New York

Published on: May 10, 2012

Court Rules on Warrantless Search for Drugs

by Stephen Bilkis

Many people believe that juvenile drug issues are a modern problem. However, history demonstrates that these are problems have been consistent throughout the history of the United States. One case from 1963, demonstrates that juvenile drug dealers were a problem in New York even then.

On July 19, 1963 at around 1830 hours, an off duty juvenile corrections officer was in a location to observe the corner of 14th Street and 31st Avenue in New York, Queens County. He observed a teenager around fifteen years of age at that corner. A New York Drug Crime Lawyer said the teen appeared intoxicated and walked with an unsteady gait. He watched the boy for a moment and observed a second youth approach him. The second boy put a one-dollar bill on top of a mail collection box. The first boy took the bill off of the box and slipped the other boy something from his hand. The other boy turned and left. The corrections officer did not see what had been in the boy’s hand. He watched the boy turn and go into a corner market. Again, he followed behind. Once inside the store, he kept the boy under surveillance for several minutes.

After a while, he approached the boy and asked him if he could frisk down his outer clothing. The boy complied and the officer felt two pill bottles in the front right pants pocket of his clothing. That was the pocket that the boy had removed whatever he had passed to the other boy from. The boy removed two pill bottles that did not have any labels. The boy told the officer that one of the bottles contained Doriden and the other contained barbiturates. A New York Drug Possession Lawyer said that Doriden was a pharmaceutical name for an opiate that was popular in the 1960’s as a mood lifter. The boy voluntarily stated at that point that he had been selling the drugs on the corner when the correctional officer saw him. The correctional officer arrested the boy and he was transported to juvenile detention.

Published on: May 10, 2012

Court Discusses Probable Cause in Drug Possession Case

by Stephen Bilkis

The police officers of the 32nd precinct in New York City were assigned to conduct surveillance over the corner of 128th Street and 8th Avenue because this was known as a high-drug crime area. A New York Criminal Lawyer said many arrests for cocaine possession and heroin possession have been made at this corner.

One police officer saw perched atop a condemned building, holding binoculars and observing the goings on at the street corner. His partner was near the street corner, waiting for a signal from his partner on the rooftop.

At 1:30 pm of February 26, 1977, the police officer on the rooftop saw one man at the corner. Most passersby hurry on by but that man stayed put. He kept having brief conversations with those who come by him but those people moved on. The man stayed. The officer observed the man for forty-five minutes.

Published on: May 9, 2012

Court Decides Case Based on New Sentencing Guidelines

by Stephen Bilkis

Prior to January 2005, indeterminate sentencing was considered the norm. It was originally designed as a means of tailoring the sentence to the crime. The belief was that since everyone is an individual, indeterminate sentences allowed a defendant the option of faster improvement. A New York Drug Crime Lawyer said it was hoped that the indeterminate sentence would encourage defendants to demonstrate good behavior in an attempt to shorten their overall term of incarceration. The experiment was a dismal failure. Rather than encouraging good behavior, it instilled a feeling of helplessness in the inmate population. The sentences were sometimes completely different for persons involved in the same crime. The disparate sentences that some offenders received soon became regarded as a problem. The violence that some of these offenders demonstrated while incarcerated was also higher than the levels of violence demonstrated by offenders with definitive sentences. The hopelessness of having no way of knowing when the end of their sentences might arrive created an air of hostility and despair in the inmate population. By 2005, the trend of indeterminate sentencing had been recognized as a failure and sentencing reform laws were initiated to correct the problem.

These sentencing reform guidelines had several necessary provisions. They were designed to allow defendants who were charged with non-violent drug offenses to be given determinate sentences that were often much lower than their original indeterminate sentences were. The guidelines state that the person must be a non-violent offender and cannot have committed a violent offense within 10 years of the application for determinate sentencing.

In the present case, the defendant was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence and is attempting to be approved for resentencing under the Drug Law Reform Act to a determinate sentence of three and one half years as a second non-violent felony offender. The original date of his offence was August 26, 2003 and no final adjudication had been made at the time of his request. He states that the revised sentencing guidelines are an amendment of a failed method and because of that, he is entitled to be sentenced under these guidelines as opposed to sentencing under the old ones. His crime was committed prior to the enactment of the new statute.

Published on: May 8, 2012

Court Decides if Accomplice will be Convicted

by Stephen Bilkis

Five men formed a gang whose only purpose was to prey on drug dealers. They targeted drug dealers who were always awash with cash and robbed them. They also took the drugs they found on the drug dealers and sold these on the street. One night, on February 12, 1997, all five men planned to rob a drug dealer who had a first floor apartment on Riverside Drive.

Of the five men, one was to be the driver and wait for them in the car while the others entered the apartment of the drug dealer. A New York Criminal Lawyer said their plan was to ring the doorbell and when they were buzzed in, they would force themselves inside the apartment of the drug dealer. The group came late and they missed the drug dealer who had already left his apartment. There was no one home. So the five men went their separate ways.

A few hours later four of the five men came together to see if the drug dealer had come back to his apartment; the driver did not go back with his four friends on the second robbery attempt. He went home.

Published on: May 8, 2012

Court Discusses Various Degrees of Robbery

by Stephen Bilkis

In just one afternoon of April 7, 2009 a man snatched the purse of an old lady as she was about to enter a store inside a shopping mall. Later that afternoon, that same man walked into a bank. He walked up to the counter and grabbed a teller by her shirt and jacket. He pulled the teller onto the counter and made her give him money. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the teller gave the man the cash that was available to her in the sum of $1464. The man took the money and escaped running from the bank.

Two days later, the man came to a police station in Schoharie County and surrendered. He confessed to the robbery he committed. He was charged with first degree robbery, fourth degree grand larceny for the bank robbery and grand larceny for snatching the old lady’s purse. Because the man had voluntarily surrendered and confessed to the commission of the robbery and the larceny, he was tried without a jury. The trial was only to submit evidence other than the man’s confession that a crime had been committed by the man.

A New York Criminal Lawyer said the man was convicted of the same charges of robbery and grand larceny, He was later sentenced to concurrent prison terms. He was sentenced to serve ten and a half years for robbery and one to four years of grand larceny. But the trial court ordered that the prison sentence for the other grand larceny charge be served consecutive to the other grand larceny sentence. The trial court also ordered the man to pay restitution to the bank of $1500 plus a 5% surcharge. The man appealed his conviction.

Published on: May 7, 2012

Court Erred on Motion for Severance of Actions

by Stephen Bilkis

A manager was with another employee when they were on route in a company van to one of its nearby stores with a bag containing the cash receipts. A New York Criminal Lawyer said after noticing that a vehicle in front of his van pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, the van made a strange noise and lost power. As he pulled onto the shoulder, the manager observed the previously stopped vehicle reenter the roadway and stop in front of his stalled van. Two individuals (or defendants) in dark clothes wearing masks and brandishing shotguns approached the van from both sides and shouted orders to the manager and his companion. The manager, seeing the weapons, took the bag containing the cash receipts and held it out the open window. The robbers took the money, duct-taped the manager and the employee companion side-by-side on the floor of the van, and drove with them at gunpoint. When the robbers fled, the manager and his employee companion were left in the van. Ultimately, they acquired police assistance.

Notwithstanding an extensive investigation, police authorities were unable to solve the robbery until they received a telephone call from an individual (or the caller), whom they later identified. The caller met with the investigators and provided both the details and names of three individuals involved in the robbery.

Over the next few months, the investigation led to defendants’ arrests.

Published on: May 7, 2012

Jury Given Incorrect Evidence

by Stephen Bilkis

In 1988, a man and his friend along with their two wives were running a drug enterprise out of a one room apartment with an attached kitchen located on 88th street in Queens, New York. A New York Drug Crime Lawyer said an undercover police officers had been focused on this apartment for several weeks. In fact, they had conducted undercover narcotics purchases on three separate occasions.

They were made on September 13, September 20, and September 29. After making all of these purchases, the police officers were able to obtain a search warrant to search the residence. After making the purchase on the 29th, the officers executed the search warrant on the residence. They uncovered several tinfoil packets of cocaine and angel dust. One packet of cocaine was located on the floor in between the couch and the wall. It was about a four or five inch space between the wall and the sofa. A New York Drug Possession Lawyer reported that six dollars was located in a closet that had cocaine residue on it. In another closet officers recovered $110 which was the money that was marked by them as the money that they had used to purchase narcotics at that location. The $110 was mixed in with another $850 in cash that was hidden in a child-sized purse. In the last closet, they located $3,630 in cash.

All four of the defendants were present when the search warrant was executed. They were all charged with possessing a narcotic with the intent to sell it. It is legal practice to charge everyone in a room with the possession of a narcotic that is in the room since all of the people are found to have knowledge of or should reasonably have known that the drugs were there. The drugs do not necessarily have to be in plain view. The drugs can be in a container or other item that is accessible to any of the occupants of the room. The narcotics can be in a completely separate room if they are visible to the occupants of a different room. In this case, the narcotics that were in the room, was the one packet that was located between the sofa and wall. a Nassau County Drug Possession Lawyer said the court ruled that that particular packet could not be deemed as accessible to everyone in the room or that all of the occupants of the room would have known that it was there. The fact that it was not in open view or in a container in open view makes it impossible for the police to assume that anyone other than the one owner could possibly have known that it was there. When it is determined that narcotics or other illegal drugs are in open view and in close proximity to persons, it is referred to as the drug factory presumption of Penal Law §220.25 (2).

Published on: May 7, 2012

Court Discusses Alford Plea

by Stephen Bilkis

The plea that is entered in a criminal case is of great importance in how the crime and the person convicted of the crime is treated in the system of jurisprudence. Some people accept plea agreements without thoroughly understanding what these agreements entail. One of the most frequently misunderstood pleas that a defendant can enter is an Alford-Serrano plea. Most courts call it an Alford plea for brevity sake. An Alford plea is a plea that a person can enter without admitting guilt to the offense. A New York Criminal Lawyer said an Alford plea is in essence a way for a defendant to state that they are innocent, but that they believe that based on the evidence, a jury would find them guilty of the offense. A person will use an Alford plea as an attempt to reduce the overall jail time.

Some of the issues that most defendants do not understand as they relate to an Alford plea is that even though the person is proclaiming their innocence, they are considered by the court just as guilty as a person who enters a regular guilty plea. There is no difference in the treatment of an Alford guilty offender, and one that pleads just plain guilt. Sometimes, especially in the case of sexually based offenses, this can pose a problem for the defendant.

In one case, which occurred in Richmond County New York, in 1994, a man took an Alford plea in the rape case of his own fifteen-year-old daughter. The child is of limited intelligence and unable to process the experience, however, it appears that when the child was around 12 or 13 years of age, during a three-month period, he had sexual relations with his daughter. A New York Criminal Lawyer said the defendant adamantly denied that he ever had sex with his daughter, however, everyone involved was concerned that the child would be overly traumatized by having to testify against her own father in court. In order to prevent her from having to endure any more trauma than she already had, her father took an Alford plea to one count of rape in the third degree. The prosecutors, the mother, and the child all firmly stand by the evidence that the father raped her. The rape had occurred approximately two years prior to the conviction under the Alford plea.

Published on: May 5, 2012

Defendants Claim Their 14th Amendment Rights Violated

by Stephen Bilkis

The plaintiffs and appellants in the case are Lois White et al. The defendants and appellees in the case are the Scrivner Corporation et al. The case is being heard in the fifth circuit of the United States Court of Appeals.

Case History

A New York Drug Crime Lawyer said one night Lois and her daughter Sandra White, along with her sister Gloria Pratt, went shopping at a food store owned by Scrivner Corporation, the assistant manager of the shop accused Lois of taking a roast out of the meat department of the store. The assistant manager requested that Lois and her daughter and sister come with him to an area located at the rear of the store. He asked for permission to search through their purses and while looking through the women’s purses he found a pistol located in Lois Whites purse. He told the women to stand by the wall and he made a call to the police department. The police arrived and arrested White for having a weapon that was concealed. The food goods that White was accused of stealing were never found.

Published on: May 4, 2012

Defendant Contends Prior Conviction not an Aggravated Felony

by Stephen Bilkis

The plaintiff and appellee in the case is the United States of America. The defendant and appellant of the case is Alexander Antoine Christopher. The case is being heard in the Eleventh Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals.

Appeal

A New York Drug Crime Lawyer said the defendant, Alexander Antoine Christopher is appealing the district court’s sentencing of 77 months for illegally reentering the country and violating 18 of the United States Constitution. The issue he is raising on appeal is he feels there was an error made by the district court when they enhanced his criminal record score by 16. He states that his prior conviction of theft does not qualify as an aggravated felony.