In People v. Holland,1 a divided Court of Appeals (5-2) declined the opportunity to articulate the law governing hundreds of thousands of pedestrian stops performed annually by the New York City Police Department, “only a very small percentage of which actually result in the discovery of evidence of crime.”2 Instead, the Court dismissed a defendant’s appeal from an Appellate Division order reversing a Supreme Court order that had granted a motion to suppress drugs found on defendant’s person. The Supreme Court found defendant had been unlawfully detained and that the police illegality was not attenuated by defendant’s scuffle with the police as he tried “to go,” which led to his arrest for assault and disorderly conduct and search.
The Court of Appeals dismissed the defendant’s appeal, finding that the Appellate Division’s order, “while termed ‘on the law,’ was actually predicated upon a differing view concerning the issue of attenuation, which is a mixed question of law and fact” and, therefore, does not meet the requisites of CPL 450.90(2)(a)3 that the reversal be “upon the law alone or upon the law and such facts which, but for the determination of law, would not have led to reversal.”4
A Stop and a Scuffle
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