People v. Hodge

• Decision Date: 08 June 1978
• Citation: 44 N.Y.2d 553,378 N.E.2d 99,406 N.Y.S.2d 736
• Parties: , 378 N.E.2d 99 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. George HODGE, Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 736

406 N.Y.S.2d 736

44 N.Y.2d 553, 378 N.E.2d 99

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. George HODGE, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

June 8, 1978.

Diana A. Steele and William E. Hellerstein, New York City, for appellant

Robert M. Morgenthau, Dist. Atty. (Richard M. Seltzer, Peter L. Zimroth and Robert M. Pitler, New York City, of counsel), for respondent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

The outcome of this appeal depends on whether certain tangible physical evidence and oral admissions should have been suppressed because the search and seizure of which they were products was conducted without a warrant.

George Hodge, the appellant here, stands convicted of manslaughter in the second degree. Though that judgment was entered upon his plea of guilty, pursuant to CPL 710.70 (subd. 2) he nevertheless challenges the judgment of conviction as being founded upon the trial court's erroneous prior refusal to suppress the articles and admissions in question.

We first set forth the controlling facts. At about 6:00 a. m. on February 20, 1972, Police Officer Paul Ryan and his partner received a radio message dispatching them to 83rd Street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, where they were to learn that a fatal stabbing had occurred. Repairing to the scene posthaste, they observed upon their arrival a bloodstain in the snow outside a four-story rooming house along with an equally bloody trail on the steps leading into the building.

Ryan at once began ringing the building's doorbell. Receiving no response, he proceeded to break a window in order to open the front door and thus gain admission to the common hallway. With fellow officers, he began an immediate floor-to-floor search, as a result of which further bloodstains were found on one of the intermediate staircases and in a bucket, a commode and a sink on the fourth floor community bathroom.

After this discovery, the officers knocked on the doors of the rooms located on that floor in order to speak to their occupants. One tenant informed the police that at about 5:30 a. m. she had heard sounds of an argument emanating from room 46. Another referred to the occupant of 46 as "the white man with blond hair". This description tallied with that which the police had received of the victim when they first came to the scene, but the fact, unknown to the police, was that it fit both the dead man and his assailant.

In any event, Officer Ryan then rapped on the door of 46. When there was no reply, a key was obtained from the building superintendent and the officers, guns drawn as a precaution, entered the apartment, where they found Hodge in bed. As soon as he stood up and the officers observed he was in his underwear, they put their guns back into their holsters and proceeded to ask for his name and address. As they did so, they noticed a bloodstain on his right hand. Their inquiry as to its source elicited the explanation that Hodge had cut his foot. But the officers observed no sign of injury or any blood on that part of his body.

Appellant then agreed to go to the police station to assist in the investigation. While handing Hodge his jacket preparatory to their leaving the room, Ryan patted it, felt something hard, and recovered two knives, one of which appeared to have still more blood on it. Appellant admitted the knives were his. The sequence of these events was rapid. When the officers left with the appellant it was only 6:50 a. m.

It was thereafter, during the ride to the station house, that Officer Ryan first gave the appellant the required warnings against self incrimination, whereupon Hodge agreed to answer questions in the absence of an attorney. The questioning that ensued became the basis for the prompt issuance of a warrant for a search of Hodge's quarters, where a set of car keys fitting an automobile owned by the deceased was discovered. Several hours later, the appellant also made a separate inculpatory statement to an Assistant District Attorney.

It is clear that the trial court showed care in parsing out the components of appellant's motions. It suppressed his admission of the ownership of the knives (because it had been elicited before the Miranda warnings were given) and the statement he made to the Assistant District Attorney (because the interrogation had proceeded before the summoning of a priest, as appellant had requested while failing, in answer to a question, to indicate an unequivocal willingness to be interviewed by the Assistant District Attorney without the presence of a lawyer). But, as to the knives, the car keys and the remaining statements, all of which the appellant contends were the fruit of the initial warrantless, and, therefore, in his view, illegal entry of his room, the motions were denied.

The Appellate Division, in affirming the judgment, upheld these rulings. On the analysis which follows, we too find that the refusal to suppress these evidentiary matters did not trespass on the appellant's constitutional rights.

The motive force for the constitutional safeguards precluding unreasonable searches and seizures (N.Y. Const. art. I, § 12; U.S. Const., 4th Amdt.) is protection against arbitrary governmental invasion of privacy (see United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 11, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538). To assure that, save for few specifically established and well-defined exceptions, the determination of whether the desire of the police to conduct a search or seizure is supported by probable cause is entrusted in the first instance to a neutral Magistrate. In the absence of "exigencies of the situation (that) made that course imperative" (McDonald v. United States,335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93...