State v. Navigator

494 S.W.3d 690

The State of Texas, Petitioner,

v.One (1) 2004 Lincoln Navigator, VIN # 5LMFU27RX4LJ28242, Respondent

NO. 14–0692

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued November 4, 2015

OPINION DELIVERED: June 10, 2016

Naved Qazi, Jennifer Paige Honey Dorsey, Douglas K. Norman, Nueces County District Attorney's Office, Corpus Christi, Philip A. Lionberger, Assistant Solicitor General, Warren Kenneth Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, Charles E. Roy, First Assistant Attorney General, J. Campbell Barker, Scott A. Keller, Office of the Attorney General of Texas, Austin, for State of Texas.

Celina Marie Lopez Leon, Law Office of Scott M. Ellison, P.L.L.C., Corpus Christi, for Respondent.

JUSTICE BROWN delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice GREEN, Justice WILLETT, Justice GUZMAN, and Justice BOYD joined, and in which Chief Justice HECHT, Justice JOHNSON, and Justice LEHRMANN joined in all but Part IV.

In this civil-forfeiture case, police officers arrested Miguel Herrera and seized his Lincoln Navigator. After finding drugs during an inventory search of the vehicle, the state filed a notice of seizure and intended forfeiture under Chapter 59 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, claiming that the Navigator was “contraband” under the statute.¹ Herrera argued that the stop leading up to the arrest was unlawful and therefore any evidence obtained pursuant to the subsequent search should be excluded in the civil-forfeiture proceeding. The trial court agreed, finding the vehicle search to be illegal and “denying the seizure.”

The court of appeals affirmed, holding that (1) article 59.03(b)² precludes the state from initiating a civil-forfeiture proceeding based on an illegal search; (2) the stop leading up to the arrest was unlawful because the officers did not have reasonable suspicion; and (3) Herrera was entitled to relief because, after exclusion of the evidence found in the vehicle, the state was left with no evidence that the Navigator was contraband. State v. One (1) 2004 Lincoln Navigator, No. 13–1300484–CV, 2014 WL 4262636, at *4–8 (Tex.App.–Corpus Christi Aug. 28, 2014) (mem.op.). This Court granted review to decide whether an illegal seizure requires exclusion in a Chapter 59 civil-forfeiture proceeding. We hold that it does not. Accordingly, we reverse and remand.

I

Texas law permits the state to obtain by seizure and forfeiture certain property qualifying as “contraband.” See CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 59.02(a). To exercise its forfeiture power, the state must commence a forfeiture proceeding under the Code of Criminal Procedure. See id. art. 59.04. Though found in the criminal-procedure code, such forfeiture proceedings are distinctly civil in nature: “parties must comply with the rules of pleading as required in civil suits,” id. art. 59.05(a), cases “proceed to trial in the same manner as in other civil cases,” and “[t]he state has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that property is subject to forfeiture,” id. art. 59.05(b). If the state carries its burden and “the court finds that all or any part of the property is subject to forfeiture, the judge shall forfeit the property to the state.” Id. art. 59.05(e).

Yet while forfeiture proceedings are civil in nature, they frequently arise out of criminal proceedings in which property was seized. At first glance, therefore, they often appear to implicate the constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures. See U.S. CONST. amend. IV ; TEX. CONST. art. I, § 9. In the criminal-law context, this right is generally vindicated by the “exclusionary rule,” which provides for suppression of evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure. But the application of this judge-made rule is usually confined by its rationale to the criminal-law context—“[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” See People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587 (1926) (Cardozo, J.). It does not normally apply in civil cases.

In this case, the court of appeals did not address whether the exclusionary rule applies in civil-forfeiture proceedings, holding only that “the civil[-]forfeiture statute ‘does not authorize illegal police conduct,’ ” and thus that “ ‘[r]egardless of whether the exclusionary rule applies, law enforcement agents cannot seize property if their actions leading up to the seizure are illegal.’ ” Lincoln Navigator, 2014 WL 4262636, at *4 (quoting State v. Thirty Thousand Six Hundred Sixty Dollars & no/100 ($30,660.00), 136 S.W.3d 392, 397 (Tex.App.–Corpus Christi 2004, pet. denied) (en banc)).³ While illegal actions leading up to a search or seizure generally require exclusion under the exclusionary rule in a criminal proceeding,⁴ this Court has “never decided whether the exclusionary rule applies to civil[-]forfeiture proceedings.” $ 217,590.00, 18 S.W.3d at 632 n. 1 ; see also Hardy v. State, 102 S.W.3d 123, 129 n. 3 (Tex.2003) (in the civil-forfeiture context, “we have yet to decide whether, if the State lack[s] probable cause to obtain a search warrant, evidence obtained pursuant to that warrant might be subject to suppression under the exclusionary rule.”).

Deciding that law enforcement cannot illegally seize property subject to forfeiture is therefore not the end of the analysis. Even assuming that Chapter 59 prohibits unlawful seizure, concluding that an exclusionary rule (or some functional equivalent) applies in civil-forfeiture proceedings remains a necessary prerequisite to exclusion. Cf. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 223, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) (“The question whether the exclusionary rule's remedy is appropriate in a particular context has long been regarded as an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule were violated by police conduct.” (emphasis added)). In other words, merely finding that the law enforcement agents' search (conduct ) was illegal—or otherwise not in compliance with Chapter 59—neither automatically nor inevitably compels the conclusion that exclusion is the proper remedy . Thus, after finding the officers' conduct to be illegal, the court of appeals should have asked whether exclusion was the proper remedy. In declining to do so, the court of appeals prematurely assumed that illegality equates to inadmissibility. See Lincoln Navigator, 2014 WL 4262636, at *4. The question of whether the court of appeals' assumption is nonetheless correct is now squarely before this Court.

II

“Both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, section 9 of the Texas Constitution prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures and require the exclusion of evidence obtained in violation of that prohibition in criminal trials.” $ 217,590.00, 18 S.W.3d at 636 (Abbott, J., concurring) (emphasis added). The Fourth Amendment prohibition has long been vindicated by the exclusionary rule: “a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved.” United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974) ; see also Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). In Texas, an expanded version of that common-law rule has been codified to ensure that “[n]o evidence obtained by an officer or other person in violation of any provisions of the Constitution or laws of the State of Texas, or of the Constitution or laws of the United States of America, shall be admitted in evidence against the accused on the trial of any criminal case.” CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 38.23(a) (emphasis added).

By its express terms, article 38.23 applies only to criminal cases. See id. But less clear is whether the constitutional exclusionary rule—as a common-law, judge-made rule—might have broader application. See Hardy, 102 S.W.3d at 129 n. 3. That rule, of course, appears nowhere in our state constitution, nor is it “a self-executing mandate implicit in the Fourth Amendment itself.” See Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 237, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011). Rather, it is a judge-made “deterrent sanction that bars the prosecution from introducing evidence obtained by way of a [constitutional] violation.” Id. at 231–32, 131 S.Ct. 2419. Although courts have “applied the exclusionary rule primarily to deter constitutional violations,” it has also been held to apply to “exclude[ ] evidence ar[ising] directly out of statutory violations that implicate[ ] important Fourth and Fifth Amendment interests.” Sanchez–Llamas v. Oregon, 548 U.S. 331, 348, 126 S.Ct. 2669, 165 L.Ed.2d 557 (2006).

To be sure, “[t]he wrong condemned by the [Fourth] Amendment is ‘fully accomplished’ by the unlawful search or seizure itself,” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984) —“the governments' use of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment does not itself violate the Constitution,” Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 362, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998). Exclusion, therefore, does not protect the defendant against a constitutional violation, and it “is neither intended nor able to ‘cure the invasion of the defendant's rights which he has already suffered.’ ” Leon, 468 U.S. at 906, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 540, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976) (White, J., dissenting)). Instead, “[t]he rule's sole purpose ... is to deter future Fourth Amendment violations.” Davis, 564 U.S. at 236–37, 131 S.Ct. 2419 ; see also Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 217, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960) (“The rule is calculated to prevent, not to repair.”).

“Despite its broad deterrent purpose,” however, “the exclusionary rule has never been interpreted to proscribe the use of illegally seized evidence in all proceedings or against all persons.” Calandra, 414 U.S. at 348, 94 S.Ct. 613 ; ...