New York Criminal Lawyer Blog

A couple drove from Florida to New York City to visit some of their friends. After the first few nights, they settled in a motor inn. Later, as the couple drove past to a boutique, a woman’s clothing store, the woman stated that she like the black dress and wanted to check the sizes. The man then parked the car and the woman told him to go back way.

They entered the boutique through the front door. The bathroom of the boutique has a window which looks out onto the rear parking area. The woman went into the fitting room to try on some clothes, but the man wasn’t in sight when she came out. The proprietor of the boutique informed the woman that her companion had asked to use the bathroom. According to the proprietor, the man was there for about 10 minutes. The woman then went back to the fitting room and when she again came out, the man was already standing at the front window, front door and he had picked out a blouse for her to try on. Even if the woman didn’t buy anything she had seen, she did buy the blouse picked out for her by the man. The couple then left the store without incident.

Afterward, the couple went into Manhattan, where the man purchased an ankle holster for his gun. The woman remained outside the store while her partner bought it, and she wasn’t aware of what the man had bought. After that, the couple decided to get something to eat and the woman changed her clothes. They drove to a place and when they arrived, the man told his partner to stay in the car while he looked for another person. The man returned and they drove around, finally back into an alleyway and turning out the lights. When the woman asked her criminal partner what he was doing, he allegedly replied that he had some business there. The woman then stayed in the car to watch for the cops or watch for anybody while her partner broke into the back window of what turned out to be the dress boutique.

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The court is called upon on this appeal to determine the constitutional validity of a seizure of physical evidence subsequent to a warrantless entry by police into a defendant’s furnished room based upon the homeowner’s representation that the defendant had therein a gun with which he had threatened her. At the time of the entry, the defendant was substantially in arrears in his weekly rental payments. Necessarily subsumed in analysis is the question of whether he had a legitimate expectation of privacy with respect to the room so as to entitle him to suppression of the physical evidence seized there from. The question must be answered in the affirmative. Inasmuch as the record reveals that the defendant was still legally a lessee of the subject premises, who thus had a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to his living space, the police acted improperly in pursuing the course of action they did.

The facts are essentially undisputed. A Queens County Grand Jury charged the defendant with the crime of criminal possession of a weapon based upon the discovery by the police of an automatic handgun in a closet of his rented room. The complainant, the owner of the one-family home in which the defendant rented a room at the weekly rate of $50, summoned the police to her home on the evening of August 10, 1982, claiming that the defendant had threatened her with a gun. The altercation arose when the defendant offered her $60 in rent arrears. She complained that he had failed to pay her for 11 weeks and that she would deny him access to his room until he made a more substantial payment. The defendant thereupon demanded the return of his $60. When the complainant refused to comply, he began to swear and to make threatening gestures towards her. He declared that he would break down the door of the room and blow off her head with his gun.

The complainant knew that the defendant had a gun in his room since he had threatened her daughter with it some two weeks previously. The defendant’s girlfriend had, at that time, warned the complainant to call the police since the defendant was dangerous and had once shot a man. The complainant had seen the gun a second time as she was packing up the criminal defendant’s belongings because he had failed to pay his rent. On that occasion, she also saw bullets all over the room.

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This is a criminal case where a Motion was filed by the defendant for a change of venue of his trial from Queens County to another county to be designated by the court.

A Queens County Gun Crime attorney said that in February 1988, a police Officer was shot to death while he sat in his patrol car in Jamaica, Queens, guarding the home of a witness in a drug case. It is the theory of the prosecution that the Officer was executed on orders of a reputed drug kingpin in retaliation for the latter’s arrest, conviction and imprisonment on gun possession charges. Four individuals were charged with murder in the second degree as a result of this crime, three codefendants, who were previously tried and convicted and the defendant.

The killing of the Officer has been the subject of pervasive and, at times, highly emotional media coverage. News coverage intensified during the recent month-long trial of the codefendants, culminating in their conviction in March 1989. The killing of the Officer has also been the subject of much editorial comment decrying the brazen violence employed by those immersed in drug trafficking.

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A Queens Criminal Lawyer said that, this is an appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Queens County, rendered May 25, 1995, convicting him of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, upon his plea of guilty and imposing sentence. The appeal brings up for review the denial, after a hearing, of those branches of the defendant’s omnibus motion which were to suppress physical evidence and a statement made by him to law enforcement officials.

A Queens Weapon Crime Lawyer said that, sometime between 1:00 A.M. and 1:15 A.M. on May 22, 1993, New York City Transit Authority Police Officer and her partner, were walking from the Queens borough train station to the Queens Plaza station when a car came speeding up to them and skidded to a halt. The two occupants yelled to the officers that someone in the car behind them had just shot a man in the head at the taxi stand. They did not indicate how they had obtained that information, but they pointed to the car directly behind them, the only other vehicle on the street, which was stopped at a traffic light. The Police Officer radioed for assistance and she and her partner ran to the car with their guns drawn. She approached the passenger side of the vehicle and directed the driver, the first person she observed, to put his hands up. As he did so, she saw a second and third pair of hands go up, and realized there were passengers in the front and rear seats. She had not initially seen the front seat passenger because he was slumped over toward the driver, and had to raise himself from that position in order to put his hands up. She later learned that the driver was the defendant. A codefendant, was the front seat passenger and another codefendant, was the rear seat passenger.

A Queens Felony Lawyer said that, the officers directed the defendant and the others to exit the vehicle. For safety reasons, they handcuffed the men, patted them down and had them lie on the ground. When the officers did not recover any weapons, the Police Officer asked, “Where’s the gun?”, and her partner replied that he did not know. Her partner then went to the car, reached under the front passenger seat and recovered a loaded .25 caliber gun. At that point, she realized that the two informants had left the scene. However, they returned, along with a third man, approximately 15 minutes after they initially spoke with the officers. The third individual, an eyewitness to the crime, identified codefendant as the shooter. The defendant and co-defendant were then arrest and taken to the precinct house, where the defendant made an unsolicited statement to a detective.

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A detective and a police officer, both wearing plain clothes, were patrolling a neighborhood of Queens in an unmarked vehicle. The area was known for gang activity. At some point during the patrol, the detective and the officer observed the defendant and another man walking down the street. Upon observing the defendant adjusting his right waistband, they stopped their vehicle. They then exited the vehicle, displayed their shields, and identified themselves as police. The defendant ran in the opposite direction. While the defendant was being chased by the detective, he removed a firearm from the right side of his waistband and threw it to the ground. The detective apprehended the defendant and placed him under arrest. The defendant’s attorney moved to suppress the firearm, and the Supreme Court directed a suppression hearing. After conducting the hearing, the Supreme Court denied that branch of the defendant’s omnibus motion which was to suppress the firearm. After a jury trial, the defendant was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree.

On the appeal from the judgment of conviction, the defendant argues that he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel at the suppression hearing. Specifically, the defendant contends that his counsel was ineffective because he failed to make opening and closing arguments at the suppression hearing, suggesting that counsel did not believe there was a basis for suppression. Further, the dissenting notes that the suppression court erred in making a factual finding that the criminal defendant dropped his weapon before the police chase and not during the chase itself.

Under the standard recognized in New York, counsel is effective when the defense attorney provides meaningful representation. In reviewing claims of ineffective assistance, care must be taken to avoid both confusing true ineffectiveness with mere losing tactics and according undue significance to retrospective analysis. While a single error may qualify as ineffective assistance, it may only do so when the error is sufficiently egregious and prejudicial as to compromise a defendant’s right to a fair trial. Moreover, ineffectiveness claims must be viewed within the context of the fairness of the process as a whole rather than its particular impact on the outcome of the case. Standing alone, the waiver of an opening and/or closing statement is not necessarily indicative of ineffective assistance of counsel. Indeed isolated errors in counsel’s representation generally will not rise to the level of ineffectiveness, unless the error is so serious that the burglary defendant did not receive a fair trial.

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