ALTHOUGH SUPREME COURT DENIED DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO SUPPRESS A GUN FOUND IN A VEHICLE, THE COURT DID NOT ARTICULATE THE REASON FOR THE DENIAL, THE SECOND DEPT DID NOT THEREFORE HAVE THE POWER TO REVIEW THE ISSUE, MATTER SENT BACK SO SUPREME COURT CAN ARTICULATE ITS REASONING (SECOND DEPT).
The Second Department remitted the matter to Supreme Court for the basis of its ruling on a suppression motion:
This Court is statutorily limited to reviewing errors or defects that “may have adversely affected the appellant” (CPL 470.15[1]), and thus has no power “to review issues either decided in an appellant’s favor, or not ruled upon, by the trial court”… . The Court of Appeals has observed that, once the Appellate Division has rejected a trial court’s ruling on a particular issue, it may not proceed to consider other issues that might provide a basis for affirmance if they were not determined adversely to the appellant… .
Here, the defendant contends that the Supreme Court incorrectly denied that branch of his omnibus motion which was to suppress the gun, arguing that the inevitable discovery and search incident to a lawful arrest exceptions did not apply. The People contend, as they did before the Supreme Court, that the automobile exception applies. However, the court did not set forth the basis for its denial of the branch of the defendant’s motion which was to suppress the gun. Furthermore, on this record, we cannot determine the unarticulated predicate for the court’s evidentiary ruling … Therefore, in order to avoid exceeding our statutory authority pursuant to CPL 470.15(1), we hold the appeal in abeyance and remit the matter to the Supreme Court, Queens County, for a new determination of that branch of the defendant’s omnibus motion which was to suppress the gun. People v Thomas, 2018 NY Slip Op 08962, Second Dept 12-26-18