| People v Sparks |
| 2015 NY Slip Op 07567 [132 AD3d 513] |
| October 15, 2015 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
[*1]
| The People of the State of New York,Respondent, v Yusuf Sparks, Appellant. |
Robert S. Dean, Center for Appellate Litigation, New York (Andrew J. Dalack ofcounsel), for appellant.
Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., District Attorney, New York (Susan Gliner of counsel), forrespondent.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Bonnie G. Wittner, J.), renderedJanuary 14, 2014, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of assault in the second degree,and sentencing him, as a second violent felony offender, to a term of seven years,unanimously affirmed.
The court properly exercised its discretion in modifying its Sandoval rulingbased on defendant's trial testimony (see People v Fardan, 82 NY2d 638, 645-647[1993]). The court had originally precluded the prosecutor from identifying a particularconviction as anything beyond an unspecified felony. However, when defendant testified,it became clear that there was a suspicious similarity, probative under the circumstancesof the case, between the facts of defendant's own prior crime, and the conduct he wasnow attributing to the victim. Furthermore, the court had warned defendant, prior toopening statements, that his testimony might open the door to a modifiedSandoval ruling.
The court properly denied defendant's request for a justification charge, since therewas no reasonable view of the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to defendant,to support that charge (see People v Watts, 57 NY2d 299, 301-302 [1982]). Evenunder the version of the events contained in defendant's testimony, any conduct by thevictim that might have been a basis for a justification defense had abated by the timedefendant committed the assault.
The court also properly admitted defendant's spontaneous statements made to police(see People v Rivers, 56 NY2d 476, 479-480 [1982]). The record supports thecourt's finding that these statements were not the product of interrogation or itsfunctional equivalent.
In any event, in light of the overwhelming evidence against defendant, any errorsregarding the Sandoval modification, the denial of a justification charge, and thesuppression ruling were harmless (see People v Crimmins, 36 NY2d 230 [1975]).The record fails to support defendant's assertion that, in determining defendant'ssentence, the court improperly considered conduct for which defendant had beenacquitted. We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence. Concur—Friedman,J.P., Sweeny, Saxe, Moskowitz and Gische, JJ.