Second Court of Appeals | Case Summaries

Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued – Week of April 23, 2007

NOTE: Summaries are prepared by the court's staff attorneys and law clerks for public information only and reflect his or her interpretation alone of the facts and legal issues. The summaries are not part of the court's opinion in the case and should not be cited to, quoted, or relied upon as the opinion of the court.

Links to full text of opinions can be accessed by clicking the cause number then clicking View HTML Version of Opinion.

State v. Iduarte, No. 02-06-00179-CR (Apr. 26, 2007) (Livingston, J., joined by Cayce, C.J.; Dauphinot, J., dissents with opinion).: Held: Reversed trial court's order suppressing Appellee's aggravated assault on a police officer. Although the police officer's first entry into Appellee's apartment to allegedly help him look for car keys may have constituted an illegal search for a gun, the officer and Appellee both exited the apartment, ending the initial search. At that point, the officer noticed a gun case next to the outer stairs and asked Appellee about it. Appellee became aggressive, the officer told him that he was under arrest for public intoxication, Appellee stated that he would show the officer the gun, and then Appellee ran back into the dark apartment. Such actions gave the officer reasonable suspicion that Appellee had fired a gun earlier and was now going to retrieve it. In the interest of officer safety, the officer had the right, if not the duty, to follow Appellee back into the apartment a second time to retrieve the gun. Because the second entry into Appellee's apartment was not illegal, the trial court should not have suppressed evidence of Appellee's alleged assault on the police officer.; Dissent: The trial court properly suppressed the evidence in this case because neither entry into the apartment was lawful. The police did not obtain a warrant, Appellee did not voluntarily consent to the first entry and no exigency supported it, and any exigency justifying the second entry was manufactured by the police to illegally obtain the gun.