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Meyer v. State

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the back seat of a police car.

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The county court at law found appellant Jerry Meyer guilty of driving while intoxicated. See Tex. Pen. Code Ann. � 49.04 (West Supp. 2002). The court assessed punishment at incarceration for forty-five days and a $1500 fine, but suspended imposition of sentence and placed appellant on community supervision. In three points of error, appellant contends the admission of the audio portion of a videotape recording violated the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and both the state and federal wiretapping statutes. We affirm the conviction.

Police officers stopped appellant’s vehicle for excessive speed. After appellant failed field sobriety tests, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated. The officers placed appellant in the back seat of a patrol car after reading him his rights and handcuffing him, then began to search his car. As he sat alone in the patrol car with the doors closed and the windows shut, appellant made oral statements that were recorded by the videotaping equipment in the patrol vehicle. *fn1 Appellant unsuccessfully moved to suppress these statements.

Appellant first argues that the statements were obtained in violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment. U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Fourth Amendment serves to safeguard an individual’s privacy from unreasonable governmental intrusions. Richardson v. State, 865 S.W.2d 944, 948 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993). A defendant may challenge the admission of evidence obtained by governmental intrusion only if he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the place invaded. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143 (1978). A two-pronged test is used to determine if a person had a reasonable expectation of privacy: (1) whether the person’s conduct exhibited a subjective expectation of privacy, and (2) whether the person’s subjective expectation of privacy is one that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S.735, 740 (1979) (citing Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967)); Villarreal v. State, 935 S.W.2d 134, 138 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996).

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