Patel v. State

856 S.W.2d 486, 1993 WL 142054
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedSeptember 15, 1993
Docket01-91-00744-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 856 S.W.2d 486 (Patel v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Patel v. State, 856 S.W.2d 486, 1993 WL 142054 (Tex. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

OPINION

O’CONNOR, Justice.

Pareshkumar Manabhai Patel, the appellant, was found guilty of murder by a jury and sentenced to 75-years confinement in prison. We affirm.

Fact summary

The appellant did not testify at his trial. The story of the appellant’s murder of Ray McIntyre, mostly circumstantial evidence, at trial is as follows: The appellant went to Mike Calvert Toyota pretending to be a customer interested in buying a new car. Ray McIntyre, a salesperson, attended the appellant and got keys to a 1990 Toyota Camry for the appellant to test drive. During the test drive, the appellant forced McIntyre from the car and led him to an empty field. The appellant fatally shot McIntyre, left him in the field, and drove away in the Toyota.

The day after the murder, the appellant drove two of his friends around Houston in the stolen vehicle. He told them he had borrowed the car from a friend. A few days later, the appellant left Houston and drove to College Station where he had an apartment house. There, in the parking lot of the apartment house next door, he stole a license plate that he put on the car. He then drove to Connecticut to visit a friend.

From Connecticut, he drove to South Hackensack, New Jersey, where he evidently ran out of money. In South Hack-ensack, he walked into a police station and claimed he had been robbed at gunpoint by a black male in the parking lot of the Airport Motel. He said the robber took his gold chain and wallet, and he had no money to pay for a room. Under the victim assistance program, the police provided him with a room at the motel. While checking the appellant in the hotel, the room clerk told one of the officers the appellant had tried to check in earlier, but his credit card had been rejected. The clerk had confiscated the card and cut it in two.

The next day, the chief of police and one of his officers went to the motel. First, they ran a check on the license plate, which *488 showed the car was not stolen. 1 Then they ran a check on the vehicle identification number and learned the car had been reported stolen in Houston and was associated with a missing person. They arrested the appellant for possession of a stolen vehicle, and the police made an inventory of the contents of the Toyota. The pistol used to kill McIntyre was found in the car.

1. Inventory search

In the appellant’s points of error one through seven, he raises several federal and state constitutional challenges to the search of the stolen Toyota and the court’s failure to grant the motion to suppress. These allegations include: no evidence of a standard police department policy regulating the opening of closed containers; no complete listing of the items found in the vehicle; the lack of a police department inventory policy; and the police officer who prepared the list of items seized was not present during the search.

We must determine whether the appellant has a legal right or interest or “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the area searched or the items seized. Edlund v. State, 677 S.W.2d 204, 210 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1984, no pet.). To determine if the appellant’s subjective expectation of privacy is reasonable, we must consider whether it is one society is willing to recognize. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 2580, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979) (a defendant had no protectible interest in the telephone number he dialed, only in the contents of the conversation); Jackson v. State, 745 S.W.2d 4, 8 (Tex.Crim.App.1988) (the defendant had no protectible interest in the contents of a car he stole from the murder victim); Edlund, 677 S.W.2d at 210 (the defendant had no protectible interest in the contents of a car he stole from the murder victim). In Jackson, the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote:

Simply put, any actual expectation of privacy the appellant may have manifested in the stolen vehicle is not “one society is willing to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ ” ... We are convinced that the stare decisis of this Court is applicable in the case sub judice and appellant lacked standing to contest the search and seizure of the stolen vehicle which he gained possession of only by reason of his criminal conduct.

Jackson, 745 S.W.2d at 8; see also Edlund, 677 S.W.2d at 210. We hold the appellant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy and thus lacked standing to contest the search of the stolen automobile.

The appellant contends even if the police could search the car, they were not free to open the container in which they found the gun. To support this argument, the appellant cites Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 107 S.Ct. 738, 93 L.Ed.2d 739 (1987), and Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1, 110 S.Ct. 1632, 109 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990). This case is distinguishable from both Wells and Ber-tine, because the automobile subject to the inventory search in those cases was not stolen. Here, as in Jackson, Bodde [v. State, 568 S.W.2d 344 (Tex.Crim.App.1978)], and Edlund, the automobile was stolen. In both Wells and Bertine, the person driving the car was arrested for driving while intoxicated, and the search of the car was incidental to the arrest.

The law is clear in New Jersey, as well as in Texas, that stolen property may be seized and impounded for the true owner. See N.J.Stat.Ann. § 39:5-47 (West 1990); New Jersey v. De Marco, 384 A.2d 1113, 1116 (N.J.Super.Ct.App.Div.1978); Gandy v. State, 835 S.W.2d 238, 243 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1992, pet. ref’d). The police could not just abandon the car in the parking lot of the motel.

The appellant argues the State cannot raise the issue of his standing on appeal, because it did not raise it at trial. First, the State received a favorable ruling from the trial court before it had the opportunity to present a reason to overrule the motion to suppress. After the evidence was introduced and after the appellant argued reasons to suppress the items seized during *489 the search, the trial court overruled the motion and specifically said she did not want to hear from the State. Thus, the State was not required to give reasons to support the trial court’s favorable ruling.

Second, the State may raise standing on appeal even when it did not raise it at the trial.

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Bluebook (online)
856 S.W.2d 486, 1993 WL 142054, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/patel-v-state-texapp-1993.