Court Opinion

ID: 9803167
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 15:23:20.160885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:02:47.853451
License: Public Domain

Acosta, J.,
dissents in a memorandum as follows: I would reverse, vacate the plea and sentence, grant defendant’s motion to suppress to the extent of suppressing the physical evidence found in the trunk and statements defendant made to the police after the officer asked if he could search the trunk, and remand for further proceedings. While the facts that defendant committed a traffic infraction and hugged another man with no indicia of a drug transaction being committed, that á passenger in the car made somewhat furtive movements, and that defendant was nervous upon being stopped and said he did not want to go back to jail may have justified the request to search the inside of the car, upon finding nothing therein or on the defendant after a frisk, the officers lacked a founded suspicion that criminal activity was afoot to justify the request to search the trunk of the car (People v Garcia, 20 NY3d 317 [2012]; People v Hollman, 79 NY2d 181, 194 [1992]; People v Hogencamp, 295 AD2d 808, 810 [3d Dept 2002] [ordering suppression and dismissing indictment where police continued investigation after initial suspicions were exhausted, notwithstanding the continued nervousness in *445the defendant’s voice]; People v Springer, 92 AD2d 209, 212 [2d Dept 1983] [a fruitless frisk of the defendant’s person decreased any objective suspicion of that defendant, contributing to finding that further investigation was unreasonable]; Sampson v City of Schenectady, 160 F Supp 2d 336, 344 [ND NY 2001] [“(a)ssuming for purposes of this motion that (the officers) did have reasonable suspicion to believe that (the) (p)laintiff was engaged in a narcotics transaction at the time they stopped him and that their search of (the) (p)laintiff was legally justified, that suspicion evaporated when they discovered that (the) (p)laintiff was not carrying any narcotics”]). I disagree that People v Battaglia (86 NY2d 755 [1995]) is directly on point as the majority asserts. In Battaglia, not only was the driver of the car seen driving the wrong way on a one-way street at 3:00 in the morning, when stopped, he gave the police a false name. Under these circumstances an officer could rightfully assume that the occupants of the car were attempting to hide something illegal in the car. The police were therefore justified in asking the defendant, the owner of the car and who was seated in the back seat, for consent to search the trunk. Here, contrary to the majority, the request to search the trunk was not reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place (People v William II, 98 NY2d 93, 98 [2002]; People v Quackenbush, 88 NY2d 534, 541 [1996]).
Defendant’s continued nervousness was simply insufficient indicium that criminal activity was afoot. As we held in People v Garcia (85 AD3d 28, 32-33 [1st Dept 2011], mod on other grounds 20 NY3d 317 [2012]), “There must be something more than mere nervousness on the part of the people in the stopped vehicle to establish a founded suspicion of criminal activity. Here, by describing unspecified motions as furtive, the officers were making conclusory assertions that the conduct was suspicious. The officers’ unspecific testimony does not support a finding of founded suspicion of criminal activity” (citations omitted; see also People v Irizarry, 168 AD2d 377 [1st Dept 1990], affd 79 NY2d 890 [1992] [finding request to search improper because there was no founded suspicion, even though the record revealed that the defendant’s hands were shaking during the police encounter]). In any event, with the information the police possessed at the time, the most plausible explanation for defendant’s concern that he did not want to go back to jail was that he was driving without a valid license and feared incarceration for that offense.
Furthermore, consent obtained through an illegal request to perform a search is no consent at all (Hollman, 79 NY2d at 194 *446[ordering suppression “(b)ecause the defendant’s consent was a product of the improper police inquiry”]; People v Irizarry, 79 NY2d at 892). In any event, even if the request for consent was authorized, I think the majority ignores the reality of a police stop when it finds that defendant’s consent was voluntary and not coerced (see People v Packer, 49 AD3d 184, 187 [1st Dept 2008], affd 10 NY3d 915 [2008] [recognizing the “inherent potential for intimidation and coercion in police initiated encounters and the daunting burden to which the People are put when the voluntariness of a defendant’s consent is at issue” (citations omitted)]). As we noted in People v Turriago (219 AD2d 383, 389 [1st Dept 1996], mod on other grounds 90 NY2d 77 [1997]), a defendant stopped for a traffic infraction can not “reasonably disregard the police and go about his business” (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, defendant, already facing a possible arrest for driving without a license and distraught and crying about the possibility of going back to jail, may have felt compelled to consent to a search of the trunk. Under these circumstances, telling defendant that he “wasn’t necessarily going to back jail,” could be easily construed as “as long as you cooperate and let us search the trunk.”