In a recent opinion from a Texas court, the defendant successfully argued that his motion to suppress should have been granted. Originally, the defendant was pulled over in a traffic stop, and the officer pulling him over arrested him for driving under the influence. When the defendant filed a motion to suppress the incriminating evidence proving he was intoxicated, the court at first denied this motion. Later, though, a higher court agreed with the defendant, finding that the evidence should have been suppressed in the first place.
The Facts of the Case
According to the opinion, an officer was patrolling the roads one evening when he stopped the defendant’s vehicle for failing to maintain a single line of traffic. In the officer’s testimony, he stated that the only reason he stopped the defendant’s car was for this one reason – there were no other factors that went into his decision to pull the defendant over.
During the traffic stop, the officer saw that the defendant appeared to be intoxicated. He arrested the defendant for driving while intoxicated, and the defendant soon after filed a motion to suppress the evidence of his intoxication. The defendant argued that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to pull him over in the first place, and since the officer should not have initiated the traffic stop, the subsequent evidence of intoxication was unfairly included in the State’s case. The court denied this motion to suppress, and later the defendant pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated. Continue reading