State v. Bell
| Decision Date | 23 May 2012 |
| Docket Number | Nos. PD–0025–12,PD–0026–12.,s. PD–0025–12 |
| Citation | 366 S.W.3d 712 |
| Parties | The STATE of Texas v. Mark Steven BELL, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Debora B. Alsup, Austin, for Appellant.
David C. Newell & Roger Haseman, Asst. D.A., Houston, Lisa C. McMinn, State's Attorney, Austin, for State.
Appellee was employed by Simon Management Associates as the property manager for the Galleria Shopping Mall in Houston. He was charged with unauthorized discharge of industrial waste after a pressure-washing contractor allegedly discharged contaminated water while cleaning the Galleria Mall's underground parking garages. Appellee filed a motion to suppress evidence, which the trial judge granted after an evidentiary hearing.
According to the trial court's factual findings, Sheree Moore, the owner of a pressure-washing company who worked with police on investigating competing pressure-washing companies, was acting as an agent of law enforcement when she entered the Galleria premises on November 1 and November 3, 2006. She entered the Galleria at a time when it was not open to the public and without the consent of its owner or its management company.
On both occasions, Ms. Moore, after entering without consent, then contacted Sgt. Walsh of the Houston Police Department and asked him to come to the Galleria “to conduct further criminal investigation.” He did so. He arrived at approximately 5:50 a.m. on November 1st and 6:00 a.m. on November 3rd. He 1
Based upon these and other factual findings, the trial judge concluded that the two searches were improper under the Fourth Amendment because both Ms. Moore and Sgt. Walsh were trespassers upon the property at the time they entered, searched, and seized evidence from the Galleria premises.
The State appealed and, for the first time, raised the issue of appellee's standing to contest the search, arguing that appellee did not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the closed Galleria parking lot. The court of appeals, in a per curiam opinion, agreed and reversed the trial judge's order. State v. Bell, 357 S.W.3d 683, 687 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2011) ().
We summarily grant appellee's petition for discretionary review and remand this case for further consideration in light of the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Jones,2 in which the Court reaffirmed the continued vitality of the property-based approach to the Fourth Amendment as an alternate to the more recent “expectation of privacy” approach.3 The court...
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