People v. Aponte

306 A.D.2d 42, 759 N.Y.S.2d 486, 2003 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6373
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedJune 5, 2003
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 306 A.D.2d 42 (People v. Aponte) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Aponte, 306 A.D.2d 42, 759 N.Y.S.2d 486, 2003 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6373 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2003).

Opinions

—Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Edward McLaughlin, J.), rendered May 30, 2001, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 6 to 12 years, reversed, on the law, and the matter remanded for a new trial.

Defendant was arrested following an undercover “buy and bust” operation and charged with selling $20 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover detective in a building located at 310 East 100th Street. After the detective left the building, he radioed the other members of his team and described the suspect as “male hispanic, white durag [sic], white shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers.” (A “do rag” is a cloth, wrapped and [43]*43tied tightly around the head above the eyes and ears, covering the hair.) At trial, the detective testified that the suspect also wore a black baseball cap atop his do rag. The other police officers moved in and detained a group of Hispanic males in the vicinity of the drug sale, including defendant, who wore neither a white do rag nor a black hat. The undercover detective returned in a car to the area and did a “drive-by” identification of defendant as the seller, and defendant was then arrested. The identification was made at night, with street lights providing the only illumination, following a transaction that had lasted only a few minutes. The arresting officers conducted a search of defendant and of the vicinity, but did not find any of the premarked money that had been used in the drug purchase or any drugs.

The only real issue in the trial of the case was the reliability of the undercover detective’s identification of defendant as the individual who sold him the drugs. The trial consisted of the testimony of two prosecution witnesses — the undercover detective and a second police officer involved in the operation — and one defense witness — a resident of the East 100th Street neighborhood who testified that defendant had been visiting her on the evening in question and that he left shortly before the police detained the group of Hispanic men. The testimony was completed in approximately three hours.

Following the court’s charge, the jury began its deliberations. The jury sent out three notes, requesting that it be provided with specific exhibits and that certain testimony be read back. After approximately five hours of deliberations, the jury sent out its first deadlock note to the court. The court reconvened the jury and admonished it, in part, as follows: “I don’t know what you expected when you signed on for jury service. You’ve heard me in one way or the other say I’ve been doing this for 18 years and this is jury deliberations. Continue deliberating. We await your verdict.”

The jury returned to its deliberations without decision for the remainder of the day. During deliberations the next day, the jury requested a readback of the undercover detective’s testimony regarding the time of the “actual sale.” After more than five hours of further deliberation, the jury sent its second deadlock note to the court. The court called the jury back to the courtroom and, in a supplemental charge, instructed it in relevant part as follows:

“[t]he point of the process is to get a result. Something happened in this case. It was proven or not. The standard was met or it was not. The tree that fell made a noise or it didn’t * * *. [44]*44Something hit the bell probably and with nobody around. Only you folks can tell us was there a gong, a ding, a ping or nothing * * * [I told] you what the law is to put you in a position to do what you said you would do when we started, which is to decide this case * * *. Something happened in this case. It was not a nonevent. The standard was met or it was not, and there is no other entity on the face of the earth [besides the jury] that can tell us what the answer is to that.

“Whether there is the rare occurrence — of course, it happens, but it is a rare occurrence — * * * of a jury unable to resolve a case is not a factual decision. It’s a legal decision. It is not your decision. It is mine. We are nowhere near at the point where I would begin to consider the possibility that you folks might not be able to resolve this case. Continue your deliberations, please.” The trial court denied defendant’s objection to the supplementary jury instruction, rejecting his contention that the instruction was an improper Allen charge (see Allen v United States, 164 US 492, 501 [1896]). Five minutes after the court gave its supplementary charge, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

Defense counsel’s objection included the assertion that the supplementary instruction “would lead [jurors] to feel that they were doing something improper” if they were “steadfastly holding to a firm conviction either way whether for a conviction or acquittal.” Thus, contrary to the dissent’s contention, this objection was preserved as it was made in sufficient time “to call the court’s attention to and permit it to correct” (People v Narayan, 54 NY2d 106, 114 [1981]) the asserted error.

In discussing the preservation issue, the dissent concedes that the defense maintained that the Allen charge was coercive, but contends that defendant’s request was that the jurors only be told that they could deliberate further. This misapprehends the import of the quoted language. Defense counsel, in taking exception to the supplemental charge, conveyed the essence of the need for a cautionary instruction that jurors should not abandon conscientiously held beliefs simply to reach a verdict, thus preserving the issue for appeal.

Defendant contends that the trial court’s supplementary instruction was an “unbalanced” Allen charge (see Allen v United States, 164 US 492, 501 [1896]) that exerted improper pressure on the members of the jury to return a guilty verdict. We agree.

When faced with a deadlock, a trial court must decide whether to declare a mistrial or give the jury a supplementary instruction directing it to continue deliberating and try to reach [45]*45agreement, an instruction meeting the criteria set by the United States Supreme Court in Allen v United States (164 US 492, 501 [1896]). The decision as to which course to take is one committed to the trial court’s discretion (see Plummer v Rothwax, 63 NY2d 243, 250 [1984]). Although the trial court stated that its supplementary instruction was not an “Allen” charge, that is essentially what it was (see e.g. Smalls v Batista, 191 F3d 272 [1999]). An appropriate Allen charge “encourage[s] the jurors to continue their deliberations in an attempt to reach a verdict” (People v Shortridge, 294 AD2d 182, 183 [2002], lv denied 98 NY2d 681 [2002]), but such a charge “must not attempt to persuade jurors to abandon their beliefs or convictions, must not attempt to coerce dissenting jurors to reach a particular verdict, and must not attempt to shame the jury into reaching any verdict” (People v Cowen, 249 AD2d 560 [1998]). In this case, the trial court’s supplementary instructions failed to inform the jurors that, while they each should be open to considering the views of the others, no juror should feel compelled to abandon conscientiously held beliefs (People v Alvarez, 86 NY2d 761, 763 [1995]; People v Ali, 65 AD2d 513, 514 [1978], affd 47 NY2d 920 [1979]; see also People v Nunez, 256 AD2d 192 [1998], lv denied 93 NY2d 975 [1999]).

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Bluebook (online)
306 A.D.2d 42, 759 N.Y.S.2d 486, 2003 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6373, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-aponte-nyappdiv-2003.