 283 (Tex. App.—Fort
Worth 2016, pet. ref’d). This is an objective standard that disregards any subjective
intent of the detaining officer and looks solely to whether an objective basis for the
stop exists. Id.5
Whether a traffic stop was based on reasonable suspicion does not depend
upon showing that an actual offense was committed; it is enough to show that the
officer reasonably believed an offense was in progress. Id. Thus, at the suppression
hearing, the State need not establish that a crime occurred prior to the stop but must
elicit testimony showing sufficient facts to prove that reasonable suspicion existed
that the person stopped was engaging in criminal activity. Id. at 284. Reasonable
suspicion requires only a “minimal level of objective justification” for the stop. Hamal
v. State, 390 S.W.3d 302, 306 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012).
Section 504.945(A)(7)(C) of the Texas Transportation Code provides that a
person commits a traffic offense “if the person attaches to or displays on a motor
vehicle a license plate that . . . has a coating, covering, protective substance, or other
material that . . . alters, covers, or obscures the letters or numbers of the license plate
number or the color of the plate.” Tex. Transp. Code Ann. § 504.945(a)(7)(C).
B. HINKLE’S REASONABLE SUSPICION
At the suppression hearing, Hinkle testified that he stopped Robinson due to
there being a cover on his license plate that altered the plate’s color. Hinkle’s body
camera footage corroborates that the plate’s color was altered: it shows a visibly tinted
covering over Robinson’s plate. See Miller v. State, 393 S.W.3d 255, 263 (Tex. Crim.
App. (2012) (considering “indisputable visual evidence” in a suppression proceeding).
Further, the footage shows that Hinkle told Robinson that he had initiated the traffic
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stop because the cover over Robinson’s license plate was “illegal in the state of
Texas.”
The trial court’s essential findings comport with these facts. It found that
Robinson’s license plate “had a hard plastic cover” and that Officer Hinkle had given
“testimony that the license plate was obscure in color.” Further, the trial court found
that Hinkle had stated both to Robinson and on his offense report that the plate
cover was illegal.
Giving the appropriate deference to these findings of fact, we conclude that the
trial court misapplied the law in concluding that “Hinkle did not have reasonable
suspicion nor probable cause to stop the vehicle for violation of [Section
504.945(a)(7)], because an objectively reasonable police officer would not have viewed
the license plate as having been altered or obscured to a degree that it would violate
[that Section].” An offense under Section 504.945(a)(7)(C) is not contingent upon the
degree to which a covering obscures or alters the plate’s color. Instead, a person
commits an offense if his cover alters or obscures the color of the plate—full stop.
See Tex. Transp. Code Ann. § 504.945(a)(7)(C). This is true regardless of whether or
not the officer had any difficulty reading the plate at the time of the stop. See id.In light of the evidence adduced at the hearing and the trial court’s findings of
fact that materially agree with that evidence, we conclude that the State elicited
sufficient facts to prove that Hinkle reasonably believed that Robinson was
committing a traffic offense under Section 504.945(a)(7)(C), thus giving him
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reasonable suspicion for the stop. See Torrez, 490 S.W.3d at 283. Accordingly, we
hold that the trial court erred by granting Robinson’s motion to suppress, and we
sustain the State’s sole issue.1
IV. CONCLUSION
Having sustained the State’s issue, we reverse the trial court’s order granting
Robinson’s motion to suppress, and we remand this case to the trial court for further
proceedings. See Tex. R. App. P. 43.2(d); Torrez, 490 S.W.3d at 286.
/s/ Brian Walker
Brian Walker
Justice
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)
Delivered: May 23, 2024
We note that, even if Hinkle had stopped Robinson under a mistaken belief
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about what constituted an offense under Section 504.945(a)(7)(C), he still would have
had reasonable suspicion to make the stop if that mistaken belief was objectively
reasonable. See Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 62, 135 S. Ct. 530, 537 (2014)
(holding that officer’s reasonable but mistaken understanding of traffic law could
nevertheless give rise to reasonable suspicion to justify traffic stop). Though we need
not reach this question, it would likely also have been dispositive of the State’s issue
under the facts of this case.
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