U.S. v. Coleman

• Decision Date: 30 August 2001
• Docket Number: No. 300CR-34X.,300CR-34X.
• Citation: 162 F.Supp.2d 582
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Timothy COLEMAN, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

162 F.Supp.2d 582

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Timothy COLEMAN, Defendant.

No. 300CR-34X.

United States District Court, N.D. Texas, Dallas Division.

August 30, 2001.

Michael Hawk, Krupkin & Moulliet, Kirk F Lechtenberger, Law Office of Kirk F Lechtenberger, Dallas, for defend.

Candina Sharon Heath, U.S. Attorney's Office, Department of Justice, Dallas, for U.S.

MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER

KENDALL, District Judge.

Before the Court is Defendant Coleman's Motion to Suppress and the Government's Response. This Motion was the subject of a hearing held on October 3, 2000. On January 12, 2001, the Court granted the Motion to Suppress. The Court now finds that based on Fifth Circuit binding precedent not raised by the Government, the Court must VACATE that previous order and DENY the Motion to Suppress.

I. Background

On August 25, 1998, Defendant Timothy Coleman was being investigated by the police department of Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, for possible drug dealing. Coleman was staying at a Ramada Inn in the city limits of Mesquite. Acting on a tip from an informant, Mesquite narcotics officers commenced observation of the Ramada from the parking lot in an unmarked police car. They observed an individual, whose appearance matched the description of Coleman provided by an unidentified informant, emerge from the Ramada and get into a black Cadillac, which was the type of car they had been informed Coleman drove. Coleman left the parking lot in his Cadillac and got onto the Interstate 30 service road. The narcotics officers noticed at that time that Coleman was not wearing his seat belt, which is a violation of the state transportation code.

The officers followed Coleman, but because they were in an unmarked car they did not initiate a traffic stop. Instead, they radioed for the assistance of a marked car which could more easily do so. In the meantime, Coleman drove a couple miles west on I-30, and exited to the north on a street that brought him within the Dallas city limits. The Mesquite narcotics officers followed Coleman in their unmarked car through parts of northeast Dallas, where they also observed him speed through a school zone. Coleman drove to an apartment complex in Dallas. He parked his car and entered the complex for approximately two minutes. When he came out, he got back in his car and started heading toward I-30 the same way he had come. Shortly after he left the complex, uniformed Mesquite police officers in a marked Mesquite police car caught up with Coleman and the unmarked police car which, unbeknownst to Coleman, was still following him. The Mesquite police car initiated a traffic stop on Coleman inside the Dallas city limits for the seat belt law violation the narcotics officers had witnessed earlier within the Mesquite city limits. Coleman immediately pulled over when the marked car turned on its lights and siren. Officer Pope, who was one of the Mesquite narcotics officers in the unmarked car, testified at the suppression hearing that Coleman never attempted to evade arrest and that although the officers had been "following" him for some time, they had not been "chasing" him. There was no "hot pursuit."

When the officers approached him, Coleman was unable to produce identification or a driver's license. The officers placed him under custodial arrest for the seat belt violation that had occurred in the city of Mesquite, and put him in the marked squad car. The officers searched Coleman's car incident to his arrest. Inside a plastic grocery bag on the passenger floorboard the police found one kilo of cocaine. Under arrest, Coleman signed a statement confessing his possession of the cocaine.

Drug charges against Coleman were initially filed in state court shortly after the arrest, but were later dismissed so the case could be brought in federal court instead. The defendant was indicted in federal court on February 2, 2000, one year and five months after his August 25, 1998 arrest by an all state law enforcement cast.

II. Unlawful Arrest

The arrest of Coleman by the Mesquite police was illegal because the officers were outside of their geographic jurisdiction at the time of the arrest. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has made clear that "statutes which confer upon a peace officer the authority to act may not necessarily define the geographic scope of that authority. That geographic scope, if absent from the statute granting authority to act, must find its source in some other statute." Angel v. State, 740 S.W.2d 727, 732 (Tex.Cr.App.1987). If a statement of geographic jurisdiction is not provided for by statute, it must be "controlled by common law." Id. Under the common law rule, a city police officer's geographic jurisdiction ends at the city limits. See Landrum v. State, 751 S.W.2d 530, 531 (Tex. App. — Dallas 1988, writ. ref'd)(citing Love v. State, 687 S.W.2d 469, 471 (Tex.App. — Houston [1st Dist.] 1985, writ ref'd)).

A dispute over geographic jurisdiction arises in the present case because at the time Angel v. State was decided, police officers from some municipalities had county-wide geographic jurisdiction to make warrantless arrests. A Texas statute provided that city police officers from Type A Municipalities¹ had the same powers and jurisdiction as city marshals. V.A.C.S., Art. 998, repealed by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 149, § 49(1). City marshals, in turn, had the same powers and jurisdiction as the sheriff. V.A.C.S., Art. 999, repealed by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 149, § 49(1). Sheriffs had, and continue to have, county-wide jurisdiction. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 2.17 (Vernon 1977). Mesquite is a Type A municipality. However, in 1995 the Texas state legislature amended the provisions of the Local Government Code that had in effect given Type A city police officers county-wide geographic jurisdiction. In the wake of those amendments, "[a] police officer has the powers, rights, duties and jurisdiction granted to or imposed on a peace officer by the code of Criminal Procedure." TEX. LOC. GOV'T CODE ANN. § 341.001(e)(1) (Vernon 1999).

Nothing in the Code of Criminal Procedure grants city police officers county-wide jurisdiction to make warrantless arrests. Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, a peace officer's geographic jurisdiction depends on the type of peace officer whose conduct is at issue, and the offense for which the arrest is made. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 14.03 (Vernon Supp.2001). Article 14.03(d) provides:

A police officer who is outside his jurisdiction may arrest, without warrant, a person who commits an offense within the officer's presence or view, if the offense is a felony, a violation of Title 9, Chapter 42 Penal Code, a breach of the peace, or an offense under Section 49.02, Penal Code.

Article 14.03(g) provides:

A peace officer listed in Subdivision (1), (2), (3), (4), or (5), Article 2.12, who is licensed under Chapter 415, Government Code, and is outside the officer's jurisdiction may arrest without a warrant a person who commits any offense within the officer's presence or view, except that an officer who is outside the officer's jurisdiction may arrest a person for a violation of Subtitle C, Title 7, Transportation Code, only if the officer is listed in Subdivision (4) Article 2.12.

Art. 14.03(g)(emphasis added). Article 14.03(g) affirmatively authorizes only "rangers and officers commissioned by the Public Safety Commission and the Director of the Department of Public Safety" (officers listed in Subdivision (4)) to make extra-jurisdictional arrests for traffic violations. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 2.12 (Vernon Supp.2001). Arrests for traffic violations (Subtitle C, Title 7, Transportation Code) are expressly carved out as beyond the reach of non-subdivision (4) officers who are outside of their jurisdiction. City police officers are not subdivision (4) officers. Because there is no other statute establishing the geographic scope of a city police officer's power to make arrests for traffic violations, Angel v. State dictates that common law controls. At common law, the city officer's authority ends at the city limits. Therefore, an arrest for a traffic violation by a city officer outside of his or her city limits is a violation of Texas law.²

The leading (though unpublished) post-Angel case also reads the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure as not granting city police officers the authority to make traffic stops outside of their geographic jurisdiction. Yeager v. State, 23 S.W.3d 566, 2000 WL 798080 (Tex.App. — Waco June 21, 2000, pet. pending). In Yeager, two officers from a Type B municipality, Pantego Village, observed the defendant driving erratically within the Pantego Village city limits. They followed him into the neighboring City of Arlington, where they witnessed additional dangerous driving they believed might be consistent with intoxication. The officers initiated a traffic stop on Defendant Yeager, at which point based on his slurred speech and the odor of alcohol on his breath they found probable cause to arrest him for drunk driving. The court reversed the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress evidence of the Defendant's drunken state, because Article 14.03 did not affirmatively grant the officers the right to conduct an extra-jurisdictional investigative detention.

The Government argues that Yeager is distinguishable from the present case because that case involved officers from a Type B municipality while the present case involves officers from a Type A municipality. This distinction no longer matters for the purposes of geographic jurisdiction of municipal officers. After the 1995 amendments, the geographic jurisdiction of police officers depends not on the type of municipality they work for, but the officer's classification under Article 2.12 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The only reason the Type B category mattered in Yeager was because even the pre-1995 rule in Ange...