People v. Acevedo

128 Misc. 2d 405, 488 N.Y.S.2d 537, 1985 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2937
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 14, 1985
StatusPublished

This text of 128 Misc. 2d 405 (People v. Acevedo) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Acevedo, 128 Misc. 2d 405, 488 N.Y.S.2d 537, 1985 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2937 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1985).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Bernard Fuchs, J.

Defendant is charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree and four counts of criminal possession of stolen property. He moves to controvert a search warrant and suppress the evidence recovered from his apartment. A hearing was held before me on October 31, November 1 and November 2, 1984. Police Officers Patrick Keane, Richard Briecke and Terence J. Murnane, Detective Jesse Gonzalez and Sergeant Henry Sarno all testified. I credit the testimony of these witnesses.

On March 21, 1984, at about 1:00 p.m., Officers Keane and Murnane arrested two males. When questioned, one of them (the confidential informant) reported a fencing operation on Boerum Street and Graham Avenue. He told Officer Murnane that when he had been in the Boerum Street apartment on March 19,1984, the tenant “Edgar” had told him that the property he saw there was stolen. There were televisions, stereos, radios and jewelry in the living room.

Sergeant Sarno then directed Officer Murnane to check the address. He proceeded there with the confidential informant and [407]*407Officer Briecke. They identified the building as 153 Boerum Street.

Officer Briecke and the informant entered the building at about 8:30 p.m., leaving Officer Murnane in the car. On the third floor, the informant pointed out Edgar’s apartment. The hall was dimly lit but a painted or inked “4” was visible on the door. (Later, when Officer Briecke returned to execute the warrant, he found a metal “3” on the frame above the door.)

Upon his return to the 75th Precinct, Officer Murnane contacted the Auto Crime Squad and found that they had recovered stolen automobiles on the confidential informant’s information. At about 11:00 p.m., Sergeant Sarno and Officer Murnane mentioned defendant to Detective Jesse Gonzalez. He told them defendant’s last name and that in April 1981, as an undercover, he had, during a “sting operation”, arrested defendant for criminal possession of stolen property, which was recovered from apartment “3” at 153 Boerum Street along with an unloaded shotgun. Detective Gonzalez also supplied defendant’s height, weight and date of birth.

In checking defendant’s criminal background, Sergeant Sarno found that defendant had been arrested twice for criminal possession of stolen property. From the 90th Precinct in which 153 Boerum Street is located, Sergeant Sarno learned that their Robbery Unit had conducted an unsuccessful “sting” against defendant in the summer or fall of 1983. They also indicated “some knowledge” that defendant was a “fence” at 153 Boerum Street and supplied a photo of defendant which the confidential informant identified as “Edgar”.

Sergeant Sarno and Officer Murnane then prepared a warrant and supporting affidavit to search defendant and his apartment at 153 Boerum Street. A “riding” Assistant District Attorney who was at the precinct reviewed the papers, consulted his supervisor and approved them.

The warrant was signed by a Criminal Court Judge at about 2:00 a.m. on March 22, 1984. It commanded that “between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. or at any time thereafter” the police were “to make an immediate search of Apartment 4 at 153 Boreum [sic] Street * * * and of the person of Edgar Acevedo.” Officer Murnane’s supporting affidavit named the confidential informant as the source of information that the defendant held stolen property in apartment 4 and that the informant had been there on March 19, 1984 at 4:00 p.m., had seen the stolen property and had heard defendant admit it was stolen.

[408]*408The affidavit also stated that defendant had been arrested April 10,1981 for operating a “fence” at 153 Boerum Street from which police had then recovered stolen property and a shotgun; that defendant had been the subject of a “sting” operation in December 1982 at that location; that Officer Murnane, and other members of the 75th Precinct Robbery Identification Program, had been to the building and observed that it was as described by the confidential informant and that there were no mailboxes with names on them; and that the police had recovered stolen automobiles using the confidential informant’s information. The reasons given in the affidavit for requesting night service of the warrant were “to prevent the subject’s escape and to safeguard” the executing officers and to insure defendant’s presence. No other information was placed before the Judge.

At about 4:15 a.m. on March 22, 1984, Officer Keane entered 153 Boerum Street with the confidential informant. Sergeant Sarno and other police were behind them ready to execute the warrant. Officer Keane asked the informant to point again to the door where the police were to search. He walked halfway to the fourth floor and pointed to a door there corresponding to the one he had previously indicated on the third floor. This door was marked “4 L”.

Sergeant Sarno doubted the accuracy of this designation. He knocked at “4 L” and shouted, “Police.” A Hispanic woman opened the door disclosing a nearly empty apartment. When he showed her and some children defendant’s photo and said, “Edgar”, she pointed down to the apartment below. Sergeant Sarno went downstairs and directed a search of apartment “4”. Fifty-seven items of contraband were recovered.

Defendant’s grounds for controverting the warrant are: (i) it does not describe the place to be searched with sufficient particularity; (ii) it was executed 1% hours before the search was authorized by its terms; (iii) there was no probable cause for any search; (iv) there are two alleged misrepresentations in the affidavit supporting the warrant; and (v) there is no statutory justification for a night search. From Officer Keane’s request that the confidential informant point out defendant’s apartment a second time, defendant infers that the warrant’s statement of its location is insufficiently particular.

A description which enables the executing officer, with reasonable effort, to identify the place intended, is sufficiently particular (Steele v United States, 267 US 498 [1925]; People v Cordero, 124 Misc 2d 43 [Sup Ct, Kings County 1984]). The warrant specified apartment “4” at 153 Boerum Street. There [409]*409was only one apartment so designated in that building. The fact that the same apartment as also designated “3” and the one above it was designated “4 L” does not impair the sufficiency of the description because a literal compliance with the warrant’s command would lead to the right door.

There was no search of apartment “4 L” which would execute the warrant, as defendant claims. Nor does the confidential informant’s incorrect designation of apartment “4 L” on his second visit impair the particularity with which apartment “4” was described in the warrant.

The warrant was dated March 22, 1984. It commanded, “between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. or at any time thereafter * * * an immediate search”. Since the warrant was signed at about 2:00 a.m., there is, at least literally, a conflict in its terms. It could not authorize both an immediate search and one which must wait until 6:00 a.m., when it also purported to authorize a night search. The language “or at any time thereafter” is understood by both parties to signify an intent to authorize a search after 9:00 p.m.

A warrant which purports to authorize an immediate search at any time of the day or night could not have been intended by the issuing judge to be inoperative for four hours after it was issued.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
128 Misc. 2d 405, 488 N.Y.S.2d 537, 1985 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2937, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-acevedo-nysupct-1985.