HERNANDEZ, ISRAEL GARCIA v. the State of Texas

In the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
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No. PD-0176-25
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ISRAEL GARCIA HERNANDEZ, Appellant

v.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

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On Appellant’s Petition for Discretionary Review
From the Thirteenth Court of Appeals
Willacy County
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YEARY, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

I join Judge Parker’s dissenting opinion. There is no dispute
about the meaning of “reasonable suspicion” in this case. The jury
charge accurately defined it for the jury: “‘Reasonable suspicion’
means facts known to the officer that would lead a reasonable law
enforcement officer to reasonably suspect that a specific person has
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engaged in criminal activity, is engaging in criminal activity, or is about
to engage in such activity.” Moreover, “[i]t is enough to satisfy . . .
reasonable suspicion that the information [known to the officer] is
sufficiently detailed and reliable—i.e., it supports more than an
inarticulate hunch or intuition—to suggest that something of an
apparently criminal nature is brewing.” Derichsweiler v. State, 348
S.W.3d 906, 917 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011).
The court of appeals identified sufficiently detailed and reliable
information to satisfy this standard:
Officer Garcia testified that although appellant was
not driving a Chevy Silverado, he was driving a truck; his
truck was the only vehicle in the very rural area; the truck
was “in the vicinity that the caller had advised” and “in
close proximity to” the mailbox of the 911 caller; the truck
“was the only vehicle out there in the dirt road”; and there
had been “a lot of incidences of human smuggling” in that
area. The jury was allowed to consider Officer Garcia’s
experience and specialized training to make inferences
from and deductions about the cumulative information
available to him that might well elude an untrained person
such as his knowledge of the human trafficking in that area.
* * * Officer Garcia may have relied on the 911 caller’s use
of the term “suspicious” and inferred that the caller
suspected that the driver of the truck appeared to be
engaged in criminal activity or would soon be engaged in
criminal activity. See Derichsweiler, 348 S.W.3d at 917.
Furthermore, the jury may have reasonably inferred that
Officer Garcia properly determined that criminal activity
was afoot based on appellant’s proximity to the 911 caller’s
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mailbox late at night after the 911 caller saw a suspicious
truck driving slowly by his rural residence. See id. at 914.
Officer Garcia was not required to articulate that a
particular crime had occurred. See id. Instead, the State
needed to merely provide evidence showing beyond a
reasonable doubt that Officer Garcia had a reasonable
suspicion that criminal activity may be afoot. See id. 1

Hernandez v. State, No. 13-24-00036-CR, 2025 WL 555779, at *3 (Tex.
App.—Corpus Christi, Feb. 20, 2025) (mem. op., not designated for

1
The majority claims that Appellant’s proximity to the caller’s mailbox or
address should not be taken into consideration because there is no testimony to
support the fact that “Appellant’s truck was observed at any time by Garcia to be
close to the caller’s house or mailbox.” Majority Opinion at 12. However, Officer
Garcia was asked when he was on the witness stand: “when you arrived, what did
you see?” He responded: “I observed a vehicle on a dirt road in close proximity to the
residence.” RR Vol. 3, p. 21 (emphasis added). It seems to me that the majority just
disagrees with Garcia’s idea of what constitutes “close proximity.” And moreover,
what constitutes “close proximity[,]” except in the most extreme circumstance,
should be left as a question for the jury to resolve. The Court should not simply take
that question from the jury and shout in its opinion deciding this case: “No, it
wasn’t close!” Also, Garcia later responded affirmatively to the question: “Based
on that area, did you know whether it was likely that she [the caller] would have
seen . . . a vehicle where Defendant’s vehicle was seen?” Based on Garcia’s
affirmative response to this question, a jury could have reasonably inferred that
Appellant was close to the caller’s address, and hence, her mailbox when Garcia
first saw him. And, only a few questions later, Garcia was asked “if 30 minutes later,
a vehicle is still kind of driving in the area, how does that play into your analysis?”
RR Vol. 3, p. 82. To which Garcia responded, saying: “by me observing a vehicle
still in the area, in the same vicinity, as the caller had stated, that is reasonable
suspicion for me to attempt to make contact with the occupants of the vehicle[.]”
RR Vol. 3, p. 83-84. Thus, in contrast to the Court’s chosen negative view of the
evidence, it was indeed acceptable for the court of appeals to include Appellant’s
proximity to the caller’s address and mailbox in its sufficiency analysis, viewing the
evidence in the light most favorable to the jury verdict.
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publication).
In overturning the court of appeals’ judgment, the majority
seems to parse out each fact and then to state that, alone, each fact
would not support a jury’s rational finding that the detention was
lawful. See Majority Opinion at 13 (“Officer Garcia himself testified,
driving a truck slowly on a dirt road at night is not on its own suggestive
of criminal activity.”); id. at 18−19 (“Like in Arguellez, there was
nothing ‘unusual, suspicious, or criminal’ about an individual driving
slowly on a dirt road at night.”); id. at 19−20 (“To the extent that the
State relies on Officer Garcia’s personal knowledge that this particular
area was known for human trafficking, that argument is not persuasive.
If that were sufficient, any vehicle driving slowly in an area with known
activity of human trafficking could be detained on suspicion that that
vehicle was engaged in human trafficking.”); id. at 20 (“And the 9-1-1
call does not move the needle: all it describes is a ‘suspicious’ vehicle
but provides no indication that human trafficking was at play.”).
Thus, the majority seems to highlight each inconsistent fact that
might undercut the conclusion that the officer developed reasonable
suspicion sufficient to detain Appellant. However, this is not consistent
with our clearly defined standard of review for analyzing legal
sufficiency of the evidence. See Zuniga v. State, 551 S.W.3d 729, 733
(Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (courts reviewing legal sufficiency “must not
engage in a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy but must consider the
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cumulative force of all the evidence”). The appropriate standard of
review requires the consideration of all the evidence in light most
favorable to the jury’s verdict—not each piece of evidence evaluated
individually and in a light most likely to undermine the jury’s verdict.
Id. at 732. The focus should be on what the evidence does show—
cumulatively, not on the weaknesses of individual and isolated pieces of
evidence or on what might be missing. Murray v. State, 457 S.W.3d 446,
448 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) (“‘appellate courts are not permitted to
use a “divide and conquer” strategy for evaluating sufficiency of the
evidence’ because that approach does not consider the cumulative force
of all the evidence.”). The court of appeals conducted an appropriate
analysis, and this Court should not second-guess it.
It is also arguable that the majority is mistaken to rely on Long v.
State, 535 S.W.3d 511 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017), as authority for the
proposition that our review of the jury’s reasonable suspicion
determination should be de novo. The Court in Long was endeavoring to
construe statutory language, and to then assess whether, by a proper
understanding of that statutory language, the evidence in that case was
sufficient to allow the jury to draw the required conclusions about the
defendant’s guilt. Id. at 520. Of course, the proper construction of the
statute at issue in Long was a pure question of law, subject to our de novo
review. Here, in contrast, the definition of reasonable suspicion is
undisputed; what is in dispute is simply whether the facts in their
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totality are sufficient to meet that definition. There is no statute that
needs to be interpreted. Thus, this is not a purely legal question, as in
Long, but a mixed question of law and fact.
In the context of a pretrial motion to suppress based upon a claim
that reasonable suspicion to detain is lacking, such a mixed question of
law and fact is subject to de novo review on appeal—at least once all
questions of historical fact and credibility have been resolved in the light
most favorable to the convicting court’s ruling. E.g., Derichsweiler, 348
S.W.3d at 913. But the same is not necessarily true when reviewing
courts examine the legal sufficiency of the evidence to show reasonable
suspicion (and therefore a lawful detention) for purposes of a
prosecution for evading arrest.
In the context of legal sufficiency of the evidence following a jury
trial, this Court’s prior decisions have recognized that reviewing courts
must afford some degree of latitude to jurors in applying the law to the
facts. See Vernon v. State, 841 S.W.2d 407, 409 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992)
(“Words not specifically defined by the Legislature are to be
understood as ordinary usage allows, and jurors may thus freely read
statutory language to have any meaning which is acceptable in common
parlance. Accordingly, when determining the sufficiency of evidence to
support a jury verdict, reviewing courts must not employ definitions of
relevant statutory words which are different or more restrictive than the
jurors themselves were legally entitled to use.”).
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Here, “reasonable suspicion” was defined for the jury in the jury
charge using non-technical terms. It is arguable that we owe greater
deference to a jury’s assessment of “reasonable suspicion” in a legal
sufficiency context than we would owe to a convicting court judge in the
context of its ruling on a motion to suppress. The kind of de novo
appellate review of a trial judge’s assessment of “reasonable suspicion”
(once it has resolved all issues of credibility and historical fact)
appropriate in a pretrial motion to suppress context may be
inappropriate in appellate review of a jury’s determination whether
“reasonable suspicion” existed in deciding the elemental question:
whether a detention was “lawful” in an evading arrest prosecution. The
Court may need to explain why it is not paying greater deference to the
jury’s “reasonable suspicion” determination in this case.
I agree with Judge Parker—and Presiding Judge Schenck—that
the court of appeals judgment should be affirmed. And I am
disappointed in the Court for what seems to me to be its usurpation of
the appropriate authority of a jury of our state’s citizens in determining
the Appellant’s guilt for evading detention. For these reasons, and for
the other reasons I have set out in this opinion as well, I respectfully
dissent.

FILED: December 19, 2025
PUBLISH