NY1: Voluntariness shown by experience with criminal justice system and advice of right to refuse; handcuffs removed before consent granted

“Defendant, who had prior contacts with the criminal justice system, provided his consent to search both orally and in writing, and he acknowledged that he had been notified of his right to refuse consent …. Although a large number of officers were present when defendant’s car was stopped on the highway, and although defendant was initially handcuffed, the officers did not all remain with defendant throughout the encounter, and the handcuffs were removed at the time defendant consented to the search. Furthermore, defendant was very cooperative with the police, not merely in terms of lack of resistance, but in candidly disclosing the presence of drugs in his car and apartment …. [¶] Defendant’s consent was not invalidated by an investigator’s advice to defendant that if he did not consent to the search, the police could get a warrant, and that the circumstances of the execution of the warrant could lead to the arrest of defendant’s father, who also lived in the apartment. The investigator had valid legal and factual grounds for making these statements, which were not threats to arrest defendant’s father, but warnings of a possible, less favorable alternative scenario ….” People v. Yoneyama, 2015 NY Slip Op 04566, 2015 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4491 (1st Dept. May 28, 2015).