People v. Stephens
| Decision Date | 31 January 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 2353.,No. 1550/06,2353.,1550/06 |
| Citation | 2008 NY Slip Op 613,851 N.Y.S.2d 136,47 A.D.3d 586 |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant, v. KEITH STEPHENS, Respondent. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
On the evening of February 28, 2006, the arresting officer, Officer John Hoffman, was patrolling with two other plainclothes anticrime officers in an unmarked police car. At about 10:00 P.M. Officer Hoffman made a very brief observation of defendant and another man walking four to five feet behind a third man. Defendant was wearing a puffy, waist-length winter coat, and as defendant walked, his right hand was motionless at the right side of his waistband area while his left hand was moving. According to Officer Hoffman, defendant, apparently noticing the officers' car, looked at the car and became "startled," looking "straight ahead as if he was very nervous or he saw like a ghost." While continuing to "look straight ahead" as he walked, defendant "still ha[d] his hand on his right side." As Officer Hoffman stopped the car, the other officers got out and approached defendant, who fled. Officer Hoffman, who continued to follow defendant with the car, noticed that defendant ran with his arm clutched on his right side. After a brief chase, the police apprehended defendant and recovered a gun that defendant had thrown under a parked car as he was being chased, as well as a quantity of narcotics.
Defendant was charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the second and third degrees, and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree. Defendant moved, among other things, to suppress evidence that the police had recovered upon his arrest. A Mapp hearing was ordered.
At the hearing, Officer Hoffman, a nine-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, testified that he was initially alerted by defendant's actions because there had been "robberies in the area with male blacks robbing [people] at gunpoint" and that "it looked very odd[,] based on [his] experience[,] that two individuals would be so close to another individual walking in that area." Moreover, according to Officer Hoffman, who had been trained to identify a person carrying a firearm, people carrying guns walked in a noticeably different manner.* Thus, Officer Hoffman was further alerted by defendant's actions because defendant was walking in a manner consistent with the likelihood that he was carrying a firearm. The officer then testified that he could see "no reason why someone runs ... with one hand swinging, the other hand on his person unless he is holding something."
The hearing court found Officer Hoffman to be "completely credible" and "scrupulously honest." Nonetheless, the court concluded that the defendant's motion to suppress must be granted because his conduct, including the subsequent flight, did not give rise to a reasonable suspicion that he had committed or was about to commit a crime. The court found that "[b]roken down in a frame-by-frame analysis, the defendant's behavior [was] innocuous."
The court held that, even assuming the defendant knew that the men approaching him were police officers and then fled, that behavior still would not have provided the necessary legal predicate to chase him, as flight alone was insufficient to justify pursuit. The court then found there was nothing remarkable about the defendant walking with another man, behind a third man, at 10:00 P.M. on a city street. The court also found that the defendant's act in walking with one hand held to his waistband area while allowing the other hand to swing freely was not sufficient to justify a stop of the defendant. It also failed to comport with Officer Hoffman's own training standards, as it did not fit with the signs that he had described as part of the police training on how to identify people carrying...
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