Title: The People v. Abrams

State: new-york

Issuer: New York Appellate Court

Document:

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This memorandum is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 107  
The People &c.,
            Respondent,
        v.
Emar Abrams,
            Appellant.
Mitchell S. Kessler, for appellant.
Anna E. Remet, for respondent.
MEMORANDUM:
The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.
On October 12, 2006, Tiffany Abrams and her two young
sons were in their Ulster County apartment along with defendant,
Emar Abrams, the boys' father and Tiffany's estranged husband. 
Defendant did not live at the apartment, but was supposed to
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No. 107
watch the children that day while Tiffany was at work.  Tiffany
and defendant were "arguing back and forth" when she went into
her bedroom to try to fix the "frozen" computer for her older son
before she left for work.  She sat down in front of the computer
monitor as defendant continued to badger her.  A shot was fired
from behind Tiffany, and a bullet whizzed past her ear,
shattering the moniter's screen and lodging in the bedroom wall. 
Defendant fled, and Tiffany, with her two children in tow, ran to
her sister's apartment.  Tiffany appeared upset and disheveled to
her sister; tiny glass shards were visible in her arm.  She told
her sister that defendant had shot at her.  Tiffany's sister
called the police.
Meanwhile, defendant took a taxi to the apartment
complex where his girlfriend, Tanisha Torres, resided.  After he
arrived at the apartment, defendant disappeared into Tanisha's
bedroom and reappeared with a lockbox that she kept there. 
Defendant gave the lockbox to Tanisha and asked her to "remove"
it.  Tanisha decided that the safest place for the lockbox would
be her parents' house, so she put the lockbox in a bag and called
her mother to come pick her up and take her there.  Before hiding
the lockbox in the toolshed in her parents' backyard, Torres
looked inside the box and saw a handgun.  Tanisha's mother drove
Tanisha back to her apartment, where defendant had remained.
Tanisha's mother called her husband, Tanisha's father,
who left work to go home and look in the toolshed.  He saw that
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No. 107
things were "out of place" in the shed -- to which apparently
only he and Tanisha had a key -- discovered the lockbox, pried it
open with a crowbar, saw the gun and closed the lockbox back up. 
Not wanting a gun in the shed, Tanisha's father tossed the
lockbox into the woods, and then told the police where to find
the gun.  Ballistics testing subsequently determined that the
bullet lodged in Tiffany's bedroom wall was fired from the gun
stashed away in the lockbox.
Police set up a barricade at Tanisha's apartment
complex, and defendant was eventually persuaded to surrender.  He
was arrested and charged with weapon possession crimes, reckless
endangerment, menacing and endangering the welfare of a child. 
Before trial, the newly-elected district attorney, who had
previously represented defendant "either on the charges pending
before the court or on other charges," asked County Court to
appoint a special prosecutor.  County Court granted the motion.
The special prosecutor learned that Tiffany was
unwilling to testify and intended to invoke her constitutional
privilege against self-incrimination.  Just before opening
statements, he disclosed the terms of an agreement pursuant to
which Tiffany had been granted immunity from prosecution for
perjury in the event her trial testimony conflicted with her
grand jury testimony.  The special prosecutor said that he had
granted Tiffany immunity after consulting with the district
attorney to see if, as special prosecutor, he was authorized to
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No. 107
immunize a witness from prosecution, and obtaining the district
attorney's "permission."  Defendant objected on the ground of the
district attorney's conflict of interest.  The trial judge
approved the grant of immunity.
The jury convicted defendant of all the counts of the
original indictment, except menacing, which was dismissed by the
special prosecutor at trial.  The trial judge sentenced
defendant, a prior felony offender, to determinate prison terms
that aggregated to 13½ years, to be followed by five years of
postrelease supervision.  Defendant appealed, and the Appellate
Division affirmed (73 AD3d 1225 [3d Dept 2010]).  A Judge of this
Court granted defendant leave to appeal (15 NY3d 746 [2010]), and
we now also affirm.
A prosecutor possesses discretion to decide when to
immunize a witness from prosecution, and County Court is a
competent authority to confer immunity when expressly requested
by the district attorney to do so (CPL 50.30).  Further, section
701 (4) of the County Law declares that special district
attorneys (i.e., special prosecutors) "shall possess the powers
and discharge the duties of the district attorney during the
period for which he or she shall be appointed." 
In seeking immunity for Tiffany, the special prosecutor
therefore acted within his discretionary authority.  He conferred
with the district attorney merely to confirm that he was
empowered to grant immunity to a witness, and that the district
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No. 107
attorney would honor the grant.  In short, the district
attorney's "permission" did not vest the special prosecutor with
any more authority than he already enjoyed.  As the Appellate
Division observed, the record does not suggest that the district
attorney shared confidential information with the special
prosecutor, or that he prompted or influenced the special
prosecutor's decision to immunize Tiffany from prosecution.  "To
warrant vacatur of the conviction, [a] defendant must establish
actual prejudice or a substantial risk of an abused confidence"
(People v English, 88 NY2d 30, 34 [1996]), and defendant has not
shown either circumstance to be the case here.
We have examined defendant's other claims and consider
them to be meritless.
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Order affirmed, in a memorandum.  Chief Judge Lippman and Judges
Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Smith, Pigott and Jones concur.
Decided June 14, 2011
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