PEOPLE v. JOHNSON (2004)

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (John A.K. Bradley, J.), rendered January 22, 2003, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 7 to 14 years, unanimously affirmed.

The court properly exercised its discretion in admitting into evidence a large plastic bag, containing smaller bags of cocaine, that the police recovered from a woman who had been standing next to defendant at the time of his arrest.   Minutes earlier, defendant had made a sale to an undercover officer who noticed that defendant dispensed the drugs involved in that sale from a large bag that contained smaller bags.   The circumstances permitted a reasonable inference that defendant transferred his supply of drugs to the woman immediately after making the sale to the undercover officer (see generally, People v. Mirenda, 23 N.Y.2d 439, 454-454, 297 N.Y.S.2d 532, 245 N.E.2d 194 [1969] ), and this tended to explain why no additional drugs were recovered from defendant.