People v Marte
2012 NY Slip Op 06637 [99 AD3d 432]
October 4, 2012
Appellate Division, First Department
As corrected through Wednesday, November 28, 2012


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

[*1]

Stanley Neustadter, Cardozo Appeals Clinic, New York (Peter Adelman of counsel), forappellant.

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., District Attorney, New York (Brian R. Pouliot of counsel), forrespondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Daniel P. FitzGerald, J.), rendered October30, 2009, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of assault in the first degree and criminalpossession of a weapon in the second degree, and sentencing him to concurrent terms of fiveyears, unanimously affirmed.

The verdict was not against the weight of the evidence (see People v Danielson, 9 NY3d 342, 348 [2007]). There is nobasis for disturbing the jury's credibility determinations. The victim's identification of defendantas the person who shot him was corroborated by several aspects of a surveillance camerarecording, including the sound of people shouting defendant's name immediately before shotswere fired.

The court properly permitted the victim to testify, on cross-examination, that he decided toprovide an accurate identification of his assailant once the police showed him pictures of variouspeople. The answer was responsive to an inquiry by defense counsel into the victim's reason forbelatedly telling the truth. Although testimony about photo identifications is generallyinadmissible, here "defendant opened the door to such testimony and actually elicited it duringcross-examination" (People v Hernandez, 286 AD2d 623, 623 [1st Dept 2001], lvdenied 97 NY2d 682 [2001]). Accordingly, the court properly declined to interrupt thewitness's answer or declare a mistrial. Concur—Gonzalez, P.J., Saxe, DeGrasse, Freedmanand Román, JJ.


NYPTI Decisions © 2026 is a project of New York Prosecutors Training Institute (NYPTI) made possible by leveraging the work we've done providing online research and tools to prosecutors.

NYPTI would like to thank New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, New York State Senate's Open Legislation Project, New York State Unified Court System, New York State Law Reporting Bureau and Free Law Project for their invaluable assistance making this project possible.

Install the free RECAP extensions to help contribute to this archive. See https://free.law/recap/ for more information.