People v Munnerlyn

2012 NY Slip Op 01113 [92 AD3d 507]

February 14, 2012

Appellate Division, First Department

As corrected through Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The People of the State of New York,Respondent, v Rodney Munnerlyn, Appellant.

—[*1]Bernard V. Kleinman, White Plains, for appellant.

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., District Attorney, New York (Deborah L. Morse of counsel), forrespondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Gregory Carro, J.), rendered March 9, 2009,convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of two counts each of robbery in the first degree andcriminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and sentencing him, as a second violentfelony offender, to an aggregate term of 15 years, unanimously affirmed.

The court providently exercised its discretion in denying defendant's request to present experttestimony on eyewitness identification. The threshold inquiry in considering such an applicationis "deciding whether the case 'turns on the accuracy of eyewitness identifications and there islittle or no corroborating evidence connecting the defendant to the crime' " (People v Santiago, 17 NY3d 661,669 [2011]). Here, there were two strong eyewitness identifications, as well as many items ofcircumstantial evidence that, when viewed as a whole, provided substantial corroboration.Concur—Mazzarelli, J.P., Saxe, Moskowitz, Freedman and Manzanet-Daniels, JJ.