People v Coste
2008 NY Slip Op 02757 [49 AD3d 466]
March 27, 2008
Appellate Division, First Department
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
As corrected through Wednesday, May 14, 2008


The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Hector Coste, Appellant.

[*1] Steven Banks, The Legal Aid Society, New York City (Frances Gallagher of counsel), and Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, New York City (Jeremy Robert Saks of counsel), for appellant.

Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Alice Wiseman of counsel), for respondent.

Appeal from judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Budd G. Goodman, J.), rendered September 23, 2004, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 3 to 6 years, held in abeyance and the matter remitted to Supreme Court, New York County, for a Mapp hearing.

Although defendant denied that he had the physical evidence at issue on his person, he was not required to admit possession in order to comply with the factual pleading requirement of CPL 710.60 (People v Burton, 6 NY3d 584, 589 [2006]; People v Johnson, 42 AD3d 341 [2007]). Rather, he was entitled to meet his evidentiary burden by using a police officer's statement that the property in question was seized from his person. Concur—Mazzarelli, J.P., Saxe, Buckley and Catterson, JJ.