People v Johnson

People v Johnson 2009 NY Slip Op 04940 [63 AD3d 518] June 16, 2009 Appellate Division, First Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. As corrected through Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Mark Johnson, Appellant.

—[*1] Richard M. Greenberg, Office of the Appellate Defender, New York (Daniel A. Warshawsky of counsel), for appellant.

Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Kassandra King of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (John Cataldo, J.), rendered March 15, 2007, convicting defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 3½ years, unanimously affirmed.

The court properly denied defendant's suppression motion. Defendant precisely matched a radioed description of a person who had just completed a drug sale. The description, which included the seller's location, race, height, weight and the colors of several clothing items, was sufficiently specific to provide probable cause, given the very close temporal and spatial proximity between the sale and the arrest, and the fact that defendant was the only person matching the description (see e.g. People v Rampersant, 272 AD2d 202 [2000], lv denied 95 NY2d 870 [2000]). That proximity made it highly unlikely that the suspect had departed and that, almost at the same moment, an innocent person of identical appearance coincidentally arrived on the scene. Concur—Saxe, J.P., Sweeny, Moskowitz, Acosta and Richter, JJ.