In a win for police reform advocates, New York’s highest court recently reversed a midlevel appellate court decision, saying prosecutors failed to meet the legal burden for a warrantless search in a New York City burglary case in which police arrested a defendant blocks away from a victim’s house and searched his bag without a warrant, as reported by the New York Law Journal.

The Legal Aid Society had released a letter arguing that the “court found that the police’s warrantless search of [the defendant’s] bag was justified,” despite the prosecution’s inability to provide evidence about the backpack’s location at the time of the search, or alternatively establish that the search was necessary due to immediate concerns over the safety of the officers involved.