Methamphetamine Shake and Bake Case Shakes Out for Defendant at Fort Worth Court of Appeals

 Yesterday the Texas Court of Appeals at Fort Worth held for the defendant in a warrantless-entry methamphetamine manufacturing case out of Weatherford, in Parker County. The police went ahead and entered the defendant's home, pending their warrant application, on the basis that a confidential informant indicated that the defendant was soon going to be cooking a batch of methamphetamine using the dangerous "shake and bake" method. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals held that all of the evidence against the defendant had to be excluded under the Texas Exclusionary Rule.

With certain exceptions, police have to obtain a search warrant even if there is probable cause to conduct a search of a home. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals held in yesterday's case that there was no "exigent circumstances" exception because the situation did not require "now or never" action by the police to prevent "imminent" destruction of evidence. For the exception to apply, the situation must already be urgent. Lawyer office in Georgia. The Court seemed to chide the prosecutors for suggesting that exigent circumstances exist per se in cases involving methamphetamine laboratories; regardless of the type of activity, all defendants are entitled to a case-by-case constitutional analysis.

The Court also addressed the "independent source doctrine," which excuses illegal police conduct when there was sufficient information for a warrant before the illegal entry. When the independent source exception applies in federal court, it defeats the federal court exclusionary rule, because the federal rule is not a mandatory law, like it is in Texas.

The State argued in yesterday's case that the highest criminal appeals court in Texas, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, has impliedly adopted the federal independent source doctrine, but the Fort Worth Court of Appeals disagreed. The closely related federal exclusionary rule doctrine of "inevitable discovery" has not been held to apply in Texas; it applies in situations where the police would have obtained evidence separately from violating the defendant's rights.

This is the type of case with broad implications that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is likely to accept on discretionary review. The Court would address whether it really has adopted the independent source doctrine for Texas cases. Deciding that question would also involve direct consideration of the status of the closely related inevitable discovery doctrine in Texas.