Opinion
October 2, 1986
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Glass, J.).
Judgment affirmed.
Three plainclothes police officers in an unmarked car observed the defendant leaning on a parked car, holding a rust-colored jacket. As the officers pulled up behind him, but before they had emerged from their car, the defendant either placed the jacket on the bumperguard, as one officer testified, or threw it to the ground and it caught on the bumperguard, according to the other, and walked away quickly. One of the officers went over to the jacket, picked it up, and inside found a plastic bag containing 49 foil packets containing cocaine. Another followed the defendant and upon informing him that cocaine had been found in the jacket, arrested and searched him, recovering a glassine envelope of heroin and six foil packets containing cocaine. The defendant, who was immediately advised of his constitutional rights as required by Miranda v Arizona ( 384 U.S. 436), subsequently made two inculpatory statements.
The only issue on the defendant's motion to suppress the physical evidence and his statements was whether the initial search of the jacket was valid, since the finding of cocaine justified his subsequent arrest and search (see, People v Materon, 107 A.D.2d 408, 415-416; People v Hassele, 53 A.D.2d 699; People v Thompson, 50 A.D.2d 874). Criminal Term correctly concluded that it was, finding that under the circumstances here the jacket had been abandoned (see, People v Medina, 107 A.D.2d 302; People v Chestnut, 91 A.D.2d 981) and was therefore beyond the scope of constitutional protection (Abel v United States, 362 U.S. 217, 241, reh denied 362 U.S. 984; People v Howard, 50 N.Y.2d 583, 592, cert denied 449 U.S. 1023; People v Prewitt, 120 A.D.2d 551). The fact that the defendant may have placed the jacket on the car rather than thrown it to the ground does not preclude a finding of abandonment (see, People v Brown, 40 A.D.2d 527); nor is it significant that the officers later learned that the defendant owned the car upon which he had been leaning, since the determination of reasonable cause to search must be based on the information known to the officers at the time (see, People v Washington, 58 A.D.2d 971). Furthermore, there is no basis for holding that the abandonment was nullified by illegal police conduct (see, People v Howard, supra; People v Boodle, 47 N.Y.2d 398, cert denied 444 U.S. 969; 1 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 2.6 [b], at 372-374) since the defendant discarded the jacket before the officers confronted him. Lazer, J.P., Mangano, Lawrence and Kooper, JJ., concur.