TX: What does state need to raise when it appeals a suppression order?

An interesting opinion on appellate practice: The issue here: Whether the state waived one of its two arguments for sustaining a search by not appealing it. The court concludes it did not. Remanded. State v. Young, 2026 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 326 (May 14, 2026)*:

In this case, the court of appeals made the foundational mistake of conflating independent grounds for seeking relief from a judgment with independent grounds for supporting a judgment. At the suppression hearing, the State made two independent arguments for admitting evidence obtained pursuant to an officer-citizen encounter: (1) the encounter was consensual until the officer developed reasonable suspicion to detain, and (2) the officer was acting in accordance with a community-caretaking function until the officer developed reasonable suspicion to detain. After the trial court rejected both arguments, the State appealed, raising only the consensual-encounter argument. The court of appeals concluded that the State should have raised both arguments and that, because it did not raise the community-caretaking argument, the State failed to challenge every independent basis for upholding the trial court’s decision. As a result of this reasoning, the court of appeals refused to address the State’s consensual-encounter argument. But the court of appeals was mistaken: the State’s two trial arguments were independent bases for attacking the trial court’s suppression ruling, not independent bases for supporting it.

The State is now complaining about that mistake, and Appellee concedes that the court of appeals made this mistake. We reverse the court of appeals’s decision and remand the case to that court to address the State’s point of error.

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