SMU Law Review Volume 42 Article 19 Issue 1 Annual Survey of Texas Law 1988 Criminal Procedure: Arrest, Search, and Confessions S. Michael McColloch Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr Recommended Citation S. Michael McColloch, Criminal Procedure: Arrest, Search, and Confessions, 42 Sw L.J. 565 (1988) https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol42/iss1/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in SMU Law Review by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. CRIMINAL PROCEDURE: ARREST, SEARCH, AND CONFESSIONS by S. Michael McColloch* HIS Article examines the most significant developments in the law of arrest, search, and confessions over the past year manifested primar- ily by decisions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and applica- ble federal opinions. The Article also emphasizes rulings that signify or illuminate the general trends in the courts on the most consequential and controversial issues. On balance the current Survey period stands in sharp contrast to recent Survey years in this area, which were heavily character- ized by the steady dilution of established procedural safeguards for the ac- cused, and the judicial accession of the Texas courts to minimum federal standards of protection. While the pendulum may not yet have completed its swing in that direction, this year's decisions, particularly on the most salient search and seizure issues, reflect a degree of greater restraint. The recent decisions also evidence an attempt to constructively refine and enforce the rights of the accused against the power of the state at the earliest critical stages of the criminal justice process. I. PRETEXT ARRESTS One of the more surprising developments during the Survey period in- volved the overruling of recent precedent by both the Texas Court of Crimi- nal Appeals and a panel of the Fifth Circuit to hold that an arrest or other detention for one offense as a pretext in furtherance of the investigation into another offense renders any evidence obtained as a result thereof inadmissi- ble under the Fourth Amendment. In Black v. State I officers obtained infor- mation leading them to suspect the connection of the defendant with a recent murder, but lacked probable cause to arrest him for the crime. While conducting surveillance of his residence, the officers watched the suspect de- part in an automobile. The police followed the suspect in an unmarked car. The officers observed him commit several minor traffic violations, pulled him over, and arrested him. They told the defendant that they wanted to ques- tion him about the murder and several hours later obtained a confession. The trial court admitted the confession over objection.2 * B.A., Washington and Lee University; J.D., St. Mary's University School of Law. Attorney at Law, Bruner, McColl & McColloch, Dallas, Texas. 1. 739 S.W.2d 240 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987). 2. Id. at 241. The only information the police possessed to connect the defendant to the SOUTHWESTERN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 42 In the lead plurality opinion, the court of criminal appeals noted that it had discussed the pretext arrest doctrine in several of its older opinions, 3 but had never conclusively adopted it.4 The court then turned to the twenty- year old Fifth Circuit decision of Amador-Gonzalez v. United States5 that struck down a stop of a suspect as a pretext arrest on facts materially indis- tinguishable from those presented in Black.6 Stressing that the arresting of- ficer in Black admitted that the reason he arrested the defendant was to question him about the homicide, the court of criminal appeals concluded that the officers simply used the traffic violations as a pretext to get around the warrant requirement. 7 The defendant's detention, therefore, was illegal8 even though the officers had probable cause to make the traffic stop and take the defendant into formal custody merely because of the traffic violations.9 In the wake of Black, such arrests will not justify a resultant search or con- fession on another offense so long as the evidence conclusively demonstrates that the officer's true motive for making the arrest is to further his investiga- tion on the other offense.' 0 The Fifth Circuit had reached exactly the same conclusion several months earlier in United States v. Causey. II In Causey city police officers wanted to murder was a statement by the defendant's brother that the defendant was in possession of a stolen .25-caliber automatic weapon, the fact that the deceased had been killed with a .25- caliber weapon, and that the defendant lived in the same vicinity. Curiously, the court of appeals concluded that, in conjunction with the defendant's traffic infractions, this information constituted probable cause to arrest the defendant. Id. The court of criminal appeals easily concluded that based on this little information, police had no probable cause to justify arrest- ing the defendant. Id. at 243. 3. See Gutierrez v. State, 502 S.W.2d 746, 748 (Tex. Crim. App. 1973); McDonald v. State, 415 S.W.2d 201, 202 (Tex. Crim. App. 1967); Adair v. State, 427 S.W.2d 67, 71-72 (Tex. Crim. App. 1967) (dissenting opinion). 4. 739 S.W.2d at 244-45. In these earlier cases, the courts consistently determined that the officers involved were unaware of the arrestee's possible involvement in the more serious crime until after the arrest for the minor offense. See, e.g., Evers v. State, 576 S.W.2d 46 (Tex. Crim. App. 1978); Guitterez, 502 S.W.2d at 748; McDonald, 415 S.W.2d at 202; Adair, 427 S.W.2d at 67. 5. 391 F.2d 308 (5th Cir. 1968). 6. In Amador-Gonzalez the officers observed the defendant because they suspected his involvement in a narcotics transaction. At the trial the officer admitted that the real reason he wanted to stop the defendant was to search for narcotics. The officer was a narcotics officer who did not normally make traffic arrests and possessed no ticket book. The officer did not write out the traffic tickets at the time of the arrest and he delayed for some time between observing the traffic offenses and stopping the defendant. Id. at 314. 7. 739 S.W.2d at 245. 8. Id. 9. The court of criminal appeals recently made it clear that a full-custody arrest is per- missible for any nonspeeding traffic violations, or even for the operation of a motor vehicle that could not pass vehicle inspection. See Williams v. State, 726 S.W.2d 99, 101 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986). The officers in Black saw the defendant driving without headlights, running stop signs, and driving on the wrong side of the road. The officers also noticed the absence of a light over the license plate of the car, as required by statute. 10. The Black court remanded the case to the court of appeals for a determination as to whether the defendant's confession was admissibly nevertheless on grounds that intervening events broke the causal connection between the illegal arrest and the confession. Black, 739 S.W.2d at 245, citing Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 603 (1975); Self v. State, 709 S.W.2d 662, 665-66 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986). 11. 818 F.2d 354 (5th Cir. 1987). 1988] CRIMINAL PROCEDURE question a suspect about a bank robbery, but lacked probable cause to arrest him. The officers then uncovered a seven year old outstanding warrant on the suspect for failure to appear in court on a misdemeanor theft charge. The police arrested him, using the theft charge as a pretext to question the suspect about the robbery. The court did not question the validity of the outstanding warrant, but the officers admitted that the sole reason for mak- ing the arrest was to gain the opportunity for custodial interrogation of the suspect regarding the bank robbery. Subsequent to the interrogation, the defendant confessed to an FBI agent. The prosecution introduced the con- fession at trial in order to obtain the defendant's conviction on a federal bank robbery charge. As did the court of criminal appeals in Black, the Fifth Circuit panel in Causey found Amador-Gonzalez controlling, even though more recent prece- dent in the circuit had reached precisely the opposite conclusion. 12 The panel noted that in United States v. Cavallino1 3 the court had refused to suppress evidence obtained by interrogating a defendant taken into custody through a substantially similar pretextual arrest. 14 The Causey panel quickly overruled Cavallino as an aberration in Fifth Circuit case law. 15 The panel also was concerned that the holding in Cavallino would encourage of- ficers to use minor infractions of statutes as a means of incarcerating citizens while ignoring their right to freedom, the degree of the violation, or the gov- 1 6 ernment's ability to prone a more serious violation of a criminal statute. The panel therefore ruled that a confession obtained as a result of an arrest made pursuant to a valid warrant is nevertheless inadmissible if the officer involved really made the arrest solely to enable the police to interrogate the detainee about another, unrelated matter; particularly if the arresting officer has no intention to prosecute the suspect for the minor crime on which the arrest was based.17 The panel stressed that courts objectively assess the cir- cumstances to determine an officer's true intentions in such a situation.18 12. Id. at 361. 13. 498 F.2d 1200 (5th Cir.