The Third Department determined meth-lab evidence and defendant’s Mirandized statements should have been suppressed. The police were called to an apartment and heard the sounds of a physical altercation inside. The police opened the unlocked door and separated the two men who were fighting. Defendant then came out the bathroom and was asked to sit down. The officers heard someone in the back bedroom which defendant rented. Defendant told the police his wife was in the back bedroom. The officers knocked on the locked bedroom door and defendant’s wife said she had to get dressed. She then came out of the bedroom into the living room. One of officers smelled a chemical odor in the back bedroom, went in, lifted up a shirt and found the meth lab equipment. The Third Department held that a protective sweep of the back bedroom was not justified (the concurrence disagreed). In addition the Third Department determined the People did not demonstrate defendant’s Mirandized statements were sufficiently attenuated from the improper questioning of the defendant at the apartment. With regard to the protective sweep, the court wrote:
… [T]he question is whether, on these facts, the officers were entitled to enter and look under clothing in defendant’s bedroom as part of a protective sweep, which “is a quick and limited search of premises . . . conducted to protect the safety of police officers or others. It is narrowly confined to a cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding” … . Recognizing the dangers faced by police officers who enter homes, the Supreme Court of the United States has held that officers may, “as a precautionary matter and without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, look in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched” … . Beyond that precautionary measure, the Court held that, to conduct a further protective sweep, “there must be articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene” … . People v Harris, 2016 NY Slip Op 05670, 3rd Dept 7-28-16
CRIMINAL LAW (PROTECTIVE SWEEP WHICH UNCOVERED METH LAB NOT JUSTIFIED; MIRANDIZED STATEMENTS NOT SUFFICIENTLY ATTENUATED FROM IMPROPER QUESTIONING; SUPPRESSION SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/SUPPRESSION (PROTECTIVE SWEEP WHICH UNCOVERED METH LAB NOT JUSTIFIED; MIRANDIZED STATEMENTS NOT SUFFICIENTLY ATTENUATED FROM IMPROPER QUESTIONING; SUPPRESSION SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/SEARCH AND SEIZURE (PROTECTIVE SWEEP WHICH UNCOVERED METH LAB NOT JUSTIFIED; MIRANDIZED STATEMENTS NOT SUFFICIENTLY ATTENUATED FROM IMPROPER QUESTIONING; SUPPRESSION SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/STATEMENTS (CRIMINAL LAW, MIRANDIZED STATEMENTS NOT SUFFICIENTLY ATTENTUATED FROM IMPROPER QUESTIONING; SUPPRESSION SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/ATTENUATION (CRIMINAL LAW, MIRANDIZED STATEMENTS NOT SUFFICIENTLY ATTENUATED FROM IMPROPER QUESTIONING; SUPPRESSION SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)