People v. Shaw

2026 NY Slip Op 00961
CourtNew York Court of Appeals
DecidedFebruary 19, 2026
DocketNo. 113
StatusPublished
AuthorHalligan

This text of 2026 NY Slip Op 00961 (People v. Shaw) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Shaw, 2026 NY Slip Op 00961 (N.Y. 2026).

Opinion

People v Shaw (2026 NY Slip Op 00961)
People v Shaw
2026 NY Slip Op 00961
Decided on February 19, 2026
Court of Appeals
Halligan, J.
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.


Decided on February 19, 2026

No. 113

[*1]The People & c., Respondent,

v

Samuel Shaw, & c., Appellant.


Clea Weiss, for appellant.

Martin P. McCarthy, II, for respondent.



HALLIGAN, J.

The defendant was convicted of two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree, and three counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, stemming from a shooting that left two people dead and another paralyzed. On appeal, he argues that a gun discovered in an apartment where he stayed overnight should have been suppressed because he was arrested in violation of Payton v New York (445 US 573 [1980]), and that the subsequent search of the apartment was based on consent from the tenant that was neither voluntary nor attenuated from the illegal arrest. Although there is more than sufficient record support for the Appellate Division's conclusion that the defendant was coerced to leave the apartment in violation of Payton, the Appellate Division applied the wrong legal standard to determine whether the tenant's consent was voluntary. We therefore remit the matter to the Appellate Division for application of the correct legal standard. Because we conclude that any error would be harmless in relation to all counts except for count nine, charging the defendant with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, the Appellate Division need consider only that count on remittal.

[*2]I.

The evidence at trial established that in June 2018, defendant Samuel Shaw shot and killed two people and paralyzed another in a parking lot in the City of Rochester. Two eyewitnesses, including the surviving victim, identified the defendant as the shooter the next day. Those identifications were supported by forensic evidence. The police recovered shell casings, projectiles, and a magazine ejected from a handgun from the scene of the shooting. They determined that the casings and projectiles had been fired from the same 9-millimeter handgun, and the magazine had the defendant's palm print on it. Following the defendant's arrest, police discovered a 9-millimeter handgun inside a toilet tank located in an apartment where the defendant had stayed overnight. As a result of a search warrant executed at a different address, the police also found an empty box for a 9-millimeter handgun bearing the same serial number as the gun discovered at the apartment, and identified the defendant's fingerprints on the box.

This appeal concerns the legality of the defendant's arrest and subsequent search of the apartment. On July 21, 2018, fifteen members of the Monroe County SWAT team and additional uniformed officers arrived at the apartment in an armored vehicle called a BearCat. The SWAT team members wore body armor and camouflage tactical clothing and carried assault rifles. The defendant did not live in the apartment but had been there for approximately 18 hours and stayed overnight the prior evening. An officer admitted that the police chose not to obtain an arrest warrant for the defendant because they wanted to interview him before his right to counsel attached.

A police investigator testified that upon seeing the defendant through the apartment window, he shouted at him to "come on out, house is surrounded . . . come out empty handed and come out with your hands up." The defendant then "shooed" the tenant of the apartment and her 16-year-old cousin into the laundry room and exited the building, at which point he was taken into custody. Officers then entered the apartment and ordered the tenant and her cousin to "come out with [their] hands up" and lie face down with "guns to [them]." The tenant testified that she was scared; she and her cousin were handcuffed; and the police separated them and put the tenant into the back of a police patrol car, where she could not see her cousin and remained for approximately five to seven minutes. An officer obtained the tenant's consent to search. While the record is unclear as to whether verbal consent was provided when the tenant was still handcuffed, an officer removed her handcuffs before she signed a written consent to search form. The tenant testified that she was not intimidated throughout this encounter and that police neither promised anything in exchange for her consent nor threatened her. After the tenant signed the consent form, officers searched the apartment and found a gun inside the toilet tank in the bathroom.

Before trial, the defendant moved to suppress the gun, arguing that his arrest violated Payton v New York (445 US 573 [1980]), and that the tenant's consent to search the apartment was neither voluntary nor sufficiently attenuated from the Payton violation. The People responded that there was no Payton violation because the defendant had been taken into custody outside the apartment, and that he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the apartment and thus lacked standing to challenge the search.

The trial court denied the suppression motion, holding that the defendant's arrest did not implicate Payton because he was arrested outside the apartment. The court further held that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the search and, in any event, the tenant had voluntarily consented to the search. The case proceeded to trial and the defendant was convicted of all charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On appeal, the Appellate Division held that the defendant's arrest violated Payton, but that suppression of the gun was not required. With respect to the arrest, the Court found that "the number of officers, their attire in tactical SWAT gear, and their manner of entry constitute coercive circumstances suggesting that defendant was submitting to authority by leaving the apartment," rather than doing so voluntarily (229 AD3d 1180, 1184 [4th Dept 2024] [internal quotation marks omitted]). The Court further concluded that despite the Payton violation, the tenant's consent to search the apartment was "voluntarily [*3]given" and attenuated any initial illegality (id.)[FN1]. One Justice dissented, concluding that the consent to search was neither voluntary nor sufficiently attenuated, but would have found the error harmless in relation to the defendant's convictions for murder in the first degree, attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree, and two of the three counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (see id. at 1187 [Ogden, J., dissenting]). The dissenting Justice granted the defendant leave to appeal to this Court.

II.
A.

Initially, we reject the People's argument that the defendant failed to preserve his contention that his arrest violated Payton. In his suppression motion, the defendant argued that "officers from the Rochester Police Department ordered the defendant to exit his temporary domicile and arrested him," that the arrest violated Payton

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People v. Shaw
2026 NY Slip Op 00961 (New York Court of Appeals, 2026)

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Bluebook (online)
2026 NY Slip Op 00961, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-shaw-ny-2026.