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93 S.W.3d 50

Welch v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas

Decided September 18, 2002

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · decided 2002-09-18

Relies on New York v. Belton

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2002-09-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently December 2020

17 state decisions

90200220102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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WOMACK, J.,

¶1concurring.

¶2I joint the Court’s opinion. I write only to point out that the trial court’s decision to admit the evidence was justified by other laws than the law of consent.

¶3When the officer arrested the appellant, he could search the passenger compartment of the vehicle and containers therein as an incident to the arrest. See New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). This justified the search that led to the discovery of the marihuana and the methamphetamine.

¶4Because the vehicle was used in the commission of possession of methamphetamine, a felony under Chapter 481 of the Health and Safety Code, it was contraband. See Code of Criminal Procedure article 59.01(2)(B)(i). It was, therefore, subject to seizure and forfeiture. See id., article 59.02(a). Specifically, it could be seized without warrant incident to a lawful search incident to arrest. See id., article 59.03(b)(4). The search of the truck-bed in which the larger quantity of controlled substance was found was justifiable as a search of the contraband vehicle.

¶5The officer did more than the law required when he sought consent to search the bed of the truck. The evidence would *60have been admissible if he had not sought, or received, consent.

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