Case ID: ad2d_281/html/0183-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Danny Johnson, Appellant.
    [721 NYS2d 521]
   Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Dorothy Cropper, J., at hearing; Ronald Zweibel, J., at plea and sentence), rendered November 30, 1998, convicting defendant of attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 4 to 8 years, unanimously affirmed.

Defendant’s suppression motion was properly denied. Although the People neglected to elicit the fact that defendant’s arrest was based on a communication between the observing and arresting officers, the circumstantial evidence warrants such a conclusion (People v Gonzalez, 91 NY2d 909). Such a communication is the only rational explanation of how defendant came to be arrested immediately after making a series of police-observed drug sales. The coincidence theory posited by defendant on appeal does not provide a rational explanation.

We perceive no basis for reduction of sentence. Concur— Nardelli, J. P., Williams, Tom, Lerner and Friedman, JJ.