Court Opinion

ID: 9877671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-27 16:15:46.140697+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:46:56.307164
License: Public Domain

Manzanet-Daniels, J.,
dissents in a memorandum as follows: *419The primary illegality of the police conduct in searching defendant’s belongings while he was hospitalized at Jacobi Hospital is undisputed. The physical evidence subsequently discovered by the police — a ring in defendant’s vehicle and a gun in the curtilage of his home — was obtained as the result of the earlier, impermissible search of defendant’s belongings. I would accordingly grant the motion to suppress the physical evidence subsequently recovered as the fruit of the poisonous tree.*
As an initial matter, defendant’s argument was preserved. Defense counsel argued that because the seizure of defendant’s belongings was illegal, the property of the complaining witness subsequently recovered was the product of not only the illegal arrest but of the illegal seizure.
The complainant testified that he was riding in the elevator when a masked man, described as a male black in his twenties, confronted him and took his money and jewelry. The victim heard a gunshot, but was not injured during the encounter.
After speaking with the complainant, the investigating detective heard a radio report of a man at Jacobi Hospital with a bullet wound to the leg. No description of the man was given over the radio. After interviewing defendant, the detective searched the bags under his bed, without obtaining permission to do so. The complainant identified the ID and the ring recovered from the bags as his property. It was only after showing the illegally-seized evidence to the complainant that the detective questioned defendant’s girlfriend and obtained the keys to defendant’s home and vehicle. This evidence, seized moments after the unlawful search and without any attenuating events, was the direct result of and not sufficiently attenuated from the illegality itself (see People v McCree, 113 AD3d 557, 558 [1st Dept 2014]).
There was no exigency. Defendant was confined to a hospital bed and unable to leave let alone access the areas the police searched. If the police intended to continue their investigation regardless of what was found among his personal belongings at the hospital, they could have applied for a warrant to search his vehicle and his home.
This is not a case where the exclusionary rule has no application because the connection between the illegal conduct of the police and the discovery of the challenged evidence has *420“become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint” or the People learned of the evidence from an independent source (Wong Sun v United States, 371 US 471, 487 [1963] [internal quotation marks omitted]). I disagree with the majority that regardless of what the police found in defendant’s possession, they were likely to pursue defendant as a possible suspect. If the police discovered nothing in the illegal search of defendant’s belongings, they would have had little cause to pursue the investigation, let alone to question defendant’s girlfriend, from whom they obtained the keys to defendant’s vehicle, and to thereafter search defendant’s vehicle and home. The necessary links between defendant and the robbery were the illegally seized identification and ring, the second ring found in the vehicle, and the gun found in the curtilage of defendant’s home. The police were led to the challenged evidence by “exploitation of that illegality” (Wong Sun, 371 US at 488). The physical evidence recovered should have been suppressed as the fruit of the illegal search.
Admitting the ring and gun into evidence cannot be said to be harmless error under the circumstances (see People v Crimmins, 36 NY2d 230, 237 [1975]). The People’s case depended on circumstantial evidence that the illegally-obtained ring found in the vehicle had been taken from the victim during the alleged robbery and served as the only identification of defendant during the trial.

 Because I would suppress the challenged evidence on this ground, I do not address the alternate arguments raised by defendant and addressed by the majority.