Woods v. State

Decision Date05 November 1997
Docket NumberNo. 1574-96,1574-96
Citation956 S.W.2d 33
PartiesCandace Waggoner WOODS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
CourtTexas Court of Criminal Appeals

Keith S. Hampton, Cynthia L. Hampton, Austin, for appellant.

Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION ON STATE'S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

PRICE, Judge.

Appellant was indicted for carrying a firearm in court. TEX. PEN.CODE ANN. § 46.03(a)(3) (Vernon Supp.1996). After her pretrial motion to suppress was overruled, she pleaded guilty to the lesser included offense of unlawfully carrying a weapon. TEX. PEN.CODE ANN. § 46.02(a) (Vernon 1994). The district court found appellant guilty and, pursuant to a plea bargain, assessed punishment at one year confinement, then suspended imposition of the sentence and placed appellant on one year community supervision.

The Austin Court of Appeals held that the detention and search of appellant in this cause were not shown to be justified by the need for courthouse security or by a reasonable suspicion of criminality and, therefore, it was error for the trial court to deny the appellant's motion to suppress. Woods v. State, 933 S.W.2d 719, (Tex.App.--Austin 1996). We granted the State's petition for discretionary review to determine whether the construct of "as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity" has any continuing utility in an analysis of reasonable suspicion.

I. Factual Background

A brief recitation of the facts may be helpful to understand the context of appellant's arrest. Appellant entered the Travis County Courthouse through the main entrance, passing a sign that informed those entering that all persons and baggage are subject to a search. After entering, appellant saw a metal detector and x-ray machine operated by Kevin McCullen, a private security guard employed by the Travis County Sheriff's department. McCullen testified that appellant "looked very surprised and scared when she saw the machines." She turned toward a door to the left which went to a justice of the peace courtroom. This courtroom door also bore a sign advising that all persons must be screened before entering. Appellant then turned around and started to go back out the main entrance.

McCullen stopped appellant before she could leave the building and asked if he could help her. She told McCullen she was trying to get to the fifth floor. McCullen stated that appellant "seemed very nervous" after he told her she had to pass through the metal detectors to reach the elevators. She told him that she first had to go back to her car and she started outside. McCullen told appellant she could not leave the building without first running her purse through the x-ray machine. Appellant ignored McCullen's instruction and left the courthouse. McCullen followed and stopped appellant outside, again telling her she needed to have her purse checked through the machine. McCullen was joined by Deputy Sheriff Billy Richardson. Appellant agreed to reenter the courthouse with the officers, telling them that her purse was going to set off the metal detector. When appellant's purse was put through the x-ray machine, the officer saw the image of a pistol. Richardson opened appellant's purse and discovered a loaded pistol.

II. The Court of Appeals' Decision

The Austin Court of Appeals held that appellant's behavior did not give rise to reasonable suspicion. In so holding, the court recited the standard for reasonable suspicion: to justify a temporary detention, a police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The court also stated that when the facts are as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity, a detention based on those facts is unlawful. The court cited our decisions in Montano v. State, 843 S.W.2d 579 (Tex.Crim.App.1992), and Crockett v. State, 803 S.W.2d 308 (Tex.Crim.App.1991), and concluded that nothing in appellant's words or conduct "clearly set her apart from persons engaged in innocent activity." Thus, the court held that the trial court abused its discretion in finding there was reasonable suspicion to detain appellant.

III. Arguments of the Parties

The State argues that the notion that reasonable suspicion can never be established by conduct which is "as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity" has been specifically rejected by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989) (individual factors when taken by themselves were consistent with innocent travel, but when taken together they amounted to reasonable suspicion) and by this court in Holladay v. State, 805 S.W.2d 464 (Tex.Crim.App.1991 ) (the test for reasonable suspicion is not whether conduct is innocent or guilty, but rather, the degree of suspicion that attaches to noncriminal acts). However, the State contends that this Court and many intermediate appellate courts persist in applying this abandoned concept. It is the State's position that when a court concludes that no reasonable suspicion is shown because a suspect's behavior is "as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity," the court is essentially requiring a showing of "proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence." This standard, according to the State, has also been specifically rejected by the Supreme Court and this Court. 1

Appellant, in her reply brief, characterizes the State's position as an "algebraic analysis." She argues that the "as consistent with innocent activity" construct is not a mathematical balancing test used to calculate degrees of suspicion. Instead, it is merely another way of expressing why the seizure of a person based on facts which raise no articulable nexus to criminal activity is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Appellant relies on this Court's decision in Crockett v. State, 803 S.W.2d 308 (Tex.Crim.App.1991), and asserts that there is no arithmetical equation of "guilty" and "innocent" behavior under the reasonable suspicion analysis; rather, Crockett requires that the reviewing court uncover the criminality of otherwise innocent conduct, and if the behavior which the officer considered criminal cannot be objectively distinguished from innocent behavior, a seizure of any sort is unreasonable. Stated another way, the analysis is not a measure of suspicion, but a method by which the absence of such a connection between facts and their criminal nature is highlighted. Appellant insists that such a connection must exist before a stop, detention, or arrest can be said to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Otherwise, seizures could be justified based on wholly innocent activity and all Fourth Amendment protections would evaporate.

IV. Analysis

The Fourth Amendment bridles the government's power to invade a person's privacy by requiring that searches and seizures customarily be supported by a showing of probable cause. The lower standard of reasonable suspicion is derived from the probable cause standard and applies only to those brief detentions which fall short of being fullscale searches and seizures. The Supreme Court established this standard in response to the time-honored police practice of "stop and frisk." 3 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE § 9.1(a), at 334 (2d ed.1987). This type of practice was deemed a necessary tool that would aid law enforcement in preventing imminent crimes and stopping ongoing crimes, as well as lending protection to officers and others in potentially threatening situations. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884. In the landmark decision of Terry v. Ohio, the United States Supreme Court held that a police officer can stop and briefly detain a person for investigative purposes if the officer has a reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that criminal activity "may be afoot," even if the officer lacks probable cause. Id. at 29, 88 S.Ct. at 1884. The Terry court recognized the precarious balance between a citizen's right to privacy and law enforcement's personal safety interests. Id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1879. To discourage police harassment carried out indiscriminately based on social stereotypes, race, gender or other irrelevant personal characteristics, the Court explained that the officer must be able to point to specific articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant the detention. Id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1880. The Court emphasized that "these facts must amount to something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch." Id. The Court in Terry, however, did not elaborate further on what specific types of conduct should be deemed suspicious enough to warrant police intrusion.

The "as consistent with innocent activity as with criminal activity" construct employed by the court of appeals in this case, and criticized by the State in its petition, first surfaced in Texas jurisprudence in Armstrong v. State, 550 S.W.2d 25 (Tex.Crim.App.1976). In Armstrong, a police officer stopped appellant's automobile. The officer testified that he stopped the car because "he had received information about ten days before of such a vehicle being wanted for the investigation of a burglary." Id. at 26. The driver of the car was arrested for outstanding warrants. A subsequent search of the trunk revealed stolen goods. On appeal from the denial of Armstrong's motion to suppress, we determined that the admission of the items in the trunk was error because the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to detain Armstrong and therefore the subsequent search was illegal. At the time of the stop, there was no traffic violation. The officer did not observe any other offense being committed, nor was there any evidence of...

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