State v. Medrano

• Decision Date: 06 February 2002
• Docket Number: No. 527-99.,527-99.
• Citation: 67 S.W.3d 892
• Parties: The STATE of Texas, Appellant, v. Matthew MEDRANO, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

67 S.W.3d 892

The STATE of Texas, Appellant, v. Matthew MEDRANO, Appellee.

No. 527-99.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, En Banc.

February 6, 2002.

Luis E. Islas, El Paso, for Appellant.

Betty Marshall, Asst. State Atty., Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which KELLER, P.J., KEASLER, HERVEY, and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.

The issue in this case is whether article 44.01(a)(5)¹ of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure permits the State to bring a pretrial appeal of an adverse ruling on a motion to suppress evidence when the trial court does not conclude that the evidence was "illegally obtained." Although this Court, in State v. Roberts, 940 S.W.2d 655 (Tex.Crim.App.1996), held that the State cannot appeal a pretrial evidentiary ruling unless the defendant claims that the evidence was "illegally obtained," neither the language of the statute nor legislative intent supports this limitation. It is not consistent with the interpretation other state or federal courts have given to the same or similar language in their government-appeal statutes. Moreover, the rule in Roberts has proved unworkable in practice. Therefore, we overrule Roberts and hold that under article 44.01(a)(5), the State is entitled to appeal any adverse pre-trial ruling which suppresses evidence, a confession, or an admission, regardless of whether the defendant alleges, or the trial court holds, that the evidence was "illegally obtained."

I.

Appellee, Matthew Medrano, was charged with capital murder for the robbery-murder of Benton Smith, a pizza delivery man. The State's only witness to the robbery-murder was Jennifer Erivez, a fourteen-year-old girl, who was standing in the driveway of her home at about 10:00 p.m. waiting for her boyfriend. Jennifer testified that she saw the pizza delivery man drive by and park down the street. Then she saw a maroon car, like a Chrysler LeBaron, drive past slowly and stop under a street light. A man got out of the front passenger side and did something like take the license plate off of the car. Jennifer saw the man's face clearly, but could not recall the car's license plate number. The car then drove further down the street and parked behind the pizza delivery man's truck. The same man got out of the car and walked up to the pizza delivery man. Jennifer heard a gunshot and then saw the man run back to the car. He got in, and the driver sped away.

A few hours later, Jennifer gave police a written description of the person she had seen get out of the car and approach the pizza delivery man:

The front seat passenger is Hispanic, between 17-21 years old, tall, maybe about 6' tall, medium build, short dark colored hair combed back. I did not see any facial hair, and he was wearing a black long sleeve-shirt and underneath he was wearing a white muscle T-shirt-shirt, loose fitting black pants and black shoes.

Jennifer also stated that the maroon car contained a total of four people. Because she was unable to recall the car's license plate number, an El Paso police officer, trained in hypnosis, conducted a videotaped hypnotic session the next day. She was still unable to recall the license plate number. About a week later, the police conducted two photo lineups for Jennifer. She did not identify anyone in those lineups.² After she identified Mr. Medrano as the shooter in a third photo lineup two days later, he was arrested and charged with capital murder.

Defense counsel filed a "Motion to Suppress In Court Identification"³ based upon Zani v. State, 758 S.W.2d 233 (Tex.Crim. App.1988), Tex.R. Evid 403, the 6th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and Article 1, Sections 10 & 13 of the Texas Constitution. After a pretrial suppression hearing, the trial judge orally granted the defense motion. Her written order stated that she granted the motion "for the reasons stated on the record" at the hearing and that she "also f[ound] said identification was obtained in violation of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution and Article I, sections 9, 10, 13, and 19 of the Texas Constitution."

The State certified that it could not prosecute the case without Jennifer's testimony and filed an appeal with the El Paso Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals dismissed the State's appeal for want of jurisdiction. State v. Medrano, 987 S.W.2d 600 (Tex.App.-El Paso 1999). That court concluded:

We find that, although the trial court framed her order to conclude that constitutional provisions had been violated, her findings were the result of a balancing test conducted under Texas Rule of Evidence 403....

Thus, although constitutional implications may be present in this decision, we find it was not a "suppression" in the sense contemplated by Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 44.01(a)(5) and the case law interpreting it.

Id. at 604 (footnote omitted). The State Prosecuting Attorney filed a petition for discretionary review with this Court.⁴

II.

Article 44.01 was enacted as a vehicle for the State to challenge "questionable legal rulings excluding what may be legally admissible evidence[.]"⁵ The purpose of the statute is to permit the pretrial appeal of erroneous legal rulings which eviscerate the State's ability to prove its case. The Texas legislature, in passing Senate Bill 762 in 1987, clearly intended to provide Texas prosecutors with the same vehicle of appeal for pretrial evidentiary rulings as federal prosecutors. As this Court noted in State v. Moreno, 807 S.W.2d 327, 332 (Tex.Crim.App.1991), "when our Legislature adopted Article. 44.01 in 1987, it made clear its intent to afford the State the same powers afforded the federal government under 18 U.S.C. § 3731." There is no question that under 18 U.S.C. § 3731, federal prosecutors may appeal a wide variety of pretrial evidentiary rulings-not just those tied to motions to suppress illegally obtained evidence.⁶ Similarly, there is no question that the federal statute is liberally construed.⁷ The Texas Legislature modeled art. 44.01 after the corresponding federal provision generally.⁸ The section at issue here, section 5(a)(5), mimics "the clarifying nomenclature of the Wisconsin statute,"⁹ which permits appeals from orders "suppressing evidence."¹⁰ The Wisconsin Supreme Court has interpreted its statute as allowing the State to appeal any pretrial order barring admission of evidence which would normally be outcome determinative.¹¹

All fifty states, as well as the District of Columbia, have provisions permitting the government to appeal adverse rulings of a question of law.¹² Many of those states use the same or very similar language as that contained in art. 44.01(a)(5), and they permit the State to appeal any pretrial ruling suppressing evidence if that evidence is likely to be outcome determinative.¹³ Other states explicitly grant the prosecution a broad right to appeal any pretrial suppression, evidentiary or other legal ruling which is likely to determine the outcome of the case.¹⁴ A few states explicitly permit the State to appeal only orders excluding "seized evidence," "evidence illegally obtained," or "evidence seized in violation of the Constitution."¹⁵ A handful of state courts have construed their government-appeal statutes to permit only appeals of constitutionally-based pretrial rulings excluding evidence.¹⁶ At least one state, Ohio, has judicially broadened its government-appeal statute to permit pretrial appeals of nonconstitutional trial rulings excluding evidence, despite language to the contrary.¹⁷ Although a few states apply their government-appeal statutes narrowly, the vast majority of courts and legislatures across the nation broadly construe their state's-right-to-appeal statutes. They focus upon the same major themes: 1) Does this pretrial ruling effectively prevent the government from presenting its case to a jury? And 2) Is the ruling based upon an erroneous interpretation or application of law?

In Roberts, this Court followed that handful of states which have very narrowly construed their state's right-to-appeal statutes. This Court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to consider a State's appeal from a trial court's ruling that civil deposition testimony was inadmissible. 940 S.W.2d at 660. We held that the phrase "motion to suppress evidence," as used in article 44.01(a)(5), was limited to motions which sought to suppress evidence on the basis that such evidence was "illegally obtained." The defendant in Roberts contended that a videotaped deposition from a civil case was inadmissible hearsay; he did not claim that the deposition testimony was illegally obtained. Because the defendant's motion was not a "motion to suppress evidence" contemplated under art. 44.01(a)(5), went the logic, the order granting the motion was not appealable. Roberts, 940 S.W.2d. at 660.¹⁸

In arriving at its conclusion in Roberts, this Court stated that the phrase "motion to suppress" was ambiguous, and so looked to extratextual factors to interpret the statute. We focused primarily upon the "technical" definition of "motion to suppress" in Black's Law Dictionary:

Motion to suppress. A device used to eliminate from the trial of a criminal case evidence which has been secured illegally, generally in violation of the Fourth amendment (search and seizure), the Fifth Amendment (privilege against self-incrimination), or the Sixth Amendment (right to assistance of counsel, right of confrontation, etc.) of the U.S. Constitution.

Roberts, 940 S.W.2d at 658-59 (emphasis in original) (quoting Black's Law Dictionary (6th ed.1989)).

The Court in Roberts also relied on the fact that the corresponding federal statute authorizes an appeal by the Government, under 18 U.S.C.A. § 3731, "from a decision or order of a district court suppressing or excluding evidence...." Texas article 44.01(a)(5) authorizes an appeal from a motion...