Miller v. Texas (Original)
Annotate this CaseSheriff's deputies arrested appellant for possession of a controlled substance. She filed a motion to suppress, alleging that the controlled substance was illegally obtained as the result of a warrantless search of her apartment. The trial judge held a hearing and denied relief, and appellant then plead guilty pursuant to a plea bargain. On appeal, appellant challenged the trial judge's denial of her motion to suppress. The court of appeals affirmed the ruling of the trial court. Appellant raised three issues in her Petition for Discretionary Review: (1) the Fourth Court of Appeals erred in holding that a warrantless search was justified under the emergency doctrine when the emergency doctrine was not a theory urged by the State at the suppression hearing and when there was no evidence presented at the suppression hearing that officers remained in Appellant's home pursuant to the emergency doctrine; (2) are law enforcement officers justified in remaining in a person's residence without a warrant under the guise of conducting a "warrant check" after the homeowner unequivocally tells officers to leave the residence?; (3) when law enforcement officers remain in a person's residence without a warrant under the guise of conducting a warrant check after the homeowner unequivocally tells officers to leave the residence, are they committing the offense of Criminal Trespass which would render any evidence seized after the intrusion inadmissible? Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court's decision. The Court concluded that the trial court's factual finding that the police presence in the appellant's apartment was part of a reasonable domestic-violence investigation is accurate with respect to the officers' initial entry, but it did not support a legal conclusion that the officers were still completing their investigation of domestic violence at the time they remained in appellant's apartment while waiting for a return on the warrant check and at the time that the illegal substance was found. At that point, the appellant had told them four times to leave, and the officers, by their own admission, were planning to leave the apartment after the results of the warrant check came back because their domestic-violence investigation had been completed. Having revoked her consent to enter, the officers had no probable cause to arrest her until after the fourth iteration of her revocation of consent, and that, by remaining in her apartment, the officers were not at a vantage point where they had the right to be. The trial court should have granted appellant's motion to suppress, and the court of appeals erred when it affirmed the trial court's denial of that motion. Because of the Court's conclusions on appellant's first and second grounds, the Court did not address her third issue on appeal.
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