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In this case, the appellate court considered whether evidence should have been suppressed because the defendant’s consent to having his car searched was not voluntary.

In People v. Wright-Hale, the arresting officer went to a hotel in Queens in response to a 911 emergency call that someone was banging on a hotel room door with a firearm. When the arresting officer arrived several other officers were already on the scene.  They were talking to the defendant in the hallway.  The arresting officer entered the hotel room and learned from the room’s occupant, the defendant’s ex-girlfriend, that the defendant was known to carry a gun.  The arresting officer then asked the defendant for permission to search his car.  He gave permission, gave the officer his keys, and told the officer which car belonged to him.  The officer found a gun in a shoebox in the trunk of the defendant’s car.

The defendant was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. The defendant filed a motion to suppress the gun and statements that the defendant made to the police.  The court denied the motion. The defendant was eventually convicted. He appealed on the grounds that the evidence of the gun should have been suppressed because the officer had no reason to suspect criminal activity.  The defendant also argued that the search was involuntary because of the presence of so many police officers and because the arresting officer did not inform the defendant that he had the right to refuse permission to search his car.

In the case of People v. Sloley, the Appellate Court considered the question as to whether the jury properly concluded that a defendant constructively possessed a firearm.  Constructive possession is a legal doctrine which allows prosecutors to bring criminal charges and potentially obtain convictions for possessory offenses in cases where the contraband was not actually found physically on the defendant.

In 2016, the defendant was pulled over by law enforcement for speeding. When he officer returned to his car to write the speeding ticket, the defendant then fled.  At one point during the chase, the defendant drove behind a building and the police lost sight of him.  He then reappeared and crashed. The police searched the area behind the building where the defendant had driven during the chase and found a handgun with the help of a canine. As a result, the defendant was charged with a variety of crimes and eventually convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, unlawful fleeing from a police officer in a motor vehicle in the third degree, and reckless driving.  Because he was a second violent felony offender, the defendant was sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by five years of postrelease supervision. The defendant appealed the conviction.

The basis of the defendant’s appeal of the firearms charge was that the prosecution did not establish that he had possession of the gun. For a possession charge the law requires that the defendant must have exercised “dominion or control over the property by a sufficient level of control over the area in which the contraband is found.” People v McCoy, 169 AD3d 1260, 1262 [2019].  In this case no one witnessed the defendant with possession of the gun and no one witnessed the defendant discard the gun.  A deputy sheriff testified that the defendant fled in his vehicle behind the building where the gun was found.  He further testified that the handgun was relatively clean and not weathered, indicating that it had been placed in the area recently.  Furthermore, the defendant’s DNA was found on the gun as well as a hat that was found in the area where the gun was found.

In People v. McCoy, the defendant was convicted of three counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and four counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. The convictions were based on the defendant being found to have constructively possessed a gun. Constructive possession of a firearm occurs when a defendant was not found in actual physical possession of the firearm, but was found to have had control over the area where the firearm was found.  After being sentenced to 12 years in prison, the defendant appealed his convictions.

The defendant’s arrest stems from an incident during which the defendant’s live-in girlfriend observed the defendant hammering a step in the attic of these in which they lived.  The next day, when the defendant was out of the house, she pulled up the step and found a plastic bag containing several guns. After showing her sister, who also lived in the house, the girlfriend called the police.  The police arrived at the house and removed the guns.  However, no fingerprints or DNA were found on the gun.  In addition to the defendant, the girlfriend, the girlfriend’s sister, the downstairs neighbors also had access to the attic.  Nonetheless, the defendant was arrested and charged with several charges of criminal possession of a weapon.

On appeal, the defendant challenged the legal sufficiency of the evidence.  Because several other people had access to the attic and because his DNA was not found on the guns, the defendant argued that there was not sufficient evidence presented at trial to support a finding that he exercised dominion and control over the area in which the guns were found.  Thus, the defendant concluded, the jury should not have convicted him of criminal possession of a weapon. Even though on appeal the court found that the defendant did not raise this particular argument in his motion to dismiss, the court still reviewed this issue in the context of evaluating whether all elements of the charged crimes were proven beyond a reasonable doubt.