# Bower v. State

> Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · January 25, 1989 · 769 S.W.2d 887

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9857828

## Case

- **Full name:** Lester Leroy BOWER, Jr., Appellant, v. the STATE of Texas, Appellee
- **Court:** Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
- **Decided:** January 25, 1989
- **Citations:** 769 S.W.2d 887; 1989 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 6; 1989 WL 4325
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Clinton
- **Judges:** McCormick, Clinton, Miller, Duncan, Campbell, Teague
- **Cited by:** 271 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Overruled on other grounds by Heitman v. State, 1991 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 160 (1991).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9857828

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding substantial basis for issuance of warrant to search for evidence of murder committed more than three months earlier when that evidence was in defendant‘s possession seven days prior to warrant‘s issuance
- observing that, generally, "anyone [may] openly and peaceably" approach the front door of a residence "with the honest intent of asking questions of the occupant thereof — whether the questioner be a pollster, a salesman, or an officer of the law"
- finding officers did not conduct a search when they approached defendants’s front door by the only means of access — a driveway— and observed stolen items through uncur-tained windows in the garage
- holding that what person knowingly exposes to public, even in his own home, is not search subject to Fourth Amendment protection

## Opinion text

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
Anent point of error four, the opinion of the Court is anticlimatic: In Eisenhauer v. State, 754 S.W.2d 159 (Tex.Cr.App.1988), *909 a majority finally managed “to stay in step with the federal constitutional model for probable cause determinations,” id., at 164 . For the reasons developed in my dissenting opinion in that cause, id., at 166 ff, and also in my concurring opinion in Brown v. State, 657 S.W.2d 797 , 799 ff, such close order is a drill repugnant to our forebear-ers.
To yet another assault on the sovereignty of this State, I dissent.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9857828. Public record. Not legal advice.