Court of Appeals of New York

In this case, defendant and his friend were chased into his apartment by police officers, then handcuffed and frisked. The officers then proceeded to conduct a warrantless search of the premises, finding a gun in a metal box on the floor. Order of the Appellate Division concluding that the exigent circumstances that justified the officers' entry into the apartment justified the warrantless search of the gun-at-issue is reversed, where: 1) the People failed to meet the burden of establishing that the exigencies of the situation justified the warrantless search of the closed box; and 2) the search was unreasonable as a matter of law because by the time the box was opened, any urgency justifying the warrantless search had abated, and so a warrant was required for searching the box.

Appellate Information

• Decided 10/16/2014
• Published 10/16/2014

Judges

• Pigott

Court

• Court of Appeals of New York

Counsel