People v Spann

People v Spann 2008 NY Slip Op 09697 [57 AD3d 276] December 11, 2008 Appellate Division, First Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. As corrected through Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Gerard Spann, Appellant.

—[*1] Steven Banks, The Legal Aid Society, New York (Paul Wiener of counsel), for appellant.

Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Jared Wolkowitz of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Edward J. McLaughlin, J., at suppression hearing; Charles H. Solomon, J., at plea and sentence), rendered May 3, 2005, convicting defendant, of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 4½ to 9 years, unanimously affirmed.

Given the testimony of a trained and experienced member of a police street narcotics enforcement unit that, from a rooftop vantage point in a drug-prone location, he observed defendant retrieve two small objects from the area of his buttocks and hand them to a man and a woman in exchange for an unknown sum of United States currency, there is ample support in the record for the hearing court's determination that the officer had probable cause to arrest and search defendant (see People v Jones, 90 NY2d 835 [1997]). Concur—Tom, J.P., Andrias, Friedman, Catterson and Acosta, JJ.