PD-0186-24 05/22/2024
“Mr. Pettit, as a passenger in the vehicle, had standing to contest his unconstitutional seizure. The Twelfth Court of Appeals did not follow this Court’s holding in Kothe v. State, 152 S.W.3d 54 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004), fundamentally misapplied the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ doctrine and erred by holding that Mr. Pettit lacked standing.”
Pettit was a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding. The trooper asked both driver and Pettit to get out of the car. Despite giving him a ride, the driver did not really know Pettit. Both Pettit and the driver admitted they had a history of drug use. The trooper called for a K-9 unit, which took forty minutes to arrive. The dog alerted, and officers found paraphernalia and a sawed-off shotgun somewhere in the vehicle. Pettit was charged with possession of the prohibited weapon. He moved to suppress the shotgun based on the officer prolonging the detention after the reason for the traffic stop had concluded. The trial court granted the motion.
For the first time on appeal, the State argued that Pettit failed to establish standing, and the court of appeals agreed that Pettit’s Fourth Amendment claim was not based on a violation of his own rights. It relied on Lewis v. State, 664 S.W.2d 345 (Tex. Crim. App. 1984), which permits passengers to contest searches of vehicles in which they lack a possessory or privacy interest only if the search of the vehicle “was come at by exploitation of [the defendant’s] continued detention and removal from the vehicle.” In Lewis, the vehicle search could have been performed without removing the car’s occupants, and thus intrusion on the passenger-defendant’s rights was not a but-for cause of obtaining the evidence. The court of appeals reasoned that, as in Lewis, Pettit’s detention was irrelevant to the officer’s decision to search the vehicle; the officer could have let Pettit leave without hampering his ability to search the car, and thus Pettit’s continued detention was not implicated.
Pettit argues that the court of appeals incorrectly applied the fruit-of-the- poisonous-tree doctrine. He contends that both he and the driver had a reasonable expectation of privacy in not being detained after the reason for the traffic stop had ended and they awaited the arrival of the drug dog. Furthermore, nothing purged the taint or broke the chain of events sufficient to show the search was not the product of his unlawful seizure.
