Samantha A. PABST, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee
NO. 14-13-00856-CR
Court of Appeals of Texas, Houston (14th Dist.).
May 19, 2015
David Christopher Newell, Houston, TX, for State.
Panel consists of Chief Justice Frost and Justices Boyce and McCally
OPINION
Kem Thompson Frost, Chief Justice
At issue in this appeal is the propriety of a traffic stop based on the vehicle‘s temporary tag being illegible from a distance of four-to-five feet. After determining the police officer reasonably suspected the driver of the vehicle had committed a violation, the trial court denied appellant‘s motion to suppress evidence stemming from the traffic stop. We affirm.
I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Appellant Samantha A. Pabst was driving a vehicle with a temporary tag. Officer Tida Liu found the tag illegible and initiated a traffic stop. As a result of evidence obtained after the traffic stop, appellant was charged by information with the class A misdemeanor offense of driving while intoxicated. Appellant filed a motion to suppress any evidence collected or statements made after the traffic stop. The trial court denied appellant‘s motion to suppress. Appellant pled “guilty” to the offense, while reserving her right to appeal the trial court‘s ruling on her motion to suppress. The trial court rendered a judgment convicting appellant of the charged offense and sentenced her to one year‘s confinement, probated over the course of one year, and assessed a $300 fine.
II. ANALYSIS
In two issues, appellant asserts the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress.
A. Did the traffic stop violate appellant‘s Fourth Amendment rights?
Appellant argues the traffic stop violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution because Officer Liu did not reasonably believe appellant had committed a traffic violation. We review a trial court‘s ruling on a motion to suppress under a bifurcated standard of review. Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). At a
The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
A police officer lawfully conducts a temporary detention when the officer has reasonable suspicion that an individual is involved in criminal activity. See id. at 177. Reasonable suspicion requires more than a hunch; it exists only when an officer has specific, articulable facts that, taken together with reasonable inferences from those facts, would lead the officer to reasonably conclude that the person detained is, has been, or soon will be, engaging in criminal activity. See id. The reasonable-suspicion determination is an objective one made by considering the totality of the circumstances. See id. The State need not show that appellant actually committed a traffic offense, but only that the officer reasonably suspected that appellant was committing an offense. See Madden v. State, 242 S.W.3d 504, 508 n. 7 (Tex.Crim.App.2007).
Texas Transportation Code section 503.069, entitled “Display of License Plates and Tags,” provides that “[a] license plate, other than an in-transit license plate, or a temporary tag issued under this chapter shall be displayed in accordance with commission rules.”
Texas Administrative Code Section 215.151, entitled “Temporary Tags, General Use Requirements, and Prohibitions” requires that “[a]ll temporary tags shall be displayed in the rear license plate display area of the vehicle.”
Officer Liu testified that she was driving her vehicle four or five feet behind appellant‘s vehicle and that she could not read the temporary tag on appellant‘s vehicle. The tag was printed in faded gray ink; Officer Liu could see only two of the seven digits of the temporary tag through the plastic cover. Because she could not read the temporary tag, she initiated a traffic stop. Appellant asserts that Officer Liu did not have reasonable suspicion to conduct the traffic stop, even though Officer Liu could not read her temporary tag from a distance of four-to-five feet away, because the temporary tag was legible when a person was closer to the vehicle and because the Administrative Code does not impose a specific distance at which the tag must be legible. Appellant also asserts that the Administrative Code imposes a duty on a dealer to properly display a temporary tag, but it does not impose a clear duty on her, as the recipient of the temporary tag, to display the tag in accordance with the Texas Administrative Code. Accordingly, appellant asserts Officer Liu did not have reasonable suspicion to stop appellant‘s vehicle.
Even if the Administrative Code does not impose a requirement that a temporary tag be legible from a particular distance, because appellant‘s temporary tag was illegible at a distance of four-to-five feet, Officer Liu reasonably could have suspected that the tag was not legible at any distance. Therefore, we need not determine whether or not the Administrative Code requires appellant‘s temporary tag to be legible at any particular distance. See Madden, 242 S.W.3d at 508 n. 7.
Texas Transportation Code section 503.063(c)(2), entitled, “Buyer‘s Temporary Tags,” provides that the dealer shall issue a temporary tag to individuals who buy vehicles.
Even if the dealer has an obligation to display the tag on the vehicle, this obligation does not preclude appellant from also being responsible for the continued display of the temporary tag. Texas Transportation Code Section 503.069 states that the tag “shall be displayed” in accordance with the commission rules. See
Officer Liu testified that she noticed appellant‘s temporary tag was illegible and therefore reasonably suspected that the temporary tag did not comply with Texas Administrative Code Section 215.151. We conclude the trial court did not err in determining that Officer Liu had reasonable suspicion that appellant was involved in criminal activity. See Kennedy, 847 S.W.2d at 636; Green, 866 S.W.2d at 703. We overrule appellant‘s first issue.
B. Did appellant preserve error on her argument that the traffic stop lasted too long?
In her second issue, appellant argues that Officer Liu‘s stop of appellant‘s vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment because Officer Liu detained appellant after the officer‘s suspicions that the temporary tag was illegible were extinguished. The State argues that appellant did not preserve this complaint for appellate review. Appellant argues that even though she did not raise this ground in her motion or argue this ground orally at the hearing on the motion to suppress, she has nonetheless preserved error because the ground was apparent from her cross-examination of Officer Liu.
To preserve an issue for appellate review, a party must present to the trial court a timely request, objection, or motion stating the specific grounds for the ruling desired. See
It violates “ordinary notions of procedural default” for an appellate court to reverse a trial court‘s decision on a legal theory not timely presented to the trial court by the complaining party. See Hailey v. State, 87 S.W.3d 118, 122 (Tex.Crim.App.2002). The complaining party must have clearly conveyed to the trial court the particular complaint raised on appeal, including the precise and proper application of law as well as the underlying rationale. See Pena v. State, 285 S.W.3d 459, 463-64 (Tex.Crim.App.2009). A trial court‘s decision will not be revised on a theory upon which the non-appealing party did not have an opportunity to develop a complete factual record. See id.
Appellant did not preserve error as to her complaint that Officer Liu detained her after the officer‘s suspicions had dissipated. Appellant argues that she preserved error because she developed testimony addressing the issue of whether appellant was free to leave after Officer Liu was able to read the temporary tag and argued at the motion-to-suppress hearing that the stop was illegal because the temporary tag was legible. In the
III. CONCLUSION
The trial court did not err in denying appellant‘s motion to suppress. Accordingly, the trial court‘s judgment is affirmed.