A Dickson City man is entitled to a new trial because his lawyer failed to take his advice during his first one, the Pennsylvania Superior Court said in an April 10 ruling.<\/p>\n
In preparation for his trial in April 2021, Victor Nieves-Crespo pointed out to his defense attorney, Robert Saurman, a recent state Supreme Court ruling he believed applied to case.<\/p>\n
In Commonwealth v. Alexander, the state\u2019s high court raised the bar in regard to warrantless searches of vehicles, ruling police officers need both probable cause and exigent circumstances to make such a search.<\/p>\n
In Nieves-Crespo\u2019s case, police officers searching his vehicle found a 45-caliber handgun and a clear plastic bag containing several grams of cocaine under the seat.<\/p>\n
The Superior Court pointed out that, at the time, Nieves-Crespo was already in police custody.<\/p>\n
In addition, the Superior Court ruled that, in spite of a police officers assertion that a crowd of people were in danger, no there were no people on the street near the car.<\/p>\n
The case<\/p>\n
Nieves-Crespo was convicted of possession with intent to deliver and firearms violations following a July 2020 traffic stop. At the time, officers were investigating a report of a man having pointed a gun at another person outside Main Street Bistro before fleeing in a vehicle.<\/p>\n
During the traffic stop, officers retrieved a 45-caliber handgun and a clear plastic bag containing several grams of cocaine under the seat.<\/p>\n
In April of 2021, jurors returned a guilty verdict, concluding a three-day trial. Nieves-Crespo was subsequently sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison.<\/p>\n
On June 13, 2024, Nieves-Crespo filed a \u201cpost conviction relief petition,\u201d alleging Saurman represented him inadequately. Following a February 2025 hearing, that petition was denied.<\/p>\n
Nieves-Crespo then appealed that ruling to the state\u2019s Superior Court alleging \u201cineffective assistance of counsel.\u201d Nieves-Crespo argued Saurman failed to cite the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Commonwealth vs. Alexander, in his argument at trial.<\/p>\n
That decision made it necessary for there to be exigent circumstances in order to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle, including concerns for safety or corruption of evidence.<\/p>\n
The Superior Court ruled \u201cmere assertion of danger\u201d isn\u2019t enough to justify a warrantless search and officers must prove a real threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were at least ten officers present on the scene who could have secured the vehiclewhile a warrant was obtained,\u201d the Superior Court ruled. \u201cThe video footage makes clear that there was not a crowd of onlookers present on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the post conviction relief hearing in Feb. 2025, Saurman acknowledged Nieves-Crespo brought up the Commonwealth vs. Alexander decision during trial preparation.<\/p>\n
Saurman said he didn\u2019t raise the decision at Nieves-Crespo\u2019s trial because he believed the decision applied to \u00a0\u201cthe smell of marijuana in and of itself is no longer appropriate to be probable cause for a vehicle search.<\/p>\n
Although Saurman argued that the legality of the search during the trial, he didn\u2019t cite Commonwealth vs. Alexander.<\/p>\n
No threat to onlookers<\/p>\n
During a pre-trial hearing, Blakely police officer Michael Shaheen said the vehicle had been searched because there was a \u201clarge crowd\u201d in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was for everyone\u2019s safety in the area. Again, that\u2019s our number one priority. I don\u2019t want anyone to get hurt so that\u2019s what was done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Shaheen\u2019s body camera showed no one present on the street except Nieves-Crespo and police officers.<\/p>\n
Saurman had access to the body camera, but didn\u2019t show it at trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad the evidence recovered in the vehicle been suppressed, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the proceedings would have been different,\u201d the Superior Court ruled.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dickson City man is entitled to a new trial because his lawyer failed to take his advice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179,729],"class_list":["post-166573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}