| People v Dancy |
| 2007 NY Slip Op 07346 [44 AD3d 331] |
| October 4, 2007 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
| The People of the State of New York,Respondent, v Alfred Dancy, Appellant. |
—[*1] Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Mary C. Farrington of counsel), forrespondent.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Ronald A. Zweibel, J.), rendered January 7,2003, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of murder in the second degree, criminal possessionof a weapon in the second degree and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the thirddegree, and sentencing him to an aggregate term of 25 years to life, unanimously affirmed.
The court properly denied defendant's application pursuant to Batson v Kentucky(476 US 79 [1986]). The record supports the court's finding that the nondiscriminatory reasonsprovided by the prosecutor for the challenges in question were not pretextual. This finding isentitled to great deference (see People v Hernandez, 75 NY2d 350 [1990], affd500 US 352 [1991]). Defendant did not preserve his claim that the court should have required theprosecutor to provide race-neutral explanations for challenges to additional panelists (seePeople v James, 99 NY2d 264 [2002]), and we decline to review it in the interest of justice.
The court properly declined to provide a circumstantial evidence charge, since defendant'sguilt was established, in part, by direct evidence (see People v Daddona, 81 NY2d 990[1993]; People v Cedeno, 175 AD2d 767 [1991], lv denied 79 NY2d 854[1992]). Even if we were to find that the court should have delivered a circumstantial evidencecharge, its absence was harmless because the evidence "was overwhelming and there simply isno reasonable possibility, let alone significant probability that the jury would have acquitted hereif the [*2]circumstantial evidence charge had been given"(People v Brian, 84 NY2d 887, 889 [1994]). Concur—Andrias, J.P., Sullivan,Catterson, McGuire and Malone, JJ.