Opinion
No. 2002-11207.
December 11, 2007.
Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the County Court, Westchester County (Adler, J.), rendered December 6, 2002, convicting him of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree and failure to wear a safety belt in violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1229-c (3), upon a jury verdict, and imposing sentence. The appeal brings up for review the denial, after a hearing (Smith, J.), of that branch of the defendant's omnibus motion which was to suppress physical evidence.
Abraham J. Mayers, Yonkers, N.Y., for appellant.
Janet DiFiore, District Attorney, White Plains, N.Y. (William C. Milaccio, Richard Longworth Hecht, and Anthony J. Servino of counsel), for respondent.
Before: Miller, J.P., Ritter, Florio and Dillon, JJ., concur.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The credibility determinations of a hearing court are accorded great deference on appeal, and will not be disturbed unless clearly unsupported by the record ( see People v Umadat, 29 AD3d 830; People v Cameron, 6 AD3d 546; People v Jakins, 277 AD2d 328). The record supports the hearing court's determination to credit the testimony of a state trooper that he was able to observe that the defendant was not wearing a safety belt in violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1229-c (3) ( see People v Umadat, 29 AD3d 830; People v James, 19 AD3d 617, 618). This observation, as distinguished from mere pretext ( see People v David, 223 AD2d 551; People v Smith, 181 AD2d 802, 803), justified the trooper's stop of the vehicle ( see Whren v United States, 517 US 806, 810; People v Robinson, 97 NY2d 341, 349; People v Robinson, 38 AD3d 572, 573). Accordingly, the hearing court properly denied that branch of the defendant's omnibus motion which was to suppress physical evidence.