Seguine v. State
| Decision Date | 30 January 2023 |
| Docket Number | 07-22-00118-CR |
| Parties | BRANDAN RAY SEGUINE, APPELLANT v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Do not publish
On Appeal from the 78th District Court Wichita County, Texas [1] Trial Court No. DC78-CR2021-1449, Honorable Meredith Kennedy Presiding
Before PARKER and DOSS and YARBROUGH, JJ.
Appellant Brandan Ray Seguine, was indicted for possessing between one and four grams of methamphetamine, a third-degree felony.[2] Appellant filed a pre-trial motion to suppress the methamphetamine that was obtained during a traffic stop. After Appellant's motion was denied, he pleaded guilty while reserving his right to appeal the trial court's suppression ruling. The trial court assessed a punishment of four years' confinement in prison. In his sole issue Appellant contends the officer unnecessarily prolonged his traffic stop to investigate a drug offense when there was no reasonable suspicion to do so. We affirm the trial court's denial of Appellant's motion to suppress.
At a pre-trial hearing, the trial court heard testimony from Electra police officer David Ohm pertaining to the events relevant to Appellant's motion to suppress. The State also introduced the in-car video from the officer's patrol car which captured the stop and subsequent arrest.
Around 3:00 p.m. on March 2, 2019, Officer Ohm was dispatched to investigate a criminal trespass at a location known to law enforcement as a drug house, that is, a house used to cook methamphetamine. Officer Ohm learned from the dispatcher that Appellant was one of the suspects and Roseanna Borders was the other suspect. From his prior experience, the officer knew that Appellant was a methamphetamine user and had been recently arrested for "manufacture/delivery" of methamphetamine. The officer had stopped Appellant multiple times. When the officer arrived at the location of the reported trespass, he spoke with Toni Strickland, who lived across the street. Strickland stated that the homeowner was not there because he was in jail. She saw Appellant and Borders pull up in a vehicle, go into the house, grab "some things," and leave. Strickland provided a description of Appellant's vehicle.
While patrolling the area, Officer Ohm spotted Appellant's vehicle near the scene of the reported trespass. After conducting a records check, the officer learned that Appellant's driver's license was invalid. The officer followed Appellant and initiated a traffic stop. When he activated the lights on his patrol car, Appellant did not stop immediately. Instead, Appellant continued to drive slowly. Appellant stopped at a stop sign, turned left, and continued to drive. Officer Ohm noticed that Appellant was looking at him in his mirror, so he "bumped" his siren. Appellant drove another quarter of a block before pulling over. Officer Ohm testified that Appellant had ample time to stop and pull over before Appellant encountered the stop sign.
After the officer approached Appellant's vehicle, he observed that Appellant was shaking even though Appellant had his heater on and remained in the vehicle. When the officer asked Appellant why he was shaking, Appellant said that he was cold. The temperature was "kind of cool, but it wasn't cold-cold." According to Officer Ohm, Appellant had never shaken or looked nervous during their previous encounters; in contrast, on those occasions, Appellant had acted like a "smart aleck." When the officer asked Appellant why he was driving with an invalid license, Appellant said he was unaware that it was invalid. The officer asked Appellant to step outside the vehicle and, when he complied, he locked and shut the door. Officer Ohm testified that this behavior was odd because Appellant had "never locked a vehicle that I've asked him to get out of."
When Appellant stated he did not have anything illegal in his vehicle, the officer asked him for consent to search the vehicle and his person. Appellant granted consent to search the vehicle but denied consent to search his person. Officer Ohm questioned Appellant about the criminal trespass and Appellant acknowledged that he and Borders had been at the house the subject of the trespass. During his questioning, Officer Ohm instructed Appellant several times to stay off his cell phone, but Appellant continued to use it. A few minutes after giving consent to search the vehicle, Appellant withdrew his consent and Officer Ohm arranged to have a canine officer come to the scene. The dash cam video shows less than seven minutes had elapsed from the time that Officer Ohm initiated the traffic stop to the time that he requested a canine unit. At that point, Officer Ohm had not written a ticket or decided what he was going to do about Appellant's invalid driver's license. Further, he was still conducting an investigation regarding the criminal trespass.
While waiting for the canine officer, Officer Ohm decided to place Appellant in the patrol car. He asked his partner, Officer Norris, to perform a pat-down frisk of Appellant for weapons. As he did so, Officer Norris found a multitool and something large in Appellant's right pocket. Officer Norris asked Appellant what was in his pocket and Appellant replied, "a wad." Officer Norris asked him, "[A] wad of what?" Appellant said, "just a wad." Appellant stuck his hands into his pockets and pushed the wad down farther. As Officer Norris placed the multitool on the hood of the patrol car, Appellant pushed off of Officer Ohm and ran. Officer Ohm grabbed Appellant and Officer Norris used a Taser to subdue Appellant.
Officer Ohm testified that the entire encounter, from the time of the traffic stop until Appellant began running, lasted approximately fourteen minutes. The officer admitted that fourteen minutes was a sufficient amount of time for an officer conducting a traffic stop to run warrants, check for insurance, and issue a citation.
The officers handcuffed Appellant, retrieved the wad from his pocket, and found that it contained methamphetamine. After Appellant received Miranda[3] warnings, he stated that he had gotten the drugs from "somebody else's belongings" that were located within the house.
At a pre-trial hearing, Appellant filed a motion to suppress in which he argued that the arresting officer caused the detention to last longer than necessary to accomplish the purpose of the stop, and, as a result, the contraband discovered during a pat-down of his clothing should be suppressed. The trial court denied the motion and stated on the record that the officer was a credible witness, and the traffic stop had not been unreasonably delayed given that "there was a pending drug investigation" that had begun.
Appellant pleaded guilty and signed a judicial confession. The trial court convicted him and sentenced him to four years' confinement in prison. Appellant reserved the right to appeal the denial of the motion to suppress. He timely filed this appeal.
In his sole issue, Appellant contends that officers unnecessarily prolonged his detention during a traffic stop for an invalid driver's license to investigate a drug offense when there was no reasonable suspicion to do so.
We review a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence using a bifurcated standard. Amador v. State, 221 S.W.3d 666, 673 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). 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). The trial judge is the sole trier of fact and judge of the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony. Wiede v. State, 214 S.W.3d 17, 24-25 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). We give almost total deference to the 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. Amador, 221 S.W.3d at 673. But when application-of-law-to-fact questions do not turn on the credibility and demeanor of the witnesses, we review the trial court's rulings on those questions de novo. Id.
When, as here, 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 rulings, 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. State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 819 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006).
A traffic stop[4] and any ensuing detention must be supported by reasonable suspicion. Ramirez-Tamayo v State, 537 S.W.3d 29, 36 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). "Reasonable suspicion" to detain a person exists when a police officer has "specific articulable facts that, combined with rational inferences from those facts would lead him reasonably to conclude that the person detained is, has been, or soon will be engaged in criminal activity." Matthews v. State, 431 S.W.3d 596, 603 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). A reasonable suspicion is more than a mere hunch; the standard requires considerably less proof of wrongdoing than a preponderance of the evidence, and less than is necessary for probable cause. See Johnson v. State, 622 S.W.3d 378, 384 (Tex. Crim. App. 2021). The existence of reasonable suspicion is determined by considering the totality of the circumstances. Id. at 385; see also Lambeth v. State, 221 S.W.3d 831, 837 (Tex. App.- Fort Worth 2007) (...
To continue reading
Request your trial