THE SEARCH OF DEFEFNDANT’S VEHICLE BY PAROLE OFFICERS WAS NOT COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO AN ILLEGAL FRISK BY A POLICE OFFICER WHICH REVEALED THE CAR KEYS; COCAINE FOUND IN THE VEHICLE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED; INDICTMENT DISMISSED (FOURTH DEPT).
The Fourth Department, reversing County Court’s denial of a suppression motion and dismissing the indictment, determined the search of defendant parolee’s vehicle after an illegal frisk revealed the keys was not justified. Parole officers accompanied a police investigator to a health facility where defendant was known to be as part of a police, not a parole, investigation. The illegal frisk occurred when defendant left the health facility and before the parole officers learned defendant had driven there in violation of his parole terms. Therefore the search of defendant’s vehicle could not be justified as a distinct and completely unrelated “parole” investigation:
The testimony further establishes that the parole officers’ suspicion of a parole violation and their investigation thereof arose only after defendant’s parole officer requested that the police investigator hand over the fruit of the unlawful search and seizure, i.e., the keys, and the police investigator left the scene. The parole officers began their investigation—pressing the fob, questioning defendant, waiting for the purported owner of the vehicle to emerge from the building, and viewing surveillance footage—as a direct result of the unlawful seizure of the keys from defendant’s person. Indeed, defendant’s parole officer did not learn of defendant’s possible connection to the vehicle until he pressed the fob, which activated the lights of the vehicle. Inasmuch as the investigation by the parole officers was precipitated by the police investigator’s unlawful seizure of the keys from defendant, the subsequent discovery of the contraband in the vehicle was not “based solely on information obtained prior to and independent of the illegal [search and seizure]” … . Thus, the court’s determination that the parole officers’ investigation was independent of the unlawful seizure of the keys is not supported by the record. People v Smith, 2022 NY Slip Op 00790, Fourth Dept 2-4-22