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Arrests In Texas’S “Suspicious Places”: A Rule In Search Of Reason, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

When article 14.03(a)(1) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure first appeared in Texas law, landmark decisions like Terry v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona were more than a century in the future. Nevertheless, a current exception to Texas's arrest warrant requirement can be traced directly to a virtually identical statute from those pre-Civil War days.

It is a small wonder that today's courts find this statute confusing; and confusion, whether advertent or inadvertent, invites result-oriented, illogical, or unpersuasive judicial decisions. Courts' attempts to make sense of article 14.03(a)(1) arguably have failed in each of these ways over the statute's …