Daniel v. State

683 S.W.3d 777

Bernard DANIEL, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas, Appellee

NO. PD-0037-22

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Delivered: February 14, 2024

ON STATE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW FROM THE THIRD COURT OF APPEALS, BELL COUNTY

Stacey M. Soule, Austin, for Appellee.

Erika Copeland, Abilene, for Appellant.

OPINION

McClure, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which Keller, P.J., and Hervey, Richardson, Newell, Keel and Slaughter, JJ., joined.

The State asks whether a mistake of law should apply whenever an officer conducts a search or seizure under an ambiguous law that a majority of this Court had not yet construed, notwithstanding negative precedent in the controlling appellate jurisdiction. We hold the answer to that question is, yes. The officer’s reasonable misinterpretation of state criminal law did not undermine the reasonable suspicion required to conduct the traffic stop.

BACKGROUND

Appellant filed a pre-trial motion to suppress based on the argument that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion that Appellant was driving while intoxicated. Killeen Police Department Officer John Todd testified that around three in the morning on April 15, 2017, he stopped Appellant for failing to remain in a single lane of traffic. Todd testified that he saw Appellant’s vehicle cross the dotted white line dividing the outer lanes from the inner lanes three times. A dashcam video recording shows one of these instances where Appellant veers out of his lane as he navigates a left turn at an intersection. This initial crossing during the turn is plainly visible on the video, but the officer agreed it is difficult to see on the video how Appellant was driving as he got further from the patrol vehicle. There were no other cars near the Appellant’s vehicle nor did there appear to be anything else unsafe about Appellant’s driving.

Officer Todd initiated a traffic stop. Once the officer approached Appellant, he smelled alcohol on Appellant’s breath. Appellant admitted he had been drinking but refused to give a breath sample and refused to participate in all the roadside tests offered. After the officer observed a total of six clues of intoxication, he obtained a warrant for a blood sample. The test results showed Appellant’s blood alcohol content was .174. Based on his criminal history, and the events of that morning, Appellant was indicted for felony driving while intoxicated.

During the suppression hearing, Appellant argued that a violation of the failure to maintain a single lane statute, Section 545.060(a) of the Texas Transportation Code, requires the motorist to have strayed from his lane when it was not safe to do so. The State disagreed, noting that the video showed "a very clear failure to maintain a single lane during a left turn," and that this was "a clear violation of the law." According to the State, his car went almost entirely into the inside lane as he entered the roadway.

The trial court denied Appellant’s motion, finding that Appellant "turned left and did not remain within his single marked lane"; that "Officer Todd followed to make an investigatory stop"; and that "he indicated that he saw two more instances ,of not maintaining a single marked lane before the stop which were not unsafe." The trial court concluded that "a warrantless stop was made upon probable cause [sic] which lead [sic] to [Appellant’s] arrest and detention for DWI".

DIRECT APPEAL

On appeal, Appellant challenged the denial of his motion to suppress. The Third Court of Appeals agreed with Appellant and reversed the judgment of conviction; The court below decided this case prior to this Court’s opinion in State v. Hardin, 664 S.W.3d 867 (2022)(holding that subsection (a) of Section 545.060(a) of the Transportation Code creates, only one offense and that it is not a traffic violation to fail to maintain a single marked, lane of traffic if such failure does not occur in an unsafe manner). Therefore, the court of appeals resolved that it was bound by its own prior decision in Hernandez v. State, 983 S.W.2d 867 (Tex. App.—Austin 1998, pet. ref'd) and reversed Appellant’s conviction.

HISTORY OF THE INTERPRETATION OF § 545.060(a): THE FAILURE-TO-MAINTAIN-SINGLE-LANE

The basis offered by the State for the stop of Appellant’s vehicle was that the officer had reasonable suspicion that Appellant violated Section 545.060 of the Texas Transportation Code. That section provides, in pertinent part:

(a) An operator on a roadway divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for traffic:

(1) shall drive as nearly as practical entirely within a single lane; and

(2) may not move from the lane unless that movement .can be made safely.

Tex Transp. Code Ann. § 545.060.

Since its enactment in 1995, interpretations of the failure-to-maintain-single-lane statute (Section 545.060 of the Transportation Code) have varied amongst the intermediate courts.

The First, Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Courts of Appeals read the failure to maintain a single lane statute as requiring both: (1) the failure to drive "as nearly as practical" in a single lane and (2) unsafe movement when moving from a single lane. See Munoz v. State, 649 S.W.3d 813, 818 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st] 2022); Fowler v. State, 266 S.W.3d 498, 502 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2008, pet. ref'd) ("Although the statute has two subparts, it does not create two separate offenses, but rather only one: moving out of a marked lane when it is not safe to do so."); Marrero v. State, No. 03-14-00033-CR, 2016 WL 240908, at, *3 (Tex. App.—Austin Jan. 14, 2016, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication); Daniel v. State, 641 S.W.3d 486, 493-94 (Tex. App.—Austin 2021); State v. Arriaga, 5 S.W.3d 804, 806-07 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 1999, pet. ref'd); Curtis v. State, 209 S.W.3d 688, 693-94 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2006), rev’d on other grounds, Curtis v. State, 238 S.W.3d 376 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007); Ehrhart v. State, 9 S.W.3d 929, 930-31 (Tex. App.—Beaumont 2000, no pet.); State v. Hardin, No. 13-18-00244-CR, 2019 WL 3484428, at *3 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi Aug. 1, 2019), rev’d by State v. Hardin, 664 S.W.3d 867 (Tex. Crim. App. 2022); State v. Bernard, 503 S.W.3d 685, 691 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2016), judgment vacated on other grounds, 512 S.W.3d 351 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017).

Alternatively, the Seventh, Eighth, Tenth; Eleventh, and Twelfth Courts of Appeals have interpreted subsection (a) as setting forth two offenses instead of one. Wilde v. State, No. 07-15-00432-CR, 2016 WL 3180290, at *3 (Tex. App.—Amarillo June 3, 2016, no pet.)(not designated for publication); Reyes v. State, 608 S.W.3d 543, 549 (Tex. App. El Paso 2020, no pet. h.); Meras v. State, 629 S.W.3d 284 (Tex. App.—Waco 2020), rev’d by State v. Meras, 665 S.W.3d 604, 605 (Tex. Crim. App. 2023); Tex. Dep’t of Pub. Safety v. Ardoin, 515 S.W.3d 910, 915 (Tex. App.—Eastland 2017, no pet.); State v. Virginia South, No. 12-17-00176 CR, 2018 WL 686085, at *4 (Tex. App.—Tyler Jan. 31, 2018, pet. ref'd) (not designated for publication); State v. Virginia South, No. 12-17-00176-CR, 2018 WL 636085, at *4 (Tex. App.—Tyler Jan. 31, 2018, pet. ref'd) (not designated for publication).

Hernandez - The Third Court of Appeals holds that § 545.060(a) creates a single offense.

In Hernandez, the State contended that a driver’s "drift" across a lane marker into another lane of traffic traveling in the same direction, without any evidence that the drifting was unsafe, gave an officer reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver had violated Section 545.060(a). Id. at 869-70. The Third Court of Appeals concluded that it did not. Id. at 871. Therefore, it decided that Section 545.060(a) creates a single offense and that no violation occurs without unsafe movement. Id. This Court declined to exercise discretionary review of that court’s decision.

Leming - A fractured¹ Court of Criminal Appeals split in its statutory interpretation of § 545.060(a).

Eighteen years later, four judges on this Court rejected the Third Court’s reasoning in Hernandez, construing Section 545.060(a) as creating two separate offenses:

it is an offense to change marked lanes when it is unsafe to do so; but it is also an independent offense to fail to remain entirely within a marked lane of traffic so long as it remains practical to do so, regardless of whether the deviation from the marked lane is, under the particular circumstances, unsafe.

Leming v. State, 493 S.W.3d 552, 559-60 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016)(Opinion Part II by Yeary, J., joined by Keller, P.J., Meyers and Richardson, JJ.).

Hardin - The Court of Criminal Appeals formally and authoritatively settles the debate: § 545.060(a) establishes a single offense, not two.

In Hardin, this Court held that the officer had no reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant when her vehicle’s right rear tire briefly touched the dividing line between the center and right lane of traffic because the State did not prove that the movement was unsafe. When analyzing § 545.060(a)’s text, the Court remarked that the operative terms of the statute—"nearly," "practical," and "safely"—are "clear and unambiguous" and recognized that the dispute is over the number of offenses. Hardin, 664 S.W.3d at 873-74. Considering both subsections, the Court determined that a two-offense construction would render subsection (a)(1) unconstitutionally vague and (a)(2) meaningless. Id. at 875.

The Hardin Court distinguished the factual scenario presented in that case from the basis of the stop in Leming, noting that the officer in Leming had reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant for driving while intoxicated regardless of whether he had failed to maintain a single lane. Id. at 878.

Judge Slaughter wrote separately to suggest that mistake of law would apply, however, the State failed to raise the argument. Id. at 879-882. She also noted that reasonable minds can disagree as to the meaning of the language in the statute and...