Page 25 - Jan Feb TPA Journal

Joe C. Tooley, Legal Digest Editor
Joe C. Tooley, Attorneys & Counselors, Rockwall, Texas
www.TooleyLaw.com 972-722-1058

TEXAS POLICE ASSOCIATION

LEGAL DIGEST

January - February 2021

AUTHOR’S NOTE: It is the goal of this submission to extract those portions of relevant appellate
opinions or the syllabus of the legal reporter which bear directly upon law enforcement methods
and provide guidance for officers on an operational level. Much of the information pertaining to
these cases is lifted verbatim from the court opinion or syllabus with independent analysis inserted
as appropriate. Due to clarity for training purposes, the distinction between quotes from the
opinions and inserted analysis is not always identified and legal citations within the opinion are
often omitted. Emphasis is placed upon reported decisions from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

REASONABLE SUSPICION – TRAFFIC suppression hearing that he saw Williams drift
STOP & DETENTION. between two lanes and change lanes without
signaling, and that he relayed those observations to
A jury convicted Angela Michelle Williams of Officers Rodriguez and Gonzalez, who conducted the
possession with intentto distribute crack cocaine and traffic stop. Accordingly, the initial stop was justified
distribution of cocaine. Law enforcementofficials under the doctrine of collective knowledge. This
discovered crack cocaine on Williams’s person during collective knowledge alsojustifies arresting Williams
a strip search after she was arrested for traffic for the traffic offenses.
violations. Furthermore, testimony and body-camera
Williams appeals her convictions, arguing that the recordings from the traffic stop demonstrate that
district court erred by denying her first motion to Officer Rodriguez observed that Williams had red
suppress, her motion for reconsideration, and her eyes, asserted multiple times she had not been
second motion to suppress. She argues that the drinking, and was argumentative and “squirrely”
evidence of drugs found on her person during her during the pat-down search. Officer Rodriguez could
post-arrest strip search should have been suppressed reasonably have suspected that Williams’s failure to
because there was not cause to stop her, detain her, or maintain her lane of travel was related to drug or
take her tothe jail to be strip searched. She further alcohol use, which justified extending the length of
argues that the evidence does not support her the detention.
conviction of distribution of cocaine because the Because the traffic stop and arrest did not violate
government’s witnesses were not credible and she Williams’s Fourth Amendment rights, the district
cannot be identified in the video evidence, taken by a court did not err by denying her pretrial motions.
cooperating witness, of a controlled drug buy. Williams preserved her sufficiency-of-the-
In this case, Detective Sedillo testified at the evidence argument about her distribution conviction,
thereby preserving a de novo standard of review.

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