PD-0969-17
COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS
AUSTIN, TEXAS
Transmitted 10/5/2017 4:06 PM
Accepted 10/6/2017 10:31 AM
DEANA WILLIAMSON
NO. PD-0969-17 CLERK
IN THE FILED
COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS
COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS 10/6/2017
OF TEXAS DEANA WILLIAMSON, CLERK
AT AUSTIN
_________________________
THE STATE OF TEXAS,
Appellant
v.
RANDY DALE ADAMS,
Appellee
_________________________
On appeal in Cause No. F14-34086-K
from the Criminal District Court #4
Of Dallas County, Texas
And on Petition for Discretionary Review from
the Fifth District of Texas at Dallas
In Cause No. 05-16-01045-CR
_________________________
APPELLEE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW
_________________________
Counsel of Record:
Alison Grinter
State Bar No. 24043476
633 West Davis Street, Ste. 1017
Dallas, Texas 75208
(214) 704-6400 (phone)
alisongrinter@gmail.com
ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONER/APPELLEE
LIST OF PARTIES
TRIAL COURT JUDGE
Dominique Collins – Criminal District Court No. 4
APPELLANT
The State of Texas
APPELLEE
Randy Dale Adams
DEFENSE COUNSEL AT TRIAL
Alison Grinter
633 West Davis Street, Ste. 1017
Dallas, Texas 75208
Douglas Huff
Dallas County Public Defender’s Office
133 North Riverfront Boulevard LB-9
Dallas, Texas 7520
ON APPEAL
Alison Grinter
STATE’S ATTORNEYS AT TRIAL
Blake Reyna
Dallas County District Attorney’s Office
Frank Crowley Courts Building
133 N. Riverfront Blvd., LB-19
Dallas, Texas 75207-4399
ON APPEAL
Faith Johnson, District Attorney
Brian P. Higginbotham
Dallas County District Attorney’s Office
Frank Crowley Courts Building
133 N. Riverfront Blvd., LB-19
Dallas, Texas 75207-4399
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF PARTIES ................................................................................................... ii
INDEX OF AUTHORITIES ....................................................................................iv
STATEMENT REGARDING ORAL ARGUMENT ............................................... 1
STATEMENT OF THE CASE ................................................................................. 1
STATEMENT OF THE PROCEDURAL HISTORY OF THE CASE .................... 1
STATEMENT OF FACTS ........................................................................................ 2
GROUNDS FOR REVIEW ....................................................................................... 2
ARGUMENT ............................................................................................................. 3
Ground One................................................................................................................ 3
The issue of a hotel guest’s reasonable expectation of privacy in
his own hotel registration is a novel question of law that has not
been, but should be decided by the Court of Criminal Appeals. ..................... 3
Ground Two ............................................................................................................... 4
The Court of Appeals’ decision reversing the trial court’s order
granting Petitioner’s motion to suppress evidence conflicts with
decisions of the United States Supreme Court. ............................................... 4
Ground Three ............................................................................................................. 6
The court of appeals’ failure to grant Appellee’s motion to dismiss
the State’s appeal for want of jurisdiction has so far departed from
the usual and accepted course of judicial proceedings as to call for
an exercise of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ power of
supervision. ...................................................................................................... 6
PRAYER FOR RELIEF ............................................................................................ 7
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE .................................................................................. 7
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE ......................................................................... 8
iii
INDEX OF AUTHORITIES
Cases
City of Los Angeles v. Patel,
135 S. Ct. 2443 (2015) ......................................................................................5
Ford v. State,
477 S.W.3d 321 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) ..........................................................3
Hankston v. State,
517 S.W.3d 112 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017) ..........................................................3
Katz,
389 U. S. 347 (1967) .........................................................................................6
Love v. State,
No. AP-77, 024 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016) (slip opinion available at 2016 Tex.
Crim. App. LEXIS 1445) ..................................................................................4
Muller,
829 S.W.2d 805 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) ..........................................................7
Smith v. Maryland,
442 U. S. 735 (1979) .....................................................................................5, 6
State v. Adams,
No. 05-16-01045-CR, 2017 Tex. App. (Tex. App.—Dallas August 3, 2017)
(not designated for publication) ........................................................................1
State v. Muller,
829 S.W.2d 805 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) ..........................................................6
State v. Shelton,
830 S.W.2d 605 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) ..........................................................6
United States v. Miller,
425 U. S. 435 (1976) .........................................................................................5
US v. Jones,
132 S. Ct 945 (2012) .........................................................................................5
Statutes
TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 44.01(a)(5)...............................................................1
TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 44.01(d) ...................................................................6
TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 44.01(i) ....................................................................6
iv
TO THE HONORABLE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS:
Randy Dale Adams, Appellee, respectfully presents to this Honorable Court
his Petition for Discretionary Review of the Fifth District Court of Appeals’
Opinion reversing the trial court’s order.
STATEMENT REGARDING ORAL ARGUMENT
Appellee requests oral argument because this case presents a question of law
on an issue having statewide impact and possible reoccurrence. Oral argument may
be helpful to the members of this Court in the resolution of the issue presented.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellee was charged by indictment with the state jail felony offense of
possession of a controlled substance. (CR: 7). The trial court granted Appellee’s
motion to suppress. (CR: 6; CR: 24; 2RR: 24). The State appealed pursuant to TEX.
CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 44.01(a)(5). (CR: 28). The State’s Notice of Appeal was
signed by the First Assistant District Attorney of Dallas County in the absence of
the elected District Attorney, Susan Hawk. (CR: 28, 29).
STATEMENT OF THE PROCEDURAL HISTORY OF THE CASE
On August 3, 2017, in an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals for the
Fifth District of Texas reversed the trial court’s order granting the motion to
suppress. State v. Adams, No. 05-16-01045-CR, 2017 Tex. App. (Tex. App.—
Dallas August 3, 2017) (not designated for publication). (See Appendix). No
1
motion for rehearing was filed. An extension of time to file was granted by this
Court, and this Petition is timely if filed on or before October 5, 2017.
STATEMENT OF FACTS
On July 10, 2014, two officers from the Irving Police Department,
responding to no call, no disturbance, and with no individualized suspicion of any
criminal activity whatsoever, requested the entire current hotel registry from the
Motel 6 in Irving. The front desk clerk turned over the registry as requested by the
uniformed officers. The officers took the entire hotel registry back to their car and
began searching the names listed against their database. When they came across
the name of Randy Dale Adams, they found that Mr. Adams had misdemeanor
warrants. The officers then went to the room listed for Mr. Adams and his lady
friend, and arrested Mr. Adams as he emerged from the shower wrapped in a
towel. They also found a small quantity of methamphetamine in the bathroom. Mr.
Adams’s motion to suppress the seized evidence was granted after a hearing in
which one of the two officers testified, and the State’s sole argument was that the
Defendant lacked standing to complain about any police intrusion into the hotel
registry.
GROUNDS FOR REVIEW
Ground One: The issue of a hotel guest’s reasonable expectation
of privacy in his own hotel registration is a novel question of law
that has not been, but should be decided by the Court of Criminal
Appeals.
2
Ground Two: The Court of Appeals’ decision reversing the trial
court’s order granting Petitioner’s motion to suppress evidence
conflicts with decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
Ground Three: The court of appeals’ failure to grant Appellee’s
motion to dismiss the State’s appeal for want of jurisdiction has so
far departed from the usual and accepted course of judicial
proceedings as to call for an exercise of the Court of Criminal
Appeals’ power of supervision.
ARGUMENT
Ground One
The issue of a hotel guest’s reasonable expectation of privacy in his own hotel
registration is a novel question of law that has not been, but should be decided by
the Court of Criminal Appeals.
The Court of Appeals decision is an improper expansion of the Third Party
Doctrine past the limits of any of its prior applications, both because of the
sensitivity of the information sought, and because it was sought here without any
individualized suspicion whatsoever.
Texas courts have not examined the issue of an individual’s right to expect
privacy in his or her hotel registration information. The Court of Appeals reversed
the trial court’s order entirely on the basis of the Third Party Doctrine, i.e. the hotel
registry was comprised of information in the possession of a third party motel
office. Citing Hankston v. State, 517 S.W.3d 112, 117 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017) and
Ford v. State, 477 S.W.3d 321, 328 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015), the Court found that
Adams had no expectation of privacy in that record. However, Hankston and Ford
3
dealt with targeted investigations into cell site location information obtained by
court order, not suspicionless fishing expeditions, as is the case here. Additionally,
this Court has found that the Third Party Doctrine is not absolute, and that it is
limited by an individual citizen’s legitimate privacy interests. See Love v. State,
No. AP-77,024 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016) (slip opinion available at 2016 Tex. Crim.
App. LEXIS 1445).
The limits of the Third Party Doctrine are at the forefront of our Fourth
Amendment jurisprudence in the digital age because so much of a modern person’s
life, which would have previously been unquestionably private, is disclosed, in one
way or another, to third parties who may not share the individual’s interest in the
privacy of that information. Whether police officers in Texas should be allowed to
request that information under the color of authority, and aggregate, maintain, and
use it without any individualized suspicion is a question of law that should be
handled by the Court of Criminal Appeals. This is a case that allows the Court to
address the issue in a way that is not married to a particularly specific or arcane set
of technical facts.
Ground Two
The Court of Appeals’ decision reversing the trial court’s order granting
Petitioner’s motion to suppress evidence conflicts with decisions of the United States
Supreme Court.
4
Although the Court does not reach the issue specifically in City of Los
Angeles v. Patel, because the city ordinance at issue fails on the city’s stated
purpose, the opinion discusses that a suspicionless request for a hotel registry as
likely illegal because it would constitute “harassment of hotel guests.” City of Los
Angeles v. Patel, 135 S. Ct. 2443, 2453 (2015). This implied recognition of a
privacy right for a hotel guest in his name on the hotel register is born out in the
briefs in Patel, which show a bubbling concern for the use of the statute allowing
for on-demand searches of registries as a pretext for an unconstitutional tool that
police can use as an end-around of the warrant requirement to investigate crime. Id.
This case is exactly the fact pattern anticipated in the Supreme Court’s opinion in
Patel.
Further, Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in US v. Jones, 132 S. Ct 945, 957
(2012) spells out a genuine concern for the blind application of the Third Party
Doctrine in situations just like the one in the case at bar.
More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise
that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in
information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. E.g., Smith, 442 U.
S., at 742; United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 443 (1976). This
approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great
deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of
carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that
they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit
and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet
service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they
purchase to online retailers. Perhaps, as Justice Alito notes, some
people may find the “tradeoff” of privacy for convenience
5
“worthwhile,” or come to accept this “diminution of privacy” as
“inevitable,” post,at 10, and perhaps not. I for one doubt that people
would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the
Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last
week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they
can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth
Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for
privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed
to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason
alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection. See Smith, 442 U.
S., at 749 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (“Privacy is not a discrete
commodity, possessed absolutely or not at all. Those who disclose
certain facts to a bank or phone company for a limited business
purpose need not assume that this information will be released to
other persons for other purposes”); see also Katz, 389 U. S., at 351–
352 (“[W]hat [a person] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area
accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected”).
Ground Three
The court of appeals’ failure to grant Appellee’s motion to dismiss the State’s
appeal for want of jurisdiction has so far departed from the usual and accepted
course of judicial proceedings as to call for an exercise of the Court of Criminal
Appeals’ power of supervision.
The State’s notice of appeal was insufficient to confer jurisdiction on the
Court of Appeals because (1) the record is clear that an elected district attorney did
not sign the State's notice of appeal, and (2) the notice of appeal, on its face, failed
to clearly show that an elected district attorney “personally, expressly and
specifically” gave an “explicit instruction” for the First Assistant to sign the State's
notice of appeal. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. arts. 44.01(d), 44.01(i); State v. Shelton,
830 S.W.2d 605, 606 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992); State v. Muller, 829 S.W.2d 805,
809-12 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992), 810 n.5, 812. As the State failed to satisfy the
6
narrow requirements of Article 44.01 necessary to invoke the Court of Appeals’
jurisdiction, the Court should here intervene and overturn the Court of Appeals’
extrajurisdictional opinion. Muller, 829 S.W.2d at 811.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
For the reasons herein alleged, Appellee prays this Court grant this petition
and, upon reviewing the judgment entered below, reverse the opinion of the Dallas
Court of Appeals and affirm the trial court’s order granting Appellee’s motion to
suppress.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Alison Grinter
Alison Grinter
State Bar No. 24043476
633 West Davis Street, Ste. 1017
Dallas, Texas 75208
(214) 704-6400 (phone)
alisongrinter@gmail.com
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that on the 5th day of October, 2017, a true copy of the
foregoing petition for discretionary review was served on Lori Ordiway, Assistant
District Attorney, Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, 133 N.
Riverfront Blvd., LB-19, 10th Floor, Dallas, Texas, 75207, by electronic delivery;
and was also served on, Lisa C. McMinn, State Prosecuting Attorney, P.O. Box
13046, Austin, Texas, 78711 by electronic delivery and by depositing same in the
United States Mail, Postage Prepaid.
/s/ Alison Grinter
Alison Grinter
7
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE
I certify that the foregoing Petition for Discretionary Review contains 1,423
words.
/s/ Alison Grinter
Alison Grinter
8
APPENDIX
REVERSE and REMAND; and Opinion Filed August 3, 2017.
S In The
Court of Appeals
Fifth District of Texas at Dallas
No. 05-16-01045-CR
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellant
V.
RANDY DALE ADAMS, Appellee
On Appeal from the Criminal District Court No. 4
Dallas County, Texas
Trial Court Cause No. F14-34086-K
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Before Justices Francis, Brown, and Schenck
Opinion by Justice Brown
The State of Texas appeals an order granting Randy Dale Adams’s motion to suppress
evidence. In a single issue, the State contends the trial court abused its discretion in granting
Adams’s motion. Because we agree, we reverse the trial court’s order and remand for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
On July 10, 2014, Irving police officers went to a Motel 6 and requested a copy of its
guest registry. The motel manager voluntarily gave the officers the registry. The officers then
checked the names on the registry for warrants. As a result, police discovered Adams was
staying at the motel and also that he had a warrant for his arrest. Police knocked on his motel
room door and asked for consent to search the room. Adams consented and police found
methamphetamine.
Adams filed a motion to suppress complaining that the investigation that enabled police
to locate him violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution
and Article 1, Section 9 of the Texas Constitution. The trial court granted Adams’s motion. In a
single issue, the State contends the trial court erred in granting the motion to suppress because
Adams had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the hotel registry. We agree.
The Fourth Amendment and Article 1, Section 9 protects individuals from unreasonable
searches and seizures. See U.S. Const. amend. IV; Tex. Const. art. 1, § 9; see also Ex parte
Moore, 395 S.W.3d 152, 158 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013). The purpose of both provisions is to
safeguard an individual’s legitimate expectation of privacy from unreasonable governmental
intrusions. Hankston v. State, 517 S.W.3d 112, 117 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). Under the third-
party doctrine, police are not prohibited from obtaining information revealed to third parties,
even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited
purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed. Smith v. Maryland,
442 U.S. 735, 477 (1979); Hankston, 517 S.W.3d at 117; Ford v. State, 477 S.W.3d 321, 328
(Tex. Crim. App. 2015).
Adams’s motion to suppress was based on his contention that he had a reasonable
expectation of privacy in the motel registry. However, the only information contained on the
registry was information Adams revealed to a third party, the motel. Adams had no reasonable
expectation of privacy in that information. Hankston, 517 S.W.3d at 117; Ford, 477 S.W.3d at
329. We therefore conclude the trial court abused its discretion in granting Adams’s motion to
suppress.
–2–
We reverse the trial court’s order and remand for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
/Ada Brown/
ADA BROWN
JUSTICE
Do Not Publish
TEX. R. APP. P. 47.2(b)
161045F.U05
–3–
S
Court of Appeals
Fifth District of Texas at Dallas
JUDGMENT
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellant On Appeal from the Criminal District Court
No. 4 of Dallas County, Texas
No. 05-16-01045-CR V. Trial Court Cause No. F14-34086-K.
Opinion delivered by Justice Brown. Justices
RANDY DALE ADAMS, Appellee Francis and Schenck participating.
Based on the Court’s opinion of this date, the trial court’s order granting Randy Dale
Adams’s motion to suppress is REVERSED and this cause is REMANDED to the trial court for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Judgment entered this 3rd day of August, 2017.
–4–