New York City

Published on: April 20, 2013

DEA Exposes Cocaine Trafficking Ring

by Stephen Bilkis

The DEA along with the local Sherriff’s Department started a joint investigation of what was believed to be to be a cocaine trafficking organization. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the investigation focused on a local restaurant and its owner. The investigators believed that the owner of the restaurant was the leader of the organization that purchased powder cocaine and crack as well as marijuana. These suspicions were confirmed when confidential informants made several drug purchases at the restaurant. The owner refused to sell to one of the informants, but his son sold to the informant and the owner watched the transaction take place.

The task force began to accumulate evidence against the owner of the restaurant as well as many of his customers over the years. Several individuals were arrested in the central part of the state for possession of numerous controlled substances and identified the restaurant as where they received the drugs.

After a while participants in the drug ring started to turn on the organization. The first individual told officials that crack cocaine was dealt at the restaurant and the main person was the owner. He told officers that he along with another man, and the girlfriend of the owner worked directly for the restaurant owner. Other people came forward and confirmed this story.

Published on: March 31, 2013

Court Decides Legality of DUI Checkpoint

by Stephen Bilkis

Police officers were given instructions by their sergeant to set up a DWI checkpoint on June 10, 1993 at the corner of 20th Street and Avenue C in Manhattan. At that checkpoint, all passing cars were stopped by the police officer manning the checkpoint. Depending on his observations of the driver of the car stopped at the checkpoint, the police officer would ask the driver to pull over to the side of the road so that the driver can be further questioned by the police.

When the defendant driver came up to the checkpoint, a police officer asked him to stop and to roll down his window. The police officer smelled alcohol on the breath of the driver as soon as he rolled down his window. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the police officer asked the driver to pull over to the side of the road. He then asked the man to exit his vehicle. The accused driver then admitted to the police officer that he had been drinking. The police officer then administered the alcohol breathalyzer test on the accused driver and his blood alcohol level registered at .14. When the results of the breathalyzer test came out, the police officer then arrested the man.

At his arraignment, the driver asked for a hearing to determine whether the police officers had probable cause to stop his vehicle; whether or not the checkpoint was not arbitrary; and whether or not the oral admission made by the accused and the breath test result should be suppressed.

Published on: February 5, 2013

Court Sentences Defendant to Judicial Diversion Program

by Stephen Bilkis

The defendant was charged with several counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny and scheme to defraud. The parties to the case put in issue the eligibility of the accused for judicial diversion. The defendant argued that he is entitled for the judicial diversion program since he was indicted with crime of grand larceny where such offense is included in the list for the statute to be eligible for such program and none of the other crimes he was charged were considered exclusions to the said program. The respondent questioned the felon’s eligibility because only one of the several counts of charges filed against him rendered him eligible for the judicial diversion.

The statute listed down the specific exceptions to being an “eligible defendant,” to wit, “any defendant convicted of a violent felony offense, any other offense for which a merit time allowance is not available, or a class A drug felony within the preceding ten years. Also listed as an exception is that any defendant who has previously been adjudicated a second violent felony offender or a persistent violent offender.” A New York Criminal Lawyer said such exclusions to warrant denial of being eligible for judicial diversion were not applicable to the case of the accused.

Considering that the simple and clear language of the law lead to the conclusion by the Court that the defendant was not caused to be ineligible for the program simply because he was charged with other offenses in the indictment, which was not listed in the statute entitled to the judicial diversion. Although the statutory act sets forth particular circumstances that would make a person ineligible, it failed to indicate that the charges against the defendant are mutually exclusive with the qualifying offenses or the inclusion of non-qualifying offenses in the indictment would subject the accused to ineligibility.

Published on: February 4, 2013

Defendant Charged with Aiding and Abetting Robbery

by Stephen Bilkis

The accused man along with a co-accused was convicted of robbery in the first degree. He and his co-accused had been charged with aiding and abetting the actual perpetrator; and the sole evidence linking the accused to the robbery was his own admissions. The evidence was insufficient to establish the accused man’s guilt of robbery as a principal.

The accused man’s admissions established only that he had given a gun to his co-accused who, in the accused man’s presence, then turned it over to their actual perpetrator man, whom they knew was going to use it in a robbery; and that after the robbery, and an ensuing homicide in which a police officer was killed, the accused cut his actual perpetrator’s hair in an effort to help him evade capture. It is indisputable that the accused was never present during the actual commission of the robbery and it is not claimed that he ever shared in the robbery proceeds.

Clearly, the accused did intentionally render assistance to the actual perpetrator. However, to be criminally liable for the robbery itself, he must also be shown to have shared the same specific intent or mental culpability as the actual perpetrator, and this was not done. The transfer of the weapon to the actual perpetrator, without more, is at best equivocal; and the subsequent cutting of the actual perpetrator’s hair is of little or no probative value, since it was the intervening killing of a police officer and not the robbery which obviously gave rise to the extensive manhunt. In other words, while the accused may be guilty of other crimes, such as criminal facilitation and hindering prosecution, the circumstantial evidence was not at all inconsistent with his innocence of the crime of robbery itself.

Published on: February 3, 2013

Defendant Contends 6th Amendment Rights Were Violated

by Stephen Bilkis

The appellants in this case were convicted of one count of possession of marijuana with the intent to sell. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the appellants argue that the Speedy Trial Act as well as the 6th amendment barred them from being prosecuted. The appellants also challenge the sufficiency of the evidence that was submitted against them.

Case Fact

The appellants were indicted and convicted based on a reverse sting operation conducted by a DEA agent acting undercover. The agent used a confidential informant who advised people within the community that she knew someone that wanted to sell marijuana.

Published on: February 1, 2013

Defendant to Multiple Criminal Charges was a Police Officer

by Stephen Bilkis

The defendant was charged with several crimes and was found guilty for the commission of said crimes that included grand larceny, bribery receiving, official misconduct, and sale of illegal drug, criminal possession of stolen property and unlawfully disposing of a weapon. The accused who was a police officer, being accompanied by another individual, threatened a person that, if the latter did not turn over gun and money he owned, he will be arrested. It was also averred that the appellant took possession of marihuana from an individual whom he did not arrest and sold said marihuana to another. And lastly, it was contended that the indicted police failed to voucher a stolen revolver in his possession, but instead gave it to another without authority. Thus, an appeal was filed before the court to resolve the issue of his conviction to said crimes.

The issues of the appeal were the defendant’s indictment of possession of stolen property and unlawfully disposing the same and the crimes of sale of illegal drug. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the surrounding circumstances of the alleged felony was that the police officer asked another law enforcer, who was an undercover agent of the internal affairs, to keep the “throwaway gun” in his behalf for fear of his possible detention due to the investigations about his police activities being conducted at that time. Although evidence was presented to prove that the subject gun was a stolen property, it cannot show that the convicted police officer had knowledge of the fact that it was indeed a stolen gun. As provided in the statute, the indispensible element for the crime of criminal possession of stolen property was the actual knowledge of the accused that the gun in issue was a subject of theft. This was reiterated in the case of the Supreme Court, to wit “the gravamen of Criminal Possession of Stolen Property is possession of stolen property with knowledge of its stolen character. The element of knowledge of the stolen character of the property is essential.” As such, evidence must be presented before the jury to establish the element of knowledge of the stolen character of the gun by the defendant, otherwise, an indictment for that criminal offense may not stand. No direct evidence was shown to the grand jury to ascertain that the appellant had knowledge that the gun was stolen.

It was noted by the court that there was no instruction given to the jury for considering circumstantial evidence in relation to the crime in question. As decided in several jurisprudence, “the prosecutor wholly failed to instruct the jury as to the requirements of legal insufficiency in a circumstantial evidence case… the failure to instruct the jury on the standard to be applied deprives of legal significance the factual determination implicit in the indictment.”

Published on: January 19, 2013

Court Discusses Legal Elements of Rape Crime

by Stephen Bilkis

On December 10, 1980, two men armed with a shot gun entered a fast food restaurant in Nassau County. They threatened the employees with bodily harm if they did not hand over the cash in the cash box. When the two female employees handed to the two armed men all the cash from the cash box, the men forced the women to go outside the restaurant. They forced the women to ride in their car which was parked outside the restaurant.

A New York Criminal Lawyer said the two armed men drove for twenty minutes from the fast food restaurant in Nassau County to a dead end street somewhere in Suffolk County. During the drive, the men took turns feeling up the women’s skirts and shirts. The men fondled the women’s breasts and sex organs.

When they got to the dead end street in Suffolk County, the men took turns raping the two women. When the men were exhausted, they threatened the women and their families with death should they report the rapes to the police. The two men then let the two women go.

Published on: December 29, 2012

Defendant Charged with Manslaughter in Heroin Case

by Stephen Bilkis

The defendant, is twenty-two years of age, an admitted heroin user and, in all probability, an addict. At the time of this occurrence, he was living in an apartment over a bar located on Jericho Turnpike, Smithtown, New York. On September 9, 1971, at approximately 8:00 p.m., the victim was a young girl of nineteen years of age, visited him at his apartment. The defendant observed that she was under the influence of drugs. She was high on ‘downs’, and, as a matter of fact, ‘she could not walk or talk straight’. They talked for a while and then she fell asleep on the bed. He then left the room and went out at about 9:00 to 9:30 p.m. to purchase some pizza in a restaurant.

A New York Criminal Lawyer said when he returned, he found the young girl trying to inject heroin into her arm with a hypodermic syringe and needle. She was apparently having difficulty, and he then proceeded to assist her, and actually injected the heroin (heroin possession) into her arm. They then had some food and she went back to sleep. She was lying on the bed in a semiconscious condition. Shortly thereafter she started to regurgitate, and he placed her on the floor. He watched television for a while and then went to sleep.

Shortly thereafter his roommate requested of the defendant that he accompany the roommate’s girlfriend home. He did so and returned between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. and found the victim still on the floor sleeping. Defendant then went to bed and shortly thereafter he heard the victim make a ‘gurgling noise’. He then applied mouth to mouth resuscitation and was unable to revive her.

Published on: December 21, 2012

Doctor Charged with Negligently Prescribing Opiates

by Stephen Bilkis

This action concerns a young woman who at an early age became addicted to drugs. In 2005 when she was 18, she became a patient of the accused orthopedist and employee of orthopedic rehabilitation center for treatment of lower back pain and, a month later, for left ankle pain. From May 2005 through January 2007, the orthopedist prescribed large amounts of Vicodin and Methadone for the complainant woman’s pain. It is claimed that the multiple prescriptions by the orthopedist were improper, illegal and negligent and caused both physical and mental injury to the woman separate and apart from her earlier and continued addictions to illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine and illegally obtained drugs such as Oxycodone.

Before, the Court is a motion for summary judgment by the accused parties. It is supported by an affirmation from a Board Certified Orthopedist. He first reviews the allegations made by the woman against the orthopedist. They include negligently and unjustifiably prescribing opiates to the woman and, by doing so, aiding her drug habit and causing her addiction to these opiates, improperly prescribing Methadone without a proper license, and failing to refer the woman to a pain management specialist.

A New York Criminal Lawyer said the Board Certified Orthopedist states, with a reasonable degree of medical certainty after reviewing all the relevant medical records and deposition transcripts, that the orthopedist committed no departure from good and accepted medical standards in his treatment of the woman, which was appropriate in every respect. He adds that as a licensed physician he was authorized to treat the woman and prescribe narcotic medications as he did without any negligence or medical malpractice.

Published on: December 16, 2012

Court Discusses Alleged Heroin Conspiracy

by Stephen Bilkis

A Georgia Intent to Distribute Lawyer said that, the defendant appeals his conviction after trial to a jury for conspiring to possess cocaine (drug possession) with intent to distribute it, in violation of 21 U.S.C.A. § 846, and to distribute it, in violation of 21 U.S.C.A. § 841(a)(1). This court recently affirmed an earlier conviction of defendant for conspiracy to possess and to distribute heroin. On the present appeal a Georgia Heroin Lawyer said that defendant contends that the government arbitrarily has carved a single conspiracy to deal in narcotics into separate heroin and cocaine conspiracies in violation of his Fifth Amendment right against twice being placed in jeopardy for the same offense.

A Georgia Heroin Lawyer said that, the government’s proof in the heroin conspiracy trial established that defendants arranged sales of heroin for their cocaine customer a Detective, who unknown to them was an undercover DEA Agent. Co-defendant, who pled guilty, and the Detective testified against defendant in both trials. The government presented to the jury portions of defendant’s own testimony from the heroin conspiracy trial in the trial on the cocaine conspiracy charge. During July 1976, conspiratorial negotiations involving cocaine and heroin went on simultaneously. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the major events proven in defendant’s trial on the heroin conspiracy charge which we discussed in our earlier opinion affirming that conviction, were also central to the government’s proof against defendant’s in the trial on the cocaine conspiracy charge.

The issue in this case is whether defendant’s claim for double jeopardy should be granted.