Weapon charge dismissed over illegal police stop

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A state appeals court has dismissed a weapon charge because the police traffic stop that led to the discovery of the evidence was illegal.

Defendant Jose Ponce pleaded guilty in May 2019 in state Supreme Court in Onondaga County before Justice Gordon J. Cuffy to attempted second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.

In a decision released Friday, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, Fourth Department, reversed the guilty plea, suppressed the physical evidence, and dismissed the indictment.

Ponce’s appellate attorney, Piotr Banasiak, argued that Cuffy should have suppressed the evidence because the police seizure was unlawful.

“We agree,” the Fourth Department wrote.

Banasiak argued that the traffic stop of the vehicle in which Ponce was a passenger was illegal because the 911 call to which police were responding “failed to provide reasonable suspicion that defendant … was either the driver or occupant of the vehicle,” according to the decision.

A vehicle stop in New York state is legal when police have a reasonable suspicion that the driver or occupants of the car “have committed, are committing, or are about to commit a crime,” the court wrote.

When a defendant files a motion to suppress evidence found during a search, the prosecution has the burden of showing the legality of the police conduct.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that there are situations where an anonymous tip can provide enough information to form the basis for a legal traffic stop.

But when an anonymous tip does not explain how the tipster learned the information, it can only provide reasonable suspicion if there is also a sufficient basis for reliability.

The anonymous tip must be reliable in terms of the illegal activity suggested and also name a specific person involved.

The evidence at the suppression hearing in Ponce’s case, showed that police officers were dispatched based on an anonymous tip that Ponce was in a specific vehicle at a specific location.

But when police responded to the area, neither Ponce nor the vehicle was present. More than 3½ hours later, officers saw the car and two people inside. The only officer to testify at the suppression hearing admitted that he could not determine whether the occupants of the vehicle were male or female, or whether one of them was Ponce.

Also, the car was not registered to Ponce, but the officers still turned on their emergency lights and tried to stop the car.

“After a brief pursuit, the driver of the vehicle lost control, and the vehicle struck a parked car and a stop sign before coming to rest against a fence,” according to the decision.

Ponce got out of the front passenger door and tried to flee, but he was captured a few feet away. Police found a loaded gun on the floor of the car on the driver’s side.

“We agree with defendant that the totality of the information known to the police at the time of the stop of the vehicle did not provide the reasonable suspicion necessary to believe that defendant was either the driver or an occupant of the vehicle,” the court wrote.

The court ruled that the prosecution’s evidence was not enough to justify the stop. Without the evidence of the gun, the indictment should be dismissed, the court ruled.

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