Lead Opinion
OPINION
delivered the opinion of the Court
Appellant was convicted of Class B misdemeanor possession of marijuana and
I. Facts and Procedural History
On June 24, 2009, a police officer patrolling Interstate 10 initiated a traffic stop based on his observation of traffic congestion in the inside lane. At the hearing on defendant’s motion to suppress, neither the state nor appellant offered live testimony, and the state stipulated that appellant’s arrest was warrantless. The only evidence before the trial court was the officer’s offense report.
On 06/24/09, at approximately 9:12 AM, I was on patrol on Interstate 10 in Waller County, Texas. I observed a traffic congestion in the inside westbound lane near the Igloo Road Overpass. Traffic volume was moderate. I inspected further and observed a grey Chevrolet 4-door sedan ... traveling below the pri-ma facie limit of 65 miles per hour and Impeding Traffic. I paced the vehicle, which was traveling at approximately 52 miles per hour, the initial speed utilizing the certified speed odometer on my marked patrol unit and confirmed with the in-car Doppler radar unit. I initiated a traffic stop of the vehicle.
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Initiation of the traffic stop required utilizing the rear emergency lights on the patrol vehicle to allow a safe lane change of my patrol vehicle, from the center to the inside lane. The driver of the Chevrolet sedan immediately yielded to the inside shoulder. I approached the driver’s window, identified myself, stated the reason for the traffic stop and requested a driver’s license from the driver and the front passenger. I immediately noticed a strong and distinct odor of both fresh and burnt marijuana.
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The driver, Melissa Agüeros, said that she did not have a driver’s license but produced a valid Texas identification card. The passenger, appellant, produced a valid Texas driver’s license. The officer told Agüeros that he was going to cite her for operating a motor vehicle without a license and appellant for permitting an unlicensed person to operate a motor vehicle. A check through the Waller County Sheriffs Department revealed that neither had a criminal history. Two small children in the back seat were properly secured in child-safety seats. Both adults seemed nervous.
The officer told both adults that he smelled marijuana in the vehicle. The driver began to cry, and appellant stiffened. The officer asked appellant to get out of the car when it was safe to do so and join the officer on the non-traffic side of the car. “I asked Mr. Delafuente, ‘Where is it’ and received a response of ‘it’s in the trunk.’ ” Appellant claimed sole responsibility for the marijuana and excul
With no evidence to contradict the offense report, the trial court accepted the officer’s statement that the vehicle in which appellant was a passenger was impeding traffic as credible and entered findings of fact and conclusions of law that “Defendant’s[
The court of appeals reversed, ruling that the trial court found no specific, artic-ulable facts to support reasonable suspicion. Delafuente v. State, 367 S.W.3d 731, 734-35 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2012) (“There was no evidence that the normal and reasonable movement of traffic was impeded by appellant’s driving.”), pet. granted, 369 S.W.3d 224 (Tex.Crim.App.2012). The state prosecuting attorney filed a petition for discretionary review in this Court, which we granted. We vacated the court of appeals’s judgment and remanded the cause to it so that it could determine the effect, if any, of our then-recent ruling in State v. Mendoza
II. Analysis
We granted the state’s petition on two grounds for review: (1) “Did the Court of Appeals’ determination that the traffic stop was illegal ignore relevant facts and rational inferences, require the state to rebut innocent explanations, and misconstrue Ford v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488 (Tex.Crim.App.2005)?”; and (2) “Did the Court of Appeals err by refusing to remand to the trial court for additional findings of fact and conclusions of law?” We hold that the court of appeals did not commit error on the second issue, but it did err on the first by ignoring relevant facts and failing to make reasonable inferences.
A. The Fourth Amendment
In a hearing on a motion to suppress for violation of Fourth Amendment rights, a defendant must offer evidence that rebuts the presumption of proper police conduct, such as by alleging that the search or seizure was executed without a warrant. Once the defendant has made this threshold showing, the burden shifts to the state to prove either the existence of a warrant or that the search or seizure was reasonable. Ford v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488, 492 (Tex.Crim.App.2005) (citing Bishop v. State, 85 S.W.3d 819, 822 (Tex.Crim.App.2002)). In this case, it is undisputed that the officer did not have a warrant to stop the vehicle, so the state was required to show that the stop was reasonable.
B. On Appeal
Appellate review of a ruling on a motion to suppress is a bifurcated analysis. Appellate courts must give almost total deference to a trial judge’s findings of historical fact and credibility determinations that are supported by the record, but review questions of law de novo. Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985) (reviewing courts defer to trial-court findings of fact unless clearly erroneous); Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex.Crim.App.1997) (“especially when the trial court’s fact findings are based on an evaluation of credibility and demeanor”). In this case, the trial court issued explicit findings of fact declaring credible the officer’s statement that the vehicle was “impeding traffic.”
C. Application
We do not find any evidence supporting the appellate court’s ruling that the trial court abused its discretion in crediting the offense report. Nothing indicates that the officer was untrustworthy or that his report was somehow created outside the bounds of standard procedure. In fact, during its analysis, the appellate court’s opinion relied on facts stated in the report. Delafuente, 389 S.W.3d at 622. Disagreeing with the trial court’s application of law to fact does not mean that, in finding those facts, the lower court committed an error so egregious that the credibility determination does not survive our “almost total deference.” Guzman, 955 S.W.2d at 89. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in crediting the offense report, the only evidence before it.
That said, the officer’s bare “finding” that the vehicle was impeding traffic is a legal conclusion, not a factual finding, because it asserts a violation of Section 545.363(a) of the Texas Transportation Code. In all likelihood, the officer meant simply to say that he saw a line of vehicles stacked up behind one slowly moving car, but the phrase “impeding traffic” is legally meaningful when used in conjunction with Section 545.363(a), so we cannot take this impediment at face value. We do not, however, need to remand to the trial court for additional findings under Ford or Mendoza because the trial court unambiguously found the offense report credible.
The facts in Ford did not support reasonable suspicion because, in that case, the state offered only the officer’s bare conclu-sory statement in support of its reasonable-suspicion claim. Ford, supra at 493. The trial court in Ford was presented with only a conclusory statement that Ford was violating a traffic law.
The Mendoza trial court did make findings, but they were ambiguous and did not address a crucial credibility determination. Mendoza, supra at 672-73. We reiterated that trial courts, as “Johnny[s]-on-the-Spot,” are much better situated than appellate courts to make determinations of credibility and historical facts, and we therefore remanded to the trial court so it could clarify as to which part of the officer’s testimony it credited and what facts it found. Id. at 669, 673. The instant case is also distinguishable from Mendoza because there was no evidence to contradict the offense report, which the trial court explicitly found credible. Because we must therefore use the facts contained in the offense report, we overrule the state’s second ground for review.
D. Reasonable Suspicion Determination
The court of appeals’s ruling was correct to the extent that remand to the trial court for additional fact-finding is unnecessary in this case. The reasonable suspicion test calls for consideration of specific, articula-ble facts and reasonable inferences therefrom-a totality of the circumstances,
The report indicates that there was “a congestion” in the inside lane. The use of the article “a” allows at least an inference of one particular backlog of vehicles, as opposed to general “congestion.” See Webster’s II New College Dictionary 1 (Margery S. Berube et al. eds., Houghton Mifflin 1999) (defining the indefinite article “a” as “used before nouns and noun phrases that denote a single, but unspecified, person or thing”). The statement in the offense report that the congestion was in a single lane, not spread over the freeway as a whole, also supports this inference; if the congestion was a result of heavy traffic,
The report also asserts that the vehicle was moving slowly. Driving at a speed that is less than the posted limit is not, by itself, sufficient for reasonable suspicion; a violation occurs only when the normal and reasonable movement of traffic is impeded. Texas Dept. Pub. Safety v. Gonzales, 276 S.W.3d 88, 93 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 2008) (citing cases from multiple intermediate
Taken in isolation, each of these facts might not support reasonable suspicion, but, considered together, they support the reasonable inference that the vehicle’s slow pace in the inside lane caused the traffic congestion that the officer observed. Taken together, these facts and inferences are sufficient to lead a reasonable officer to conclude that appellant was engaged in criminal activity, namely a violation of Section 545.363(a).
We therefore sustain the state’s first ground for review. The court of appeals disregarded relevant facts and rational inferences when it ruled that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to make the stop.
III. Conclusion
The trial court’s explicit language made it clear that the court found the officer’s offense report credible. We therefore affirm the appellate court’s ruling that remand to the trial court for additional fact-finding is unnecessary. However, the court of appeals read the report too narrowly and disregarded reasonable inferences from the included facts. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and reinstate the trial court’s denial of appellant’s motion to suppress.
. See Tex. Health & Safety Code § 481.121.
. 365 S.W.3d 666 (Tex.Crim.App.2012).
. The offense report does not indicate who owned the car.
. The officer’s report made it clear that Agüe-ros, not appellant, was driving.
.365 S.W.3d 666 (Tex.Crim.App.2012) ("[Bjecause the written findings in this case are ambiguous and there is no credibility determination,” the case is remanded for supplemental findings. Id. at 667.).
. “The court of appeals stated that 'Trooper Peavy testified that he saw [Ford] following another car at a distance that Peavy believed was insufficient and, thus, in violation of the statute.’... The record reveals an absence of any facts allowing an appellate court to determine the circumstances upon which Peavy could reasonably conclude that Ford actually
. Ford, supra at 492-93.
. The offense report indicates that traffic volume was moderate.
Dissenting Opinion
filed a dissenting opinion.
This case requires this Court to once again decide what to do when the losing party on a motion to suppress has requested explicit findings of fact and conclusions of law, but the findings made by the trial court are wholly inadequate. The majority opinion decides that a remand for supplemental findings is unnecessary, but I disagree. I conclude that the trial court, in essence, made only one fact finding and that it is an inadequate basis upon which to determine whether the officer had reasonable suspicion to detain the sedan occupied by Joseph Delafuente, appellant. I would sustain the second ground presented in the State’s petition for discretionary review and reverse and remand the case to the court of appeals with instructions to abate to the trial court for additional findings. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.
I. Existing Findings of Fact are Inadequate
To call this record sparse would be a gross understatement. No witness testified at the motion to suppress hearing. The entire record consists of a two-page offense report that was admitted into evidence without objection. The offense report describes these facts:
*180 1. The officer was on patrol on June 24, 2009, at 9:12 a.m., on Interstate 10;
2. The officer observed “a traffic congestion” in the inside westbound lane ' near the Igloo Road Overpass;
3. Traffic volume was “moderate”;
4. The officer “inspected further” and observed a sedan moving at 52 miles per hour in a zone with a 65 mile-per-hour maximum speed limit;
5. The sedan was “Impeding Traffic”;
6. To effect a traffic stop, the officer was “required [to] utiliz[e] the rear emergency lights on the patrol vehicle to allow a safe lane change of [the] patrol vehicle, from the center to the inside lane”; and
7. The sedan immediately yielded to the inside shoulder.
In light of the sparse evidentiary record, it is no surprise that the trial court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law are also minimal. The trial court made only one conclusion of law: “The officer had probable cause for the stop because the defendant was driving slow and impeding traffic.” On its face, this conclusion is erroneous because the defendant was not even driving the vehicle at the time of the stop; rather, he was in the passenger seat.
Aside from the single conclusion of law to which this Court owes no deference,
In its second finding of fact, the trial court determined that appellant’s vehicle was impeding traffic. This finding states, “In the offense report the officer states that defendant was impeding traffic. Since there was no contraverting [sic] testimony presented and no cross-examination, the Court accepted that statement as fact. Therefore[,] the Court finds that Defendant’s vehicle was impeding traffic.” The majority opinion recognizes, and I agree, that the officer’s bare assertion that appellant’s car was “impeding traffic” is a legal conclusion, not a factual finding, because it describes a particular violation of the law. The trial court’s adoption of that legal conclusion as a finding of fact does not transform it into something it is not; it remains a conclusion of law. See State v. Sheppard, 271 S.W.3d 281, 291-92 (Tex.Crim.App.2008) (taking note of the problem of “mixing the apples of explicit factual findings with the oranges of conclusions of law,” and stating that, regardless of how they are labeled, factual findings consist of “who did what, when, where, how, or why” and “do not include legal rulings on ‘reasonable suspicion’ or ‘probable cause’;
Importantly, the trial court’s fact findings utterly fail to address the key circumstances that an appellate court would need to consider to make a reasonable-suspicion determination, such as whether the driver of the sedan was driving more slowly than other traffic, whether the sedan affected the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, and whether reduced speed was somehow necessary for the safe operation of the vehicle or to comply with the law. See Tex. Transp. Code § 545.363(a). Section 545.363(a) of the Transportation Code states, “An operator may not drive so slowly as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law.” Id. Several Texas courts of appeals have held that driving more slowly than the posted speed limit, without more, is inadequate to establish that the driver is impeding traffic. See Tex. Dep’t of Pub. Safety v. Gonzales, 276 S.W.3d 88, 93 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 2008, no pet.) (driving 45 miles per hour in a 65 mile-per-hour zone did not constitute impeding traffic in absence of evidence describing overall amount of traffic on highway); Richardson v. State, 39 S.W.3d 634, 639 (Tex.App.-Amarillo 2000, no pet.) (driving 25 miles per hour below speed limit did not constitute impeding traffic because “there was little or no traffic on the road” and other vehicles had no difficulty passing slower one); Davy v. State, 67 S.W.3d 382, 393 (Tex.App.-Waco 2001, no pet.) (traffic not impeded because no other vehicles were present on the road at time of stop). Because the trial court made only one finding that the vehicle “impeded traffic” without even explaining what that term may have meant in the context of this case, I disagree with the majority opinion’s characterization of the trial court’s fact findings as including all the facts needed to decide this case.
II. This Court’s Precedent Requires Reversal and Abatement for Additional Fact-Findings by the Trial Court
Although the trial court never made any finding that all of the facts in the offense report were true, it appears that the majority opinion accepts the entire report as true because the evidence was undisputed at trial. But this Court has never equated undisputed testimony with credible testimony. State v. Elias, 339 S.W.3d 667, 674 (Tex.Crim.App.2011) (citing State v. Ross, 32 S.W.3d 853, 857 (Tex.Crim.App.2000)). Even though evidence is undisputed, a trial court retains the authority to disbelieve it. See id. (citing Ross, 32 S.W.3d at 857). Furthermore, the losing party on a motion
As in the cases cited above, a similar inadequacy exists in this trial court’s findings regarding the historical facts to be considered when making the ultimate legal determination whether the officer had reasonable suspicion to detain the sedan for impeding traffic. To imply all facts in favor of the trial court’s ruling, as the majority opinion in essence purports to do, conflicts with our earlier statements indicating that an appellate court should avoid making broad presumptions and should instead remand for supplemental findings when the trial court fails to enter essential and potentially dispositive findings. See Elias, 339 S.W.3d at 675-76. After Cullen and Elias, such broad presumptions in favor of the trial court’s ruling are appropriate only when there are no findings of fact and none have been properly requested.
The trial court’s sole fact finding surrounding the traffic stop used the same conclusory phrase “impeding traffic” that the officer used in his offense report. The majority opinion surmises that what the officer really intended to say was that there was “a line of vehicles stacked up behind one slowly moving car.” But that is pure speculation. Neither the trial court’s fact findings nor the offense report explains what the officer actually meant by the term “impeding traffic.” The officer could have been using the term in its technical legal meaning as the traffic offense, in a factual description as this Court’s majority opinion suggests, or something else. We simply do not know, and I disagree that this Court should supplant the trial court as fact finder by ascribing meanings to terms that are unclear.
I also disagree that this Court should become the fact finder by adopting the facts described in the offense report when those facts have not expressly been adopted by the trial court. The majority opinion states, “It is true that, in this case, the officer used a legally meaningful phrase to describe what he saw, but unlike Ford,
I conclude that the trial court’s single relevant fact finding that the sedan was impeding traffic is based solely on an unsubstantiated, subjective assertion that is inadequate to establish that the State met its burden to prove that the stop was reasonably justified. See Ford, 158 S.W.3d at 493 (where arrest is shown to be warrantless, burden shifts to State to prove reasonableness of seizure, and specific, articulable facts must go beyond “mere opinions” or “a conclusory statement that [appellant] was violating a traffic law”); Bishop v. State, 85 S.W.3d 819, 822 (Tex.Crim.App.2002) (State has burden of proof in warrantless seizure). I disagree with the majority opinion’s holding that there is no “need to remand to the trial court for additional findings under Ford or Mendoza
. See State v. Mazuca, 375 S.W.3d 294, 307 n. 68 (Tex.Crim.App.2012) (stating that legal conclusions are " ‘subject to de novo review, not deference’ ”) (quoting State v. Sheppard, 271 S.W.3d 281, 291 (Tex.Crim.App.2008)): Wilson v. State, 311 S.W.3d 452, 458 (Tex. Crim.App.2010) ("Although we give almost total deference to the trial court's determination of historical facts, we conduct a de novo review of the trial court’s application of the law to those facts.”).
. In the absence of any findings of fact, either because none were requested or none were spontaneously made by the trial court, an appellate court must presume that the trial court implicitly resolved all issues of historical fact and witness credibility in the light most favorable to its ultimate ruling. State v. Elias, 339 S.W.3d 667, 674 (Tex.Crim.App.2011) (citing State v. Ross, 32 S.W.3d 853, 857 (Tex.Crim.App.2000)). Because fact findings were properly requested by the losing party in this case, this presumption is inapplicable. See State v. Mendoza, 365 S.W.3d 666, 673 (Tex.Crim.App.2012).
. As we noted recently in State v. Saenz, however, "[t]he trial court is, of course, limited to making findings based on the facts that currently appear in the record.” 411 S.W.3d 488, 497 n. 6 (Tex.Crim.App.2013). Given the limited nature of the record in this case, I acknowledge that the trial court may find it difficult to remedy the inadequacy of its original findings. But such a task is not impossible, given the state of the record. The trial court’s supplemental findings could, for example, expressly state whether it found credible the officer’s statements in the offense report; whether there was a traffic congestion and whether that congestion was caused by appellant’s vehicle; whether that congestion was different from ordinary traffic flow at that location; whether traffic volume was "moderate” and what that term might have meant in the context of this case; whether the speed at which appellant's vehicle was traveling was one that would affect traffic conditions; and whether appellant’s vehicle was traveling in the lane designated for faster-moving vehicles, as the majority opinion suggests.
. Ford. v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488, 493 (Tex.Crim.App.2005).
. Ford, 158 S.W.3d at 493; Mendoza, 365 S.W.3d at 673.