Opinion
No. 05-07-00274-CR
Opinion Filed July 10, 2008. DO NOT PUBLISH Tex. R. App. P. 47
On Appeal from the 282nd Judicial District Court Dallas County, Texas, Trial Court Cause No. F06-66074-S.
Before Justices MORRIS, FITZGERALD, and LANG. Opinion By Justice MORRIS.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
At trial, Candace Roshawn Wyatt pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. She contends in two appellate issues that the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress. We conclude appellant failed to preserve her complaints for appeal and affirm the trial court's judgment. The background of the case and the evidence adduced at trial are well known to the parties, and therefore we limit recitation of the facts. We issue this memorandum opinion pursuant to Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 47.1 because the law to be applied in the case is well settled. A police officer testified that in the weeks before appellant's arrest, he observed the "most traffic [he had] ever seen" coming to and going from appellant's house, a known drug house. The officer testified that he had seen "several people" go in and out of the house through a side door that was within the house's back fence. The fence was approximately six feet tall. On previous occasions, the officer had arrested people for drug possession after they exited the residence through the back fence gate. In the officer's opinion, the side door of the house was the "primary door" used by visitors to the house. On the date of appellant's arrest, the officer followed a man through the gate, which was partially open, to the backyard where the officer "had seen the other people going before." He saw the man standing at the open side door talking to appellant. Appellant was holding a small bag of marijuana and a vial of PCP in her hand. As the officer approached appellant, she dropped the bag of marijuana and threw down the PCP. She then closed the door to the house and began to secure it with boards. Backup police officers arrived to help with entry into the house. As the officer was waiting to enter the house, he could hear the sounds of glass breaking, water running, and people moving throughout the house. In the officer's opinion, the sounds indicated people inside the house were destroying whatever drugs they had. Once the officers forced their way inside, appellant started yelling that they could not come into her house. The police detained her and her brother. In the doorway to a back room of the house an officer found a firearm. In her two issues on appeal, appellant complains the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress evidence from the search of her house. She specifically complains the officer entered her fenced yard where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy and the officer did not observe a felony-level offense that would authorize warrantless entry into her house. To preserve a suppression issue for appeal, a defendant must make a timely objection that states the specific ground of objection, if the specific ground is not apparent from the context. A general or imprecise objection may be sufficient to preserve error for appeal only if the legal basis for the objection is obvious to the court and to opposing counsel. See Buchanan v. State, 207 S.W.3d 772, 775 (Tex.Crim.App. 2006); see also Tex. R. App. P. 33.1. In appellant's case, counsel argued only the following at the suppression hearing:
Your Honor, this is a warrantless search placing the burden on the government to justify the entry to the house. And it's our assertion that the police viewed no criminal activity or suspicious activity prior to entering and had no consent to enter. And that the search was, therefore, illegal.When the trial court overruled appellant's motion at the hearing, she offered no additional argument to justify suppression of the evidence. Appellant's written motion to suppress was broad and contained no complaints relating to the officer's entry into the fenced yard or failure to observe a felony before entering the house. We see no evidence in the record showing that the legal bases for appellant's objections on appeal were obvious to the court and opposing counsel at the suppression hearing. We therefore conclude appellant has forfeited her two appellate complaints. We resolve her two issues against her. We affirm the trial court's judgment.