Court tosses appeal in gun case
Clark was previously acquitted in 2012 murder of resident
ALBANY, N.Y. » A state appellate court has dismissed the appeal of a 2015 weapon possession conviction by a man who was acquitted in the fatal 2012 shooting of an aspiring rapper.
The Appellate Divison of state Supreme Court unanimously rejected the assertion of Quintril Clark, 27, that he was unfairly and illegally targeted by police when he was arrested Dec. 19, 2014, after a traffic stop on 4th Street. Clark claimed through his attorney, Theresa M. Suozzi of Saratoga Springs, that Troy police did not have probable cause to either stop his vehicle or subsequently to search him.
Clark was one of three men initially accused in the murder of Ska-Kim Miller, 36, who was killed in a shootout March 8, 2012, near the corner of Madison and 2nd streets in South Troy. Authorities said Clark had planned the shooting because Miller had reportedly disrespected a female friend, but he was acquitted of second- degree murder and second- degree conspiracy by a Rensselaer County Court jury.
The man police said pulled the trigger, Allen McBee, of Watervliet, pleaded guilty to first- degree manslaughter and seconddegree criminal possession of a weapon and is serving a 15-year prison sentence, while the third man, Marcus Mansfield, testified against Clark during his trial,
The appellate judges said police properly acted on a tip from a confidential informant that Clark, reputedly a member of a city gang known as the Goon Squad or Gun Squad that was tied to several incidents of gun violence in the city, was armed with a loaded handgun. After a subsequent tip that Clark was sitting in his car on 4th Street, police placed him under surveillance and pulled him over after they said he failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign.
A grand jury subsequently charged Clark witht wo counts of second- degree criminal possession of a weapon and one count of criminal possession of a firearm, all belonies. After thenCounty Curt Judge Andrew Ceresia rejected Clark’s challenge to the stop and search in a suppression hearing, Clark agreed just before his trial was to begin to plead guilty to all three charges, for which he was sentenced to 3 1/2 to 15 years in prison, followed by five years of post-release supervision.
“[D]efendant’s failure to heed
cause for the patrol officer’s initial stop of his vehicle,” the judge’s wrote in their decision. “To the extent that the initial stop escalated and resulted in defendant’s arrest, we find that the information related by the [confidential informant] provided the requisite proba-
ble cause considering that the CI’s reliability and basis of knowledge were adequately established at the suppression hearing.”
Clark also challenged his guilty plea, claiming it was not given voluntarily, but the appellate court also dismissed that assertion, saying they saw no evidence of his making that allegation at appropriate points in the legal process. The judges also tossed Clark’s argu-
ment that his sentence was harsh and excessive.
A year before Miller’s murder, Clark was accused of shooting a female bystander while trying to gun down another person on Lexington Avenue in Albany, but was cleared by a jury in Albany County Court of charges of attempted murder, attempted first- degree assault, second- degree assault and weapon possession.