People v. HawkinsPeople v. Hawkins
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Carol Berkman, J.), rendered November 14, 2007, convicting defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and sentencing him to a term of 3 1/2 years, unanimously affirmed.
The court properly denied defendant‘s suppression motion. Defendant argued only that the pistol found in the trunk of his car should be suppressed as the fruit of an unlawful arrest, and that claim was without merit because he was at the very least lawfully arrested for driving with a suspended license. Defendant failed to argue, as he does on appeal, that the search of the car was not a lawful search incident to arrest or a lawful search under the automobile exception (see Arizona v Gant, 556 US 332 [2009]). As a result, the People were never placed on notice of any need to develop the record as to these issues, or to otherwise establish the validity of the search, including by presenting evidence that defendant may have consented to the search (see People v Martin, 50 NY2d 1029 [1980]; People v Tutt, 38 NY2d 1011 [1976]; People v Jimenez, 109 AD3d 764 [1st Dept 2013]).
While the prosecutor and court briefly alluded to the search of the car, the court specifically noted that defendant had focused on the issue of probable cause for the arrest, and that as a result, the record regarding the circumstances of the search had not been fully developed. Thus, the court did not “expressly decide [ ]” the issue “in response to a protest by a party” (