People v. Soto
| Decision Date | 26 May 1992 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, etc., Respondent, v. Samuel SOTO, Appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Philip L. Weinstein, New York City (Stephen Monick, of counsel), for appellant.
Charles J. Hynes, Dist. Atty., Brooklyn (Jay M. Cohen and Jonathan Frank, of counsel; Rudolph A. Pyatt, on the brief), for respondent.
Before EIBER, J.P., and O'BRIEN, COPERTINO and PIZZUTO, JJ.
MEMORANDUM BY THE COURT.
Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Goldstein, J.), rendered July 5, 1990, convicting him of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fourth degree, upon a jury verdict, and imposing sentence. The appeal brings up for review the denial, after a hearing (Pesce, J.), of that branch of the defendant's omnibus motion which was to suppress statements made by him to law enforcement officials.
ORDERED that the judgment is reversed, on the law and the facts, that branch of the defendant's omnibus motion which was to suppress statements made by him to law enforcement officials is granted to the extent that all of the defendant's post-arrest statements are suppressed, and a new trial is ordered. No questions of fact have been raised or considered.
While on patrol in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn on the evening of June 30, 1989, Police Officer Bruce Hammonds observed the defendant and an unidentified man engaged in what "appeared to be a drug sale". From a distance of about 10 feet away, Hammonds saw the defendant handing a vial filled with a white substance to his unidentified companion in exchange for money. When Hammonds and his partner approached the two men, the defendant threw a brown paper bag to the ground, and his companion fled. Hammonds grabbed the defendant by the arm, and asked him what he was doing there. The defendant replied that he had been smoking marihuana, and pulled a glassine envelope of this substance from his pocket. At this point, Hammonds placed the defendant under arrest, and then asked him whether the brown paper bag which had been thrown to the ground was his. The defendant responded that the contents of the paper bag belonged to him, but that he was not selling anything to the individual who fled. It was subsequently discovered that the paper bag contained 46 vials of cocaine.
At the conclusion of a pretrial Huntley hearing, the hearing court denied the defendant's motion to suppress his statements to Officer Hammonds. Although the hearing court found that the defendant was in custody at the time the statements were made, the court determined that Officer Hammonds' pre-Miranda inquiries were preliminary and investigatory in nature, and thus did not constitute interrogation...
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