| People v Johnson |
| 2009 NY Slip Op 04940 [63 AD3d 518] |
| June 16, 2009 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
| The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v MarkJohnson, Appellant. |
—[*1] Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Kassandra King of counsel), forrespondent.
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 thethird 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 aradioed description of a person who had just completed a drug sale. The description, whichincluded the seller's location, race, height, weight and the colors of several clothing items, wassufficiently specific to provide probable cause, given the very close temporal and spatialproximity between the sale and the arrest, and the fact that defendant was the only personmatching 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 thesuspect had departed and that, almost at the same moment, an innocent person of identicalappearance coincidentally arrived on the scene. Concur—Saxe, J.P., Sweeny, Moskowitz,Acosta and Richter, JJ.