People v. Hyde

• Decision Date: 23 January 2003
• Citation: 302 A.D.2d 101,754 N.Y.S.2d 11
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division
• Parties: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant,<BR>v.<BR>PAUL HYDE, Respondent.

302 A.D.2d 101

754 N.Y.S.2d 11

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant,

v.PAUL HYDE, Respondent.

SULLIVAN, J.

January 23, 2003.

Stanley R. Kaplan of counsel (Joseph N. Ferdenzi on the brief; Robert T. Johnson, District Attorney, Bronx County, attorney), for appellant.

Rosemary Herbert of counsel (Richard M. Greenberg, Office of the Appellate Defender, attorney), for respondent.

MAZZARELLI, J.P., SAXE, ROSENBERGER and LERNER, JJ., concur.

OPINION OF THE COURT

SULLIVAN, J.

This appeal, from the dismissal of an indictment for legal insufficiency, presents the issue of whether the People's evidence before the grand jury established defendant's possession of drugs, drug paraphernalia, a gun and ammunition recovered from an apartment or, as the motion court held, merely his presence in that apartment.

A transcript of the grand jury proceedings reveals the following. On July 11, 2001, at approximately 1:45 P.M., Sergeant Gibson, accompanied by Police Officers LaMazza and Lisa, responded to a radio run of shots being fired at apartment 10B, 30 Richmond Plaza in the Bronx. The sergeant knocked on the door several times without a response, although he could hear "footsteps and scuffling inside of the apartment." A woman inside the apartment shouted, "hold on" several times. Finally, codefendant Deborah Barksdale, who resided in the apartment, opened the door, partially nude, with a towel draped around her. The officers entered the apartment and asked if anyone else was there. Barksdale indicated that her cousin was inside. At that point, defendant, pulling up his trousers, barefoot, sockless and shirtless, emerged from the left rear bedroom.

In searching the apartment, described as "very messy * * * very dirty, [and] very unkept [sic]," to see if anyone else was present, the sergeant entered the bedroom, admittedly Barksdale's, from which defendant exited and observed a dresser with drawers with missing "faces." Inside one of the drawers, in open view, the sergeant observed a plate on which sat an empty plastic bag and another bag containing a substance that appeared to be cocaine. The bag's contents, later tested, contained cocaine and weighed in excess of nine ounces. Officer Lisa, directed into the bedroom by Sergeant Gibson, also recovered a bag containing 19 black-topped vials of crack cocaine (10 of the vials were analyzed and tested positive for cocaine) from under the mattress. Officer Lisa also recovered a Bacardi crack pipe, crack/cocaine residue mirror, razor blade, glass/crack pipe and two scrapers, all containing what appeared to be crack cocaine residue, from the bedroom. One of the pipes tested positive for cocaine. Officer Lisa also retrieved a .45 caliber Ruger handgun, in "fair" condition, loaded with four rounds of ammunition, from a handbag hanging off the doorknob of the door to the bedroom. As confirmed by photographs of the bedroom, the gun was visible in the bag, which was opened.

Officer LaMazza noticed a plate in the kitchen with a white powdery substance that appeared to be cocaine and a razor blade on it. The white powder tested positive for cocaine as did the residue on the razor blade. Drug paraphernalia, consisting of a white jar with a lid, 32 green tops, 47 blue tops, 81 crack vials and 149 Ziploc bags, was also recovered from the kitchen and vouchered. The officers later discovered that the apartment was neither defendant's home nor place of business.

Defendant appeared before the grand jury, testifying that on the day in question he went to the apartment to purchase drugs, as he did regularly. After making his purchase, two vials of crack cocaine for $10, he crushed the crack cocaine, mixed it with marijuana, rolled it up in paper and smoked it in the living room. About 20 to 30 minutes later, the police arrived. Any drugs found in the apartment did not belong to him. He had never been in either of the bedrooms in the apartment and was wearing a pair of shorts and a shirt the entire time. He had not engaged in sex with Ms. Barksdale. He "wasn't paying attention to the kitchen" and thus did not see the razor blade or drugs recovered there, although, if he looked, he could see into the kitchen.

The People charged the grand jury on constructive possession but not the drug factory presumption under Penal Law § 220.25 (2). In dismissing the indictment, the court held that the People had failed to establish the element of dominion and control, finding a lack of any evidence that defendant "had control over Barksdale's bedroom, the apartment or Barksdale" or that he assisted her in the possession of the contraband. According to the motion court, defendant's only act "was being present in the bedroom of the apartment naked and then coming into the hallway putting on his pants." Since we find that in so concluding the motion court failed to give the People's evidence the benefit of every reasonable inference, we reverse.

"Legally sufficient evidence" is defined in CPL 70.10 (1) as "competent evidence which, if accepted as true, would establish every element of an offense charged and the defendant's commission thereof." With respect to an indictment (see CPL 190.65 [1]), the proper standard for reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence is whether, when "viewed in the light most favorable to the People, if unexplained and uncontradicted, [it] would be sufficient to warrant conviction by a trial jury" (People v Manini, 79 NY2d 561, 568-569). In assessing sufficiency when the evidence before the grand jury is wholly circumstantial, a reviewing court's inquiry is limited to "whether the facts, if proven, and the inferences that logically flow from those facts supply proof of every element of the charged crimes" (People v Deegan, 69 NY2d 976, 979). "That other, innocent inferences could possibly be drawn from the facts is irrelevant * * * as long as the Grand Jury could rationally have drawn the guilty inference" (id.).

In considering the sufficiency of grand jury evidence, a reviewing court "may neither resolve factual questions in anticipation of the task properly left for trial * * * nor usurp the role of the Grand Jury by substituting its own inferences for those the Grand Jury has drawn" (People v Perez, 269 AD2d 321, 322, lv denied 95 NY2d 801, quoting People v Ballou, 121 AD2d 861, 862, lv denied 68 NY2d 809). A reviewing court may not examine the adequacy of the proof to establish reasonable cause, a determination that involves the weight or quality of the proof (People v Reyes, 75 NY2d 590, 593; see People v Jennings, 69 NY2d 103, 115). "[A]ll questions as to the quality or weight of the proof should be deferred" (People v Jennings, supra at 115).

The motion court dismissed the indictment because of its view that all that the evidence showed was defendant's presence in the apartment. From that, the court concluded that the People had not shown that defendant had constructive possession of the seized evidence or that he had acted as Barksdale's accomplice in possessing them. With respect to constructive possession, "the rule has long been that to support a charge that a defendant was in constructive possession of tangible...