People v. Johnson

11 A.D.3d 203, 782 N.Y.S.2d 266, 2004 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 11514

Opinion

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (John A.K. Bradley, J.), rendered January 22, 2003, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 7 to 14 years, unanimously affirmed.

The court properly exercised its discretion in admitting into evidence a large plastic bag, containing smaller bags of cocaine, that the police recovered from a woman who had been standing next to defendant at the time of his arrest. Minutes earlier, defendant had made a sale to an undercover officer who noticed that defendant dispensed the drugs involved in that sale from a large bag that contained smaller bags. The circumstances permitted a reasonable inference that defendant transferred his supply of drugs to the woman immediately after making the sale to the undercover officer (see generally, People v Mirenda, 23 NY2d 439, 453-454 [1969]), and this tended to explain why no additional drugs were recovered from defendant. Concur— Buckley, P.J., Mazzarelli, Saxe, Ellerin and Gonzalez, JJ.