New York State Gun Laws
The most serious type of gun possession charge in New York is the felony charge for possession of a weapon (handgun, assault weapon) outside of your home. If this charge stands alone there is almost always a police search and seizure issue.
The top criminal defense attorneys in Westchester County, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange Counties and in New York City will investigate the violation of an accused's constitutional rights. This is the primary defense. Collecting information from the accused and attacking the government's case (State or Federal) is the best criminal gun defense.
Recently, In Matter of Jaquan M. , 97 AD3d 403 the court held that the defendant's motion to suppress a gun found in his backpack because the police did not have reasonable suspicion should have been granted.
The court found that the police officer observations could not be based solely on the officer seeing the defendant remove an object from his waistband where the officers conceded that the object did not bear and obvious hallmarks of a weapon and there were no other behaviors from the defendant to rise to the level of reasonable suspicion.
Even the defendant's denials that there was anything in his backpack did not create probable cause to search the backpack.
In this case the court found that the defendant allowed the police to search him for identification papers but did not have authority to search any compartments of the backpack that did not contain papers.
Suppression of the Weapon
The facts of the case above point to a line the police crossed and violated the search and seizure rights of the accused. The criminal defense attorney needs to be properly prepared to present defenses to have evidence excluded at trial therefore a judge can dismiss the gun or weapon charge.
The top criminal defense attorneys will prepare their client's for the options regarding suppression of weapons and how to best present that criminal defense.
If you have been charged with criminal possession of a weapon call our law office to discuss the case and how to aggressively defend the charge.