DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT PROVIDING THE COMBINATION TO A SAFE TO SEARCHING PAROLE OFFICERS, AS WELL AS THE FIREARMS FOUND IN THE SAFE, SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (SECOND DEPT).
The Second Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined defendant’s statement providing the searching parole officers with the combination to a safe and the guns found in the safe should have been suppressed. The search of defendant’s girlfriend’s apartment was conducted after defendant, who was present in the apartment, violated parole. Defendant was handcuffed and in his underwear when the officer asked for the combination. The officers had already found other weapons and counterfeit DVD’s in the apartment. The People unsuccessfully argued the request for the combination was not designed to elicit an incriminating response:
The question—which arose after the parole officers had found counterfeit DVDs, a box filled with daggers, and a .22 caliber revolver—had only one logical purpose: to elicit a response from the defendant disclosing the combination to the safe, which would possibly lead to the discovery of incriminating evidence, and which would link the safe to the defendant … . Therefore, the Supreme Court should have granted that branch of the defendant’s motion which was to suppress his statement to law enforcement officials as to the combination to the safe, and should have suppressed the two handguns recovered from the safe, as well as a handwritten statement the defendant later made to the police about the handguns, as fruits of the poisonous tree … . Without this evidence, there could not be legally sufficient evidence to support convictions of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree based on those two handguns, or based on the defendant’s possession of three or more firearms. Accordingly, the convictions of those three offenses must be vacated, and those three counts of the indictment must be dismissed. People v Blacks, 2017 NY Slip Op 06186, Second Dept 8-16-17
CRIMINAL LAW (SUPPRESSION, DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT PROVIDING THE COMBINATION TO A SAFE TO SEARCHING PAROLE OFFICERS, AS WELL AS THE FIREARMS FOUND IN THE SAFE, SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (SECOND DEPT))/SUPPRESS, MOTION TO (CRIMINAL LAW, DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT PROVIDING THE COMBINATION TO A SAFE TO SEARCHING PAROLE OFFICERS, AS WELL AS THE FIREARMS FOUND IN THE SAFE, SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (SECOND DEPT))/EVIDENCE (CRIMINAL LAW, SUPPRESSION, DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT PROVIDING THE COMBINATION TO A SAFE TO SEARCHING PAROLE OFFICERS, AS WELL AS THE FIREARMS FOUND IN THE SAFE, SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (SECOND DEPT))/SEARCH AND SEIZURE ( DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT PROVIDING THE COMBINATION TO A SAFE TO SEARCHING PAROLE OFFICERS, AS WELL AS THE FIREARMS FOUND IN THE SAFE, SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (SECOND DEPT))