| People v Howell |
| 2007 NY Slip Op 07461 [44 AD3d 686] |
| October 2, 2007 |
| Appellate Division, Second Department |
| 78—The People of the State of New York,Respondent, v Donald Howell, Appellant. |
—[*1] Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Leonard Joblove and Victor Barall ofcounsel), for respondent.
Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Gerges, J.),rendered March 31, 2004, convicting him of manslaughter in the first degree, after a nonjury trial,and imposing sentence.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The defendant, along with his brother David Howell, shot Tyrone Dortch. When policeofficers arrived at the crime scene, they asked Dortch's girlfriend, Cheryl Leach, "whathappened?" In response, she stated that two assailants shot Dortch, and provided the officers witha description of the assailants and the location of the house from which they emerged beforeshooting Dortch. The officers drove Leach to the house, found the defendant and David Howell,who fit Leach's description, and brought them outside, where Leach identified them as theassailants who shot Dortch. At the joint trial of the defendant and David Howell, Leach wasunavailable to testify, and her statements to the police were admitted into evidence by theSupreme Court as excited utterances.
The defendant contends that the admission into evidence of Leach's hearsay statementsviolated his right to confront witnesses against him, secured to him by the Confrontation Clauseof the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, since the defendant [*2]failed to object to the admission of Leach's statements on theground that it violated his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation, he did not preserve the issuefor appellate review (see People v Gray, 86 NY2d 10, 19-21 [1995]; People v Drummond, 34 AD3d492, 493 [2006], lv denied 8 NY3d 921 [2007]; People v Marino, 21 AD3d 430, 431 [2005]), and we decline toreach the issue in the exercise of our interest of justice jurisdiction (see People v Pierre, 30 AD3d 622[2006]). Prudenti, P.J., Fisher, Dillon and Dickerson, JJ., concur.