Defendant Entitled to Suppression Hearing Where People Provided No Information About How Defendant Came to the Attention of Law Enforcement Personnel
The First Department determined the defendant’s motion papers, although conclusory, were sufficient to warrant a hearing on whether defendant’s statements should be suppressed. The People had provided no information about how the defendant came to the attention of law enforcement:
Although the People provided defendant with extensive information about the facts of the crime and the proof to be offered at trial, they provided no information whatsoever, at any stage of the proceedings, about how defendant came to be a suspect, and the basis for her arrest, made hours after the crime at a different location. The People never explained, even by implication, whether defendant met a description, was named by a witness familiar with her, or was connected to the crime in some other way. While the People disclosed defendant’s detailed confession, it did not shed any light on how she came to be arrested … .
Accordingly, given defendant’s complete lack of relevant information, that portion of her motion papers alleging a “lack of probable cause to arrest the defendant based on the unreliability of the information provided to the police and/or the insufficiency of the description,” while conclusory, was sufficient to state a basis for suppression and raise a factual issue requiring a hearing … . People v Wynn, 2014 NY Slip Op 03352, 1st Dept 5-8-14