People v. Geaslen
| Decision Date | 23 December 1981 |
| Citation | 446 N.Y.S.2d 227,54 N.Y.2d 510,430 N.E.2d 1280 |
| Parties | , 430 N.E.2d 1280 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Charles W. GEASLEN, Appellant. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Defendant was denied his constitutional right to due process when the prosecution failed to disclose Grand Jury testimony to the suppression court for it to determine whether defendant was entitled to have access to that testimony at the suppression hearing. This constitutional deprivation requires that the denial of defendant's suppression motion be vacated. Independently, defendant's conviction for the crime of unlawful imprisonment would have to be vacated inasmuch as that crime merged into his conviction of attempted rape in the first degree.
Defendant moved to suppress a serrated knife, dungarees and yellow T-shirt which had been seized in a warrantless search of his hotel room at times when he was neither present nor aware of the effectuation of the search. At the suppression hearing which followed, only one witness, Parole Officer Hotaling, testified. His account was substantially as follows: that he was having lunch at the Cobblestone Inn, Liverpool, New York, when informed by another parole officer that defendant was registered there under a false name; that he knew there was a warrant out for defendant's arrest for parole violation; that the parole officers obtained a pass key from the manager of the inn and entered defendant's room under the authority of a standard search consent form signed by defendant as a condition of parole; that they discovered certain identifying papers and he took into his possession a serrated-edged steak knife; that he then verified that a warrant was indeed outstanding for defendant's parole violation and set up a stakeout of the hotel; that shortly thereafter defendant was apprehended as he entered the hotel; that a scuffle ensued, defendant developed convulsions and was removed to a local hospital by ambulance; that Officer Wheeler of the Liverpool Police Department arrived at the hotel in response to the ambulance call; that Hotaling and other parole officers (but not Wheeler) re-entered defendant's room for the purpose of collecting his belongings; that Wheeler described certain clothing worn by a suspect in an attempted knifepoint rape case he was then investigating; and that a pair of pants, a yellow T-shirt and the serrated-edged knife were turned over to Wheeler.
Based on that testimony the suppression court determined that the search of defendant's room was a valid search pursuant to the conditions of parole. Never disclosed to the suppression court or made available to defendant prior to or at the hearing, however, was the Grand Jury testimony of Officer Wheeler. It is defendant's contention that the prosecution's failure to disclose both the existence and substance of that testimony deprived defendant of due process of law. In the circumstances of this case, we agree.
The substance of Officer Wheeler's Grand Jury testimony is that it was only after receipt of the ambulance call (following the completion of the first search of defendant's room by the parole officers before defendant had appeared at the Cobblestone Inn) that Wheeler arrived on the scene, that it was Wheeler, not the parole officers, who entered and searched defendant's room for the second time, that he did so because he suspected that defendant had perpetrated the rape that he was investigating, and that it was Wheeler who then took the knife with the serrated edge from a handbag lying...
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