Opinion
September 29, 1995
Appeal from the Wayne County Court, Parenti, J.
Present — Pine, J.P., Lawton, Wesley, Davis and Boehm, JJ.
Judgment unanimously affirmed. Memorandum: On appeal from a judgment convicting him of attempted criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree, defendant contends that the suppression court erred in refusing to suppress evidence obtained by the police from Bell's Supermarket. Specifically, defendant challenges the suppression court's reliance on the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. We reject defendant's challenge. The People established "a very high degree of probability that the evidence in question would have been obtained independently of the tainted source" (People v Payton, 45 N.Y.2d 300, 313, revd on other grounds 445 U.S. 573, on remand 51 N.Y.2d 169; see, People v Fitzpatrick, 32 N.Y.2d 499, 506, cert denied 414 U.S. 1033, 1050; People v Watson, 188 A.D.2d 501). Moreover, the challenged evidence "was not evidence illegally obtained during or as the immediate consequence of the challenged police conduct" (People v Stith, 69 N.Y.2d 313, 318). Rather, it was "evidence obtained indirectly as a result of leads or information gained from [the] primary evidence" (People v Stith, supra, at 318). Thus, the record supports the suppression court's application of the inevitable discovery exception to the challenged evidence.