| People v Jeffries |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 08814 [56 AD3d 1166] |
| November 14, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, Fourth Department |
| The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Ernest I.Jeffries, Appellant. |
—[*1] Michael C. Green, District Attorney, Rochester (Kelly Christine Wolford of counsel), forrespondent.
Appeal from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Monroe County (Joseph D. Valentino, J.),rendered April 14, 2005. The judgment convicted defendant, upon a jury verdict, of murder in thesecond degree.
It is hereby ordered that the judgment so appealed from is unanimously affirmed.
Memorandum: Defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him upon a jury verdict ofmurder in the second degree (Penal Law § 125.25 [4]). The evidence at trial establishedthat defendant caused the death of his six-week-old child during the course of a heated argumentwith the child's mother. The incident occurred on the porch at the home of the child's maternalgrandmother. Defendant picked up the child, resisted the efforts of the mother and maternalgrandmother to take the child from him and threatened to throw the child if they did not moveaway. Defendant then lifted the child and threw her head first into the floor of the porch, causingsevere head injuries that resulted in the child's death. As he left the scene, defendant said,"[f]—k the baby." He also said that he "didn't want to do it."
The evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the People (see People v Contes,60 NY2d 620, 621 [1983]), is legally sufficient to support the conviction (see generallyPeople v Bleakley, 69 NY2d 490, 495 [1987]). We reject the contention of defendant that theevidence establishes his manifest intent to kill or to cause serious physical injury and thus fails toestablish the culpable mental state for depraved indifference murder, i.e., recklessness (see generally People v Payne, 3 NY3d266, 270-272 [2004], rearg denied 3 NY3d 767 [2004]). Rather, the evidenceestablishes that defendant acted in a fit of rage directed at the child's mother, and the jury couldhave reasonably inferred that, when he threw the child, "defendant consciously disregarded therisk of serious injury or death to the child, i.e., that he acted recklessly" (People v Jamison, 45 AD3d 1438,1439 [2007], lv denied 10 NY3d 766 [2008]). We also reject the contention of defendantthat the evidence is legally insufficient to establish that he acted with depraved indifference(see generally Bleakley, 69 NY2d at 495). The jury could have reasonably inferred fromthe evidence that the conduct of defendant reflected "wanton cruelty, brutality or callousnessdirected against a particularly vulnerable victim, combined with utter indifference to the life orsafety of the helpless target of [his] inexcusable acts" (People v Suarez, 6 NY3d 202, 213 [2005]; see People v Bowman, 48 AD3d178, [*2]184 [2007], lv denied 10 NY3d 808 [2008]).Finally, we reject the contention of defendant that Supreme Court should have charged the jury inaccordance with the charge requested by him. The court's charge, which tracked the languagecontained in the Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions (see CJI2d[NY] Penal Law §125.25 [4]), properly conveyed the applicable legal principles to the jury (see People v Owens, 51 AD3d1369, 1372 [2008], lv denied 11 NY3d 740 [2008]; see generally People vLadd, 89 NY2d 893, 895-896 [1996]; People v Regan, 21 AD3d 1357 [2005]). Present—Scudder,P.J., Hurlbutt, Lunn, Green and Gorski, JJ.