Opinion
November 15, 1993
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Finnegan, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
Testimony at the suppression hearing established that the complainant was sexually assaulted in the laundry room of an apartment building. Immediately thereafter, she went to the apartment of an acquaintance, to whom she described her assailant. The acquaintance had seen an individual matching the description only a few minutes earlier in the building's lobby, coming from the direction of the laundry room.
Three weeks later, the acquaintance called the police and told them that he had seen a perpetrator of a "past crime". The police responded to the scene, talked to the acquaintance and, after a brief chase, arrested the defendant. A short time later, the complainant identified the defendant in a lineup.
The defendant asserts that the police did not have probable cause to arrest him. Therefore, the defendant contends, the hearing court improperly denied suppression of the complainant's testimony concerning her identification of the defendant at the lineup held after his arrest. We disagree.
Hearsay information provided to the police by an identified citizen is presumed to be reliable (see, People v Chipp, 75 N.Y.2d 327, 339-340, cert denied 498 U.S. 833; People v DeJesus, 169 A.D.2d 521; People v Cruz, 149 A.D.2d 151). Such information may serve as the basis for a warrantless arrest if it appears, "in the language of the Aguilar-Spinelli rules, that the informant has some basis of knowledge for the information * * * transmitted to the police" (People v Johnson, 66 N.Y.2d 398, 402).
In the instant case, the informant was present at the scene of the arrest, told the arresting officers of his conversation with the complainant, and confirmed that the defendant matched the complainant's description of the assailant. The informant also identified the defendant as the man he saw leaving the building on the day of the assault and told the police that the defendant was not a resident of the building. Under such circumstances, the police had probable cause to arrest the defendant (see, People v Reid, 184 A.D.2d 668; People v Greene, 153 A.D.2d 439, 443, cert denied 498 U.S. 947). Accordingly, the hearing court did not err in denying suppression of the complainant's testimony concerning her identification of him at the lineup.
The defendant's sentence was not excessive (see, People v Suitte, 90 A.D.2d 80).
We have considered the defendant's remaining contentions and find them to be without merit. Mangano, P.J., Balletta, Copertino and Joy, JJ., concur.