11th Court of Appeals
Eastland, Texas
Opinion
Henry Clay Mitchell
Appellant
Vs. No. 11-01-00237-CR -- Appeal from Dallas County
State of Texas
Appellee
The jury convicted Henry Clay Mitchell of the offense of possession of less than one gram of cocaine and assessed his punishment at confinement for 12 years and a fine of $1,000. We affirm.
In his first point, appellant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress. Specifically, appellant urges that the cocaine should have been suppressed because it was discovered as a result of an Aunlawful pretext traffic stop without probable cause.@
The record shows that appellant filed a written pretrial motion to suppress and that the trial court carried the motion into the trial on the merits. However, when the State offered the cocaine into evidence, appellant=s attorney replied: ANo objections.@ After the State rested, appellant=s attorney re-urged the motion to suppress. The trial court denied the motion. When a party affirmatively states that he has no objection to the introduction of certain evidence, he waives his challenge to the admissibility of that evidence. Moody v. State, 827 S.W.2d 875, 889 (Tex.Cr.App.), cert. den=d, 506 U.S. 839 (1992). Appellant has failed to preserve his complaint for appellate review.
Moreover, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to suppress. See Carmouche v. State, 10 S.W.3d 323 (Tex.Cr.App.2000); Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 87 (Tex.Cr.App.1997). The pretext doctrine that appellant relies on has been abandoned. A police officer=s subjective intent in initiating a traffic stop is irrelevant; the stop need only be objectively justifiable. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 812 (1996); Garcia v. State, 827 S.W.2d 937, 943-44 (Tex.Cr.App.1992). The record in this case shows that the traffic stop was valid and that the subsequent seizure of the cocaine was proper under the circumstances. Officer Jason Reynolds stopped appellant for failing to wear his seat belt. Then, when appellant failed to produce a driver=s license and proof of insurance, the officer asked him to step out of the car. Officer Reynolds testified that, during the stop, he had trouble understanding what appellant was saying because appellant was kind of mumbling. Officer Reynolds then noticed what appeared to be crack cocaine underneath appellant=s tongue. Appellant refused to spit the object out of his mouth, and he began trying to chew it up and swallow it. Officer Reynolds used a lateral vascular neck restraint to keep appellant from swallowing the cocaine and to force him to spit it out of his mouth. The cocaine was properly admitted into evidence. The first point of error is overruled.
In his second point, appellant argues that the trial court erred by admitting State=s Exhibit No. 6 into evidence during the punishment phase of trial. This exhibit was a certified copy of a prior conviction in Cause No. AF91-00777-UN,@ including a judgment showing that appellant had been convicted of the offense of possession of cocaine and sentenced to two years confinement. Appellant contends that this judgment was inadmissible because State=s Exhibit No. 5, appellant=s jail card, did not show a final conviction for that offense. However, State=s Exhibit No. 6 itself reflected that appellant had been convicted of the offense. Appellant=s fingerprints were compared by an expert who testified that they matched the prints found on State=s Exhibit No. 4, a pen packet containing a conviction for another offense, and the prints found on State=s Exhibit No. 5, the jail card or buff card that was completed when appellant was booked into jail for Cause No. AF9100777.@ We hold that appellant=s prior convictions were properly established and that the trial court did not err in admitting State=s Exhibit No. 6 into evidence. See Beck v. State, 719 S.W.2d 205, 209 (Tex.Cr.App.1986); Daniel v. State, 585 S.W.2d 688, 690 (Tex.Cr.App.1979). The second point of error is overruled.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
August 1, 2002 W. G. ARNOT, III
Do not publish. See TEX.R.APP.P. 47.3(b). CHIEF JUSTICE
Panel consists of: Arnot, C.J., and
Wright, J., and McCall, J.