Page 49 - May June 2020 TPA Journal

the Fourth Amendment’s general prohibition crime. The detectives witnessed Wise pretend to
against warrantless searches and seizures. sleep on the Greyhound. Wise then produced a
ticket with a “very generic” name: “James Smith.”
“Under Terry, if a law enforcement officer can He denied ownership of a backpack that was
point to specific and articulable facts that lead him sitting next to his own duffle bag. Yet, no other
to reasonably suspect that a particular person is passengers sat near the backpack. The officers
committing, or is about to commit, a crime, the discovered that the backpack contained a
officer may briefly detain—that is, ‘seize’—the substance they believed to be cocaine. The
person to investigate.” Officers may “draw on detectives were aware that narcotics traffickers
their own experience and specialized training to often carry weapons. Evaluating the totality of the
make inferences from and deductions about the circumstances, the detectives established requisite
cumulative information available to them that suspicion to detain Wise for questioning and to
‘might well elude an untrained person.’” request that he empty his pockets.
Determining the reasonableness of the officer’s
suspicion requires assessing the “totality of the The district court erred in characterizing the bus
circumstances” prior to the stop. interdiction as an unconstitutional checkpoint
stop. Also, Wise lacks standing to challenge the
Consensual encounters between the police and bus driver’s consent to the officers’ request to
civilians, however, do not implicate the Fourth search the Greyhound’s passenger cabin. Finding
Amendment. We determined in Williams that there is no other basis in the record to affirm the
when police officers asked a Greyhound passenger district court’s ruling on the motion to suppress,
to disembark and accompany them to the bus we REVERSE the district court’s suppression
terminal’s baggage handling area for the purpose order.
of answering questions—and the passenger
voluntarily complied—a Terry stop did not occur. U.S. v. Wise, No. 16-20808, 5th Cir. Court of
Here, the police asked Wise to speak with them off Appeals, Dec. 6th 2017.
the bus. The police did not indicate that his
compliance was required. Once off the bus, the
police did not restrain Wise. They also did not tell OFFICIAL OPPRESSION – KNOWLEDGE
him that he must obey their requests. The police OF ILLEGALITY REQUIRED.
asked Wise to empty his pockets, and he complied. In 2011 Appellant, Rebekah Thonginh Ross,
He also complied with the police officers’ requests worked as an investigator for the Greenville office
to show them his identification card and keys. of the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Wise has not explained why this interaction was Services (hereinafter referred to as “the
anything but a consensual encounter. Department” or “CPS”). In 2015, she was
convicted of the offense of official oppression.
Even if Wise could characterize the interaction as The charge was based on an allegedly unlawful 1
a Terry stop-and-frisk, the stop-and-frisk would be search that Ross conducted pursuant to her duties
permissible under the Fourth Amendment. as a CPS investigator. Ross’s conviction was
Detectives Sanders and Sauceda, drawing on their affirmed by the Sixth Court of Appeals.2 We
experience and specialized training, could granted Ross’s petition for discretionary review to
reasonably infer from the circumstances determine whether the court of appeals correctly
surrounding their interaction with Wise that he held that the evidence was sufficient to support
may have been in the process of committing a Ross’s conviction.

May/June 2020 www.texaspoliceassociation.com • (512) 458-3140 45