| People v Baez |
| 2016 NY Slip Op 01504 [137 AD3d 805] |
| March 2, 2016 |
| Appellate Division, Second Department |
[*1]
| The People of the State of New York,Respondent, v Christopher Baez, Appellant. |
David Bart, Fresh Meadows, NY, for appellant.
Richard A. Brown, District Attorney, Kew Gardens, NY (John M. Castellano,Johnnette Traill, Nicoletta J. Caferri, and Ushir Pandit of counsel), for respondent.
Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Queens County(Aloise, J.), rendered May 7, 2012, convicting him of gang assault in the first degree andgang assault in the second degree (two counts), upon a jury verdict, and imposingsentence. The appeal brings up for review the denial, after a hearing (Hanophy, J.), ofthat branch of the defendant's omnibus motion which was to suppress identificationtestimony.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The hearing court properly denied that branch of the defendant's omnibus motionwhich was to suppress the evidence of his pretrial lineup identification on the ground itwas tainted by the witness's prior viewings of surveillance videos and still photographsmade from those videos. The evidence at the hearing did not establish that, at the lineupprocedure, the witness was merely identifying the individual she had seen in the videosand photographs rather than the man who had participated in the subject altercation(see People v Young, 167 AD2d 366 [1990]).
The trial court properly admitted into evidence a video recording and transcript of acomplainant's testimony at a conditional hearing (see CPL 670.10 [1]; 670.20 [1];People v Arroyo, 54 NY2d 567, 577 [1982]). The opportunity forcross-examination afforded to defense counsel at the conditional examination wassufficient to test the reliability of the witness and to insure the fairness of the proceeding(see People v Arroyo, 54 NY2d at 574).
The defendant's contention that certain remarks made by the prosecutor and slidesdisplayed as part of a PowerPoint presentation during summation deprived him of a fairtrial is largely unpreserved for appellate review, since he either failed to object to most ofthe challenged remarks and the slides, or made only general objections (see CPL470.05 [2]; People vRomero, 7 NY3d 911, 912 [2006]; People v Philips, 120 AD3d 1266, 1268 [2014]; People v Martin, 116 AD3d981, 982 [2014]). In any event, the majority of the challenged comments and slideswere within the broad bounds of rhetorical comment permissible in closing arguments,constituted a fair response to arguments made by defense counsel in summation, orconstituted fair comment on the evidence (see People v Halm, 81 NY2d 819, 821[1993]; People v Quezada,116 AD3d 796, 798 [2014]). To the extent that some of the [*2]comments were improper, these errors were not, eitherindividually or collectively, so egregious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial (seePeople v Stevenson, 129 AD3d 998, 999 [2015]). Mastro, J.P., Hall, Malteseand LaSalle, JJ., concur.