James v. State
| Decision Date | 09 January 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 2-00-392-CR.,No. 2-00-393-CR.,2-00-392-CR.,2-00-393-CR. |
| Citation | 102 S.W.3d 162 |
| Parties | Tarita JAMES, Appellant. v. The STATE of Texas, State. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Campion and Campion and Alex Joseph Scarff, San Antonio, for Appellant.
Janelle M. Haverkamp, Cooke County District Attorney, and Jackson & Hagen and H.F. Rick Hagen, Denton, for Appellee.
PANEL B: HOLMAN, GARDNER, and WALKER, JJ.
Appellant Tarita James was convicted and given two life sentences by a jury for possession of cocaine over 400 grams and possession of methamphetamine over 400 grams. Appealing both convictions, James contends in her first two points that the trial court abused its discretion in denying her motions to suppress evidence seized after her vehicle was stopped because there was no reasonable suspicion for the stop. By her third point, James contends that there was no reasonable basis for continued detention and search after the purpose of the original stop was effectuated. By her fourth point, James complains that the trial court erred in overruling her motion to suppress an oral statement. In point five, she maintains that the trial court erred in excluding co-defendant Patrice Murphy's statement against penal interest. Point six complains that the trial court erred in allowing the State to impeach James with evidence of a prior conviction for which she satisfactorily completed probation. In points seven and eight, James urges that the prosecutor's misconduct throughout the trial and in closing argument denied her a fair trial. In James's ninth point, she argues that the trial court erred by preventing the venire panel from answering proper voir dire questions. We reverse and remand this case for a new trial.
On March 25, 1998, at 1:40 a.m., Cooke County Sheriff's Deputy Bobby Faglie was on patrol when he saw a green Jeep Cherokee leave a rest stop near the 489 mile marker on northbound Interstate 35. As the Jeep entered the highway, Faglie noticed that it failed to signal. As Faglie watched, the Jeep crossed the center stripe between the northbound lanes, then veered back over the yellow stripe onto the shoulder. Faglie followed the Jeep for approximately a half mile. Believing that the driver's faculties were impaired, he initiated a stop.
The driver, Patrice Murphy, did not have a driver's license with her and identified herself with a Cook County, Illinois, traffic citation. The Jeep was a rental vehicle rented to James, who was riding as a passenger. When Faglie inquired where they were going and where they had been, Murphy responded that they had been sleeping at the rest stop and were still groggy, and that they were going to St. Louis, Missouri, after a two-week stay in Dallas, visiting James's aunt.
Officer Faglie had Murphy exit the Jeep and asked her if the vehicle had insurance. When Murphy responded that she did not have insurance for the vehicle, Faglie went to the passenger side of the vehicle and made the same inquiry to James. She handed Faglie the rental agreement, issued in James's name from St. Louis International Airport, which showed the vehicle was due back two days before, on March 23, 1998. James told Faglie that they were in Dallas for two days and could not find her aunt's house.
Faglie determined that Murphy was not intoxicated and issued a warning citation for failure to indicate lane change and failure to maintain a single lane of traffic. He gave the warning citation to Murphy and then asked James for consent to search the vehicle; she consented both verbally and in writing.
Upon searching the vehicle, Faglie first found two purses on the center console of the Jeep. In the purses, he found a combined total of $6,636, and in James's purse he found five small bags of cocaine. Faglie handcuffed James and Murphy and placed them under arrest, while his partner read James and Murphy their Miranda rights.
When Faglie and his partner opened the hatchback of the Jeep, they found several shopping bags and nine suitcases, seven of which contained eighty-two insulation wrapped packages totaling over four hundred pounds of ninety-one percent pure cocaine and a forty-eight percent mixture of amphetamine.1 Murphy and James were indicted for the offenses of possession of cocaine over 400 grams and possession of amphetamines over 400 grams. James was tried separately and was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences by a jury.2
In her first two points, James contends that the trial court abused its discretion by denying her motion to suppress evidence seized from the vehicle because the initial stop was improperly premised upon Murphy entering the highway without signaling and failing to maintain a single lane without evidence that the movement was unsafe, and was thus an illegal traffic stop. In her third point, James argues that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to grant her motion to suppress because the continued detention after the warning citation was issued was unreasonable. In James's fourth point, she argues that the trial court should have granted the motion to suppress an unrecorded oral statement.
The State first argues that points one through three were not preserved for appellate review because the trial court did not rule on James's October 27, 1999 motion to suppress and the defense did not request a ruling. See TEX.R.APP P. 33.1(a)(2)(A), (B). We disagree that the trial court did not rule on the motion to suppress as to the reasonableness of the stop. At the close of the hearing on the motions to suppress, the trial court stated:
I think he said he stopped them because he thought they might be DWI. After he determined that they weren't DWI, and he determined they did have insurance for the vehicle, I can understand that if he thought they had been asleep, he could also take pity on the minor traffic infractions, and give them a warning ticket. But I think he reasonably stopped them as to the way they were driving. They could have been DWI. And that's not a minor infraction.
[Emphasis supplied].
The record reflects, however, that the trial court did not expressly rule on the legality of the continued detention because it wanted the parties to brief those issues.3 For James to demonstrate that error was preserved for appellate review, the record must show: (1) that the complaint made was by a timely filed motion stating grounds sufficient to provide notice to the trial court and, (2) that the trial court ruled on the motion either expressly or implicitly. TEX.R.APP. P. 33.1(a)(1)(A), (2)(A).
Here, the pretrial suppression motion and hearing provided the trial court ample notice of the nature of James's complaints. While the trial court decided that it needed more time to rule on the matter, it never explicitly ruled on the motion. At trial, however, the fruits of the continued detention were presented by the State. Every time the State raised this evidence, James's counsel consistently objected on the same grounds he raised during the suppression hearing. The trial court overruled his objections.
We hold that the trial court implicitly overruled the motion to suppress, as exhibited by its actions during the guilt/innocence phase of trial. Gutierrez v. State, 36 S.W.3d 509, 511 (Tex.Crim.App.2001) (). While an appellate court will generally find that a trial court made an implicit ruling on an objection when the objection was brought to the trial court's attention, it will only do so when "the trial court's subsequent action clearly addressed the complaint." State v. Kelley, 20 S.W.3d 147, 153, n. 3 (Tex.App.-Texarkana 2000, no pet.) (considering whether trial court's ruling was implicit on a motion to suppress not explicitly ruled on). We hold that error was properly preserved as to the seizure of the contraband. We turn to the merits of James's first three points.
We review a trial court's denial of a motion to suppress for abuse of discretion. Carmouche v. State, 10 S.W.3d 323, 327 (Tex.Crim.App.2000); Oles v. State, 993 S.W.2d 103, 106 (Tex.Crim.App.1999). There is an abuse of discretion when the ruling was so clearly wrong as to be outside that zone within which reasonable persons might disagree. Cantu v. State, 842 S.W.2d 667, 682 (Tex.Crim.App.1992), cert. denied, 509 U.S. 926, 113 S.Ct. 3046, 125 L.Ed.2d 731 (1993). We afford almost total deference to a trial court's determination of the historical facts that the record supports, especially when the trial court's fact findings are based upon an evaluation of credibility and demeanor. State v. Ross, 32 S.W.3d 853, 856 (Tex.Crim.App. 2000). We afford the same amount of deference to the trial court's rulings on mixed questions of law and fact, if the resolution of those questions turns on an evaluation of credibility and demeanor. Carmouche, 10 S.W.3d at 327; Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 88-89 (Tex.Crim. App.1997). We review de novo the trial court's application of law to those facts in the determination of reasonable suspicion and probable cause. Carmouche, 10 S.W.3d at 327; Guzman, 955 S.W.2d at 88-89.
When the trial court does not make explicit findings of historical facts, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling and assume that the trial court made implicit findings of fact supporting its ruling, if those findings are supported by the record. Carmouche, 10 S.W.3d at 327-28. In determining whether a trial court's decision is supported by the record, we generally consider only evidence adduced at the suppression...
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