PRICE, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
The appellant was convicted of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, namely cocaine, in the amount of 200 grams or more but less than 400 grams,
Prior to trial, the appellant filed a motion to suppress any and all evidence stemming from the traffic stop in this case. The appellant's motion argued, inter alia, that the traffic stop, purportedly for the failure to signal a turn at an intersection, was a pretext to justify an ongoing investigation of the appellant. The motion claimed that the arrest occurred without a warrant on the basis of a tip from an unidentified and unreliable informant and that any statements and/or recordings obtained as a product of the appellant's arrest were therefore tainted by this illegal stop. At a pre-trial hearing on the appellant's motion, the only witness was Detective Cesar Muñoz of the Mount Pleasant Police Department. The trial court denied the appellant's motion to suppress, finding that probable cause existed to justify the initial stop of the appellant and that the appellant voluntarily consented to the search that led to the discovery of the contraband.
The issue of the legality of the initial traffic stop was re-litigated during the appellant's jury trial. The jury heard that, in the early morning hours of August 25, 2008, Muñoz received an anonymous call to his cell phone. The caller informed Muñoz that a "Mr. Robinson" would be arriving back in Mount Pleasant from Dallas transporting a "large amount" of cocaine. Muñoz called Officer Simon Porter with the narcotics patrol division and informed him of the tip. The two positioned themselves in their respective police cruisers at opposite ends of the street on which the appellant's known address, 511 Margaret Drive, was located. Muñoz was parked facing eastbound at the intersection of East Eighth Street and Margaret Drive.
At issue at trial was whether the character of the roadway at the point where Ninth Street "merged" into Margaret Drive was such that a turn signal was legally required. It was Muñoz's opinion that a traffic infraction occurred when the appellant, traveling from Ninth Street to Margaret Drive, "continued to the right without turning his turn signal on[,]" which the appellant had "a duty" to do at "the intersection." Muñoz acknowledged that there are no traffic signals or signs at this "intersection"; however, Muñoz did not waver from his position that, although the flow of traffic at this juncture could be characterized as simply "following" the roadway around onto Margaret Drive, to "turn" or "continue" onto Margaret Drive from Ninth Street without a signal is a violation of the law.
Lakeshia Williams was in the passenger seat of the appellant's car at the time of the stop. She testified during the appellant's case-in-chief that, "[i]f you turn left" from Ninth Street onto Margaret Drive, "you have to put a signal on"; whereas to "turn right, you [are] just going around the corner" as Ninth Street "curves" into
The trial court held a charge conference on the record to permit defense counsel to raise his objections to the court's proposed charge. The appellant objected to the absence of an instruction under Article 38.23(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, specifically requested such an instruction, and asked the trial court reconsider its ruling on his pre-trial motion to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the traffic stop.
After the jury convicted him, the appellant raised two related issues on appeal with respect to the legality of the traffic stop. First, he argued that the trial court erred in failing to grant his motion to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of that stop. Second, he argued that the trial court erred in refusing his requested Article 38.23(a) jury instruction. As to the suppression issue, the appellant argued that he had not executed a "turn" at an "intersection,"
The State countered the appellant's suppression issue by arguing that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to suppress because the appellant's failure to signal violated the Transportation Code and/or the Mount Pleasant city ordinances, and, in any event, Muñoz's reasonable belief that the appellant was required to signal was sufficient to initiate a traffic stop without the State having to satisfy a burden to prove that a traffic offense was actually committed. In response to the Article 38.23(a) jury instruction issue, the State directly disputed that the three fact issues the appellant identified were genuinely contested at trial, or, perhaps more importantly, even amounted to issues of historical fact, as distinguished from questions of law that are properly reserved for determination by the trial court.
The court of appeals, although disagreeing with the appellant that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion to suppress,
The SPA petitioned this Court for discretionary review, raising only the issue of whether the reasonableness of Muñoz's belief that a turn signal was necessary constitutes an issue of historical fact to be submitted to the jury in the form of an Article 38.23(a) instruction. We granted review of the SPA's sole issue to assess the proper role of the jury under an Article 38.23(a) instruction.
The SPA argues in its brief to this Court that there were no disputed issues of fact presented at trial that would entitle the appellant to an Article 38.23(a) instruction to the jury; and because the jury is not permitted to answer questions of law, whether Muñoz believed that the law required the appellant to signal at the point at which Ninth Street "merges" with Margaret Drive was not an appropriate question for the jury. The SPA identifies the "material fact" in this case as "the configuration of the meeting of Ninth and Margaret," but argues that this fact was not actually disputed at trial.
This is not to say that a police officer's reasonable mistake of historical fact can never be the legitimate subject of an Article 38.23(a) instruction. A police officer's reasonable mistake about the facts may yet legitimately justify his own conclusion that there is probable cause to arrest or reasonable suspicion to detain. This is so because a mistake about the facts, if reasonable, will not vitiate an officer's actions in hindsight so long as his actions were lawful under the facts as he
But that was not the kind of mistake at issue here. Muñoz's testimony
We hold that the court of appeals erred to conclude that the appellant was entitled to an Article 38.23(a) jury instruction since there was no dispute about the material historical facts. The only dispute was about the legal significance of those facts — a dispute that juries are not authorized to resolve. We therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals.
Ordinarily with a case in this posture, we would simply reinstate the judgment of the trial court. In the instant case, however, there is a wrinkle. In disposing of the appellant's interrelated first point of error, the court of appeals held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the appellant's motion to
To the extent that this holding is contingent on a conclusion that the record presents an actual dispute with respect to material historical facts, it is at odds with our conclusion today that the record admits of nothing more than a dispute about the legal significance of those historical facts. Appellate courts may review the legal significance of undisputed facts de novo.
The tendered instruction tracks language from Article 38.23(a) and Sections 545.104 and 545.106 of the Texas Transportation Code. See TEX.CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 38.23(a); TEX. TRANSP. CODE. §§ 545.104, 545.106. The remainder of the instruction concerned the development of probable cause to search and arrest following the traffic stop.
See also McRae v. State, 152 S.W.3d 739, 748 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2004, pet. ref'd) ("The trial court was ... required to apply the law to the undisputed facts to make a legal conclusion about probable cause [to arrest the defendant for driving while intoxicated]. No jury instruction was required because there were no facts in dispute.") (emphasis added); Knot v. State, 853 S.W.2d 802, 805 (Tex.App.-Amarillo 1993, no pet.) (holding that the trial court erred in failing to give the appellant's requested instruction because conflicting testimony as to whether the defendant threw a beer bottle at the complaining witness, "committ[ing] a breach of the public peace in his presence, the basis for the [complaining witness's] lawful arrest of [the defendant]... raised an issue of the validity of the [defendant's] arrest and the resulting seizure of evidence admitted against him at trial"); Mills v. State, 296 S.W.3d 843, 845 (Tex.App.-Austin 2009, pet. ref'd) (In reviewing Mills's complaint that the trial court refused to include an Article 38.23 instruction in the jury charge, the Austin Court of Appeals explained that "[w]hether reasonable suspicion is present is a question of law for the trial court when there is no dispute concerning the existence of the underlying historical facts from which that determination is made." (citing Madden, supra, at 510-12)); Alcocer v. State, 256 S.W.3d 398, 399 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 2008, no pet.) ("When essential facts concerning the search or arrest are not in dispute, the legality of the search or arrest is a question of law, not fact, and no jury instruction is required."); White v. State, 201 S.W.3d 233, 248-49 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2006, pet. ref'd) (holding that, where there was "no dispute... as to the facts upon which the exigent circumstances [to enter the defendant's home without a warrant] were determined[,]" the defendant was not entitled to an Article 38.23 instruction because "[w]hether a search is reasonable is a question of law" for which "courts should carefully apply the objective standard of reasonableness" and should "take[] into account the facts and circumstances known to the police at the time of the search") (emphasis added).
In Madden, the jury heard testimony that the appellant, initially pulled over by the officer for speeding, stated at the scene that he was driving at the posted speed limit of 55 m.p.h. with his cruise control on, while the officer testified that the defendant was driving at 61 m.p.h. Madden, supra, at 511. We reviewed two jury instructions on petition for discretionary review in Madden. The first, ultimately submitted to the jury on the trial court's own motion, was whether the officer reasonably believed that the appellant was speeding at the time he stopped the appellant's car. Id. The second instruction, originally requested by the appellant but denied by the trial court, was "whether [the officer] had `reasonable suspicion' to continue to detain appellant." Id. The submitted instruction centered on an affirmatively contested issue of historical fact — the defendant's speed — and whether the facts, as presented to the jury at trial, supported the officer's belief that Madden had been traveling at 6 m.p.h. over the posted speed limit. Id. This is distinguishable from the defendant's requested instruction, which sought to have the jury determine, based on the totality of the facts, whether the officer had a "reasonable suspicion" — a legal term of art — to detain Madden for a traffic violation. Id. at 511-14. Thus, while it was proper for the jury to resolve the contested factual issue of the defendant's actual speed, in miles per hour, it would not have been proper for the jury to resolve the broader legal question of whether the defendant's speed, if it exceeded the posted speed limit, gave the officer legal justification to pull the defendant over for the traffic violation of speeding. Id. at 511 (emphasis added). By submitting to the jury a question of fact concerning the officer's belief — i.e. whether his testimony as to the defendant's speed was truthful or, on the other hand, might be seen by the jury as fabricated — the jury was asked to determine the credibility of the witnesses and choose which witness's recitation of the facts it believed. See also Mahaffey II, supra, at 912 n. 8 ("[T]his Court has never addressed whether an officer's reasonable interpretation of the law, if ultimately mistaken, can serve as an objectively reasonable basis upon which to effectuate a stop. * * * In Madden v. State, we explained that the pertinent issue was `not whether appellant was speeding,' but whether the officer `had a reasonable belief that he was speeding. Even police officers may be mistaken about an historical fact such as "speeding," as long as that mistake was not unreasonable.'") (emphasis added).
