THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v STEPHEN A. WEEKES, Appellant.
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, Third Department
52 AD3d 1032 | 860 NYS2d 278
[860 NYS2d 278]
Kavanagh, J. Appeal from a judgment of the County Court of Broome County (Mathews, J.), rendered August 3, 2006, convicting defendant upon his plea of guilty of the crime of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree.
At approximately 6:25 p.m. on June 22, 2005, Sergeant Christopher Bracco, a supervisor assigned to the street level Drug Interdiction Unit of the Binghamton Police Department, was in a marked patrol car when he saw defendant and another individual walking toward the rear of a building that had been targeted by the police department as the focus of increased criminal activity. Bracco drove to the rear of the building where he found defendant among a group of people gathered on a rear porch. Defendant approached Bracco’s vehicle and told the officer that an unidentified individual had stolen $5 from him and had run inside the building. Bracco questioned the other individuals on the porch, all of whom denied seeing anyone take any property from defendant. Based on that information, Bracco concluded that defendant had filed a false complaint about being a victim of a theft and radioed police headquarters for assistance.
Defendant moved to suppress the cocaine found in the patrol vehicle. After a suppression hearing, County Court concluded that the police officers had taken custody of defendant when they had initially placed him in the patrol car and, at that moment, had probable cause to arrest him for the crime of falsely reporting an incident. Based on that determination, the court found that the cocaine had been seized as an incident to a lawful arrest and denied defendant’s motion to suppress. Thereafter, defendant pleaded guilty to the crime of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, in full satisfaction of all charges contained in the indictment, but did not waive his right to appeal. Defendant was sentenced as a second felony of
Initially, we agree with County Court that the police took custody of defendant when they placed him in the patrol car at the outset of their inquiry into the reported theft. However, we find merit to defendant’s argument that the circumstances surrounding the police taking defendant into custody did not provide probable cause to believe that defendant had falsely reported an incident (see
Bracco, when he first saw defendant, observed him with another individual who had not been identified. Prior to placing defendant in the patrol car, no effort was made to identify this individual, nor was any attempt made to search the building to verify defendant’s claim (see People v Carrasquillo, 54 NY2d at 252). Moreover, there appears to be no reason for defendant to have fabricated this claim nor anything in his actions after that point that would have given Bracco reasonable cause to believe that defendant had committed that crime. In fact, while defendant admitted to being in the area to purchase marihuana, not once did he renounce his claim that money had been stolen from him and that he had been the victim of a crime (see People v Wharton, 60 AD2d 291, 295 [1977], affd 46 NY2d 924 [1979], cert denied 444 US 880 [1979]). Accordingly, we must conclude that defendant’s arrest was without a legal basis.
However, suppression of the cocaine was not required here because defendant’s actions in placing the cocaine behind the headrest of the police car constituted an abandonment by him of any possessory interest in the contraband as well as the loss of any expectation of privacy that he may otherwise have had in terms of the location of this property (see People v Ramirez-Portoreal, 88 NY2d 99, 110 [1996]; People v Boodle, 47 NY2d 398, 404 [1979], cert denied 444 US 969 [1979]). And the fact that he was illegally detained at the time this cocaine was found in the rear of the patrol car does not command a different result. Even if illegally detained, a defendant would still be deemed to have abandoned property if it “was discarded as the product of
Mercure, J.P., Peters, Carpinello and Rose, JJ., concur.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.