State v. Mendoza

• Decision Date: 09 May 2012
• Docket Number: No. PD–1000–11.,PD–1000–11.
• Parties: The STATE of Texas v. Vanessa M. MENDOZA, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

365 S.W.3d 666

The STATE of Texas

v.Vanessa M. MENDOZA, Appellee.

No. PD–1000–11.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

May 9, 2012.

Joe J. Monsivais, Asst. D.A., El Paso, for Appellant.

Ruben P. Morales, El Paso, Lisa C. McMinn, State's Attorney, Austin, for Appellee.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which MEYERS, PRICE, WOMACK, JOHNSON, KEASLER, HERVEY, and ALCALA, JJ., joined.

A police officer stopped appellee, Vanessa Mendoza, and arrested her for driving while intoxicated. The trial judge granted appellee's motion to suppress, concluding that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to make his traffic stop. The State appealed that ruling and requested written findings of fact and conclusions of law. Based upon the judge's written factual findings, the court of appeals inferred that the judge must have believed the officer's testimony—testimony that was in some conflict with the dash-cam video recording. The court of appeals reasoned that, if the trial judge fully credited the officer's testimony, then her legal conclusion that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to stop appellee's car was incorrect. ¹ We granted appellee's petition to review whether the court of appeals deferred sufficiently to the trial court's factual findings.² We agree with appellee that reviewing courts should not make implied findings of fact and credibility determinations that are contrary to the trial judge's ultimate ruling. But because the written findings in this case are ambiguous and there is no credibility determination, we remand this case to the court of appeals with instructions to abate the case to the trial judge for supplemental findings.

I.

The trial judge held an evidentiary hearing on appellee's motion to suppress, in which Officer Davila was the only witness. He testified that he saw Ms. Mendoza's car “ahead of [him] at a distance [and she] appeared to be traveling at a high rate of speed.” He started to pace her car and turned on his dash-cam video recorder, but by then she had slowed down and maintained her speed below the posted speed limit. Officer Davila followed Ms. Mendoza's car—driving downhill and around curves—from about the 5500 block of Mesa Street to the 4100 block of Mesa Street. He testified that Ms. Mendoza weaved within her lane, braked as she went downhill around the curves, and, at one point, veered a “little bit” towards the right, where another car was traveling several car lengths ahead. On cross-examination, the officer agreed that Ms. Mendoza had not committed any traffic offense and that his purpose in stopping her was to do “a safety check on her to make sure she was okay.” The trial judge watched the dash-cam video of the incident as Officer Davila testified that nothing on that video showed Ms. Mendoza commit any traffic offense. ³ After taking the matter under advisement, the trial judge granted Ms. Mendoza's motion and filed the following findings of fact and conclusions of law:

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. On January 29th, 2008, Officer Enrique Davila observed the defendant, Vanessa M. Mendoza, driving southbound around the 5500 or 5100 block of Mesa Street at about 2:28 a.m.

2. Officer Davila believed the defendant was going at a high rate of speed but did not ascertain the vehicle's speed by radar or by pacing the vehicle.

3. Officer Davila noticed the defendant's vehicle weaving within its lane a few times, the defendant was traveling on the far left lane of Mesa Street.

4. Officer Davila stated that the defendant's car would continuously slow down and brake. The video depicts Mesa Street as a roadway going downhill with several curves.

5. When approaching the intersection of Executive Center Blvd. and Mesa Street, Officer Davila felt that the defendant's car was going to hit another vehicle because it veered to the right. There was no testimony indicating if the defendant's car weaved out of her lane. There was no testimony about the proximity of the other car. The video shows a vehicle about two or three car lengths in front of defendant's vehicle traveling on the far right lane.

6. Officer Davila testified that he stopped the defendant because she weaved within a lane a few times, veered to the right and braked erratically.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

The Court finds that the facts of this case, (as seen on the video and the testimony of Officer Davila) did not justify a stop of the defendant's vehicle and do not provide the police officer with sufficient reasonable suspicion to believe that the defendant was intoxicated.

The court of appeals held that the trial judge's legal conclusion did not follow from her factual findings, because it inferred that the trial judge's explicit findings created an implied finding that she believed the officer's version of events.⁴ After assuming that the trial judge must have believed the officer, the appeals court found that the State's version of events constituted reasonable suspicion.⁵ If the trial judge fully credited all of Officer Davila's testimony and the logical inferences that flow from his testimony, then the officer did have reasonable suspicion to stop Ms. Mendoza's car. However, in both her factual findings and legal conclusion, the trial judge also referred to the video recording, and that video is not entirely consistent with Officer Davila's testimony. The problem with these factual findings is that they are ambiguous and do not contain any credibility determinations.

II.

In a motion to suppress hearing, the trial judge is the sole trier of fact and judge of the weight and credibility of the evidence. ⁶ In reviewing the ruling on a motion to suppress, appellate courts must give almost total deference to a trial judge's findings of historical fact and credibility determinations.⁷ First, “the trial judge is ‘Johnny–on–the–Spot,’ personally able to see and hear the witnesses testify.” ⁸ Second, “[t]he trial judge's major role is the determination of fact, and with experience in fulfilling that role comes expertise.” ⁹ Third, appellate courts that duplicate the trial judge's factfinding role likely contribute only marginally to accuracy while diverting large amounts of scarce judicial resources.¹⁰ And, finally,

the parties to a case on appeal have already been forced to concentrate their energies and resources on persuading the trial judge that their account of the facts is the correct one; requiring them to persuade three more judges at the appellate level is requiring too much.... [T]he trial on the merits should be the “main event” ... rather than a “tryout on the road.” ¹¹

A suppression ruling includes two types of trial-judge rulings; historical factual findings, often based on credibility determinations ¹² (subject to abuse-of-discretion review), and ultimate legal rulings that determine whether reasonable suspicion or probable cause existed (subject to de novo review). The Supreme Court has explained that

[t]he principal components of a determination of reasonable suspicion or probablecause will be the events which occurred leading up to the stop or search, and then the decision whether these historical facts, viewed from the standpoint of an objectively reasonable police officer, amount to reasonable suspicion or to probable cause. The first part of the analysis involves only a determination of historical facts, but the second is a mixed question of law and fact ... [that] should be reviewed de novo on appeal. Having said this, we hasten to point out that a reviewing court should take care both to review findings of historical fact only for clear error and to give due weight to inferences drawn from those facts by [trial] judges [.] ¹³

But sometimes it is not clear precisely what historical facts a trial judge actually found or what her credibility determinations were. Because “there is no justification for us to ‘assume that the trial court made implicit findings of fact that support its ruling,’ ” we held, in State v. Cullen,¹⁴ that a trial judge, “upon the request of the losing party ... must make [on-the-record] findings of fact and conclusions of law adequate to provide an appellate court” a basis for reviewing the ruling's correctness. ¹⁵ Thus, the losing party in a motion to suppress hearing may require the trial judge to make explicit historical findings of fact and credibility determinations. These may be either written out and signed by the judge or dictated on the record.¹⁶ This rule has the salutary effect of ensuring that the appellate courts will grant almost total deference to the trial judge's findings of historical fact while reviewing de novo the application of the law concerning probable cause or reasonable suspicion to those historical facts.¹⁷

Occasionally, the trial judge may make explicit findings that she considers sufficient and dispositive of the historical facts, but the appellate court determines that those findings are either ambiguous or insufficient to resolve the legal issue. For example, in State v. Elias,¹⁸ the trial judge made written findings of fact and conclusions of law concerning a motion to suppress, but those findings did not directly address the potentially “dispositive” historical fact of whether the defendant “activated his turn signal within a hundred feet of the intersection.” ¹⁹ One way of dealing with insufficient factual findings might be to revert to our former Ross²⁰ presumption that the trial judge made all possible implied findings of fact that are supported by the record and consistent with her ultimate legal ruling.²¹ But, in Elias, this Court decided that the more prudent course would be to remand the case to the trial judge to make findings of fact with greater specificity if the original findings are insufficient to resolve the legal question.²² In Elias, this Court continued the route it charted in Cullen to ensure that reviewing courts need not presume, assume, or guess at what historical facts a trial judge actually found when...