| People v Jenkins |
| 2007 NY Slip Op 08103 [44 AD3d 565] |
| October 30, 2007 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
| The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v DavidE. Jenkins, Jr., Appellant. |
—[*1] Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Lucy Jane Lang of counsel), forrespondent.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (James A. Yates, J.), rendered December 1,2005, convicting defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of manslaughter in the first degree, andsentencing him to a term of nine years, unanimously affirmed.
The court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress the statements at issue. When thepolice responded to a radio report of a dispute and found defendant, the victim and thecodefendant, all of whom appeared to have been involved in a bloody altercation, the officerswere not required to provide Miranda warnings prior to telling defendant to sit down andasking him "What happened?" The police did nothing to suggest to defendant that he was incustody; on the contrary, their course of conduct clearly conveyed that they had not decided toarrest anyone without first clarifying the situation (see People v Yukl, 25 NY2d 585[1969], cert denied 400 US 851 [1970]). The question was asked to clarify a volatilesituation, and did not constitute an interrogation (see People v Johnson, 59 NY2d 1014[1983]).
Defendant made his next set of statements to the police at a hospital, and the courtsuppressed those statements for lack of Miranda warnings. The court properly deniedsuppression of statements that defendant made at the precinct hours later to different officers, andstill later to an assistant district attorney, since all the precinct statements followedMiranda warnings, and since there was a definite, pronounced break in the interrogation,such that defendant may be said to have returned, in effect, to the status of one who was notunder the influence of questioning (seePeople v Paulman, 5 NY3d 122, 130-134 [2005]).
Although defendant moved to withdraw his guilty plea at sentencing, the record indicatesthat he withdrew the motion after the court stated that he was entitled to appeal the suppressionruling. In any event, defendant's motion to withdraw his plea was without merit since it wasbased on defendant's conclusory and unsupported claims of innocence and lack of understandingthat were contradicted by the plea allocution (see People v Frederick, 45 NY2d 520[1978]). We [*2]also note that defendant never raised thepossibility of a viable justification defense.
We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence. Concur—Lippman, P.J., Andrias,Williams, Buckley and Kavanagh, JJ.