Summary
In Paccione, the application for the warrant set forth the detective's experience which included his experience that perpetrators of robberies secrete evidence of the crime in and around their residences.
Summary of this case from People v. McCartyOpinion
March 8, 1999
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Kings County (Hall, J.).
Ordered that the order is modified by deleting the provisions thereof granting those branches of the defendant's motion which were to suppress the following items of physical evidence: (1) the .38 caliber Smith Wesson gun, (2) the .25 caliber Lorcin semi-automatic gun, (3) the silver clip to the .25 caliber Lorcin, (4) the eight .38 caliber bullets, and (5) the six .25 caliber bullets, and substituting therefor a provision denying those branches of the defendant's motion; as so modified, the order is affirmed.
The warrant for the search of the defendant's home was based upon a detective's affidavit which stated that the defendant had been identified as one of three individuals who robbed a Brooklyn Costco store. The affidavit further stated that between $150,000 and $180,000 in cash had been stolen, that one of the robbers wore a narrow-brim cloth hat and one wore a low cap with a narrow brim, that during the robbery the perpetrators displayed guns and bound the employees with duct tape and "plastic handcuffs", and that they removed the store's video surveillance equipment with the video tape inside of it before escaping.
The search warrant application also set forth the detective's experience in investigating robberies and the detective's statement that, based upon his experience, he found that perpetrators of robberies "frequently secrete evidence of the [crime] in and around their residences". He also stated that the defendant and another of the perpetrators had been in telephone contact on the day of the robbery.
To establish probable cause, a search warrant application must provide sufficient information "to support a reasonable belief that [evidence] of a crime may be found in a certain place" (People v. McCulloch, 226 A.D.2d 848, 849; see also, People v. Glen, 30 N.Y.2d 252, 259, cert denied sub nom. Baker v. New York, 409 U.S. 849). Moreover, search warrants, which generally are not composed by lawyers but rather by police officers, should not be read hypertechnically and may be "accorded all reasonable inferences" (People v. Hanlon, 36 N.Y.2d 549, 559).
Here, since the defendant had been identified as one of the perpetrators of the robbery, and the place to be searched was the defendant's residence, "it was entirely reasonable to deduce" that evidence of the robbery would be found there (People v. Robinson, 68 N.Y.2d 541, 552; see, People v. Wheatman, 29 N.Y.2d 337, 346; see also, CPL 690.40; People v. Christopher, 101 A.D.2d 504).
However, the warrant application provided no basis to conclude that some of the items which were sought and recovered constituted possible evidence of the crime (see, People v. Smith, 138 A.D.2d 932; see also, People v. Lalli, 43 N.Y.2d 729). Accordingly, other than those items indicated above, the motion to suppress physical evidence was properly granted.
Santucci, J. P., Joy, Altman and Krausman, JJ., concur.