Title: The People v. Brown

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. 95  
The People &c.,
            Respondent,
        v.
Jazzmone Brown,
            Appellant.
Timothy P. Murphy, for appellant.
Matthew B. Powers, for respondent.
MEMORANDUM:
The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.
Defendant Jazzmone Brown was convicted, after a jury
trial, of murder in the second degree and other crimes, for the
shooting of Salomon DeJesus, in Buffalo in 2002.
Defendant's principal argument on appeal is that his
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No. 95
trial counsel's failure to object to certain remarks made by the
prosecutor in summation constituted ineffective assistance of
counsel and deprived him of a fair trial.  The People do not
contest defendant's characterization of the remarks as an
improper "safe streets" appeal – one that attempts to obtain a
conviction unfairly, by suggesting to the jury that the community
must be protected from the defendant (see People v Galloway, 54
NY2d 396, 401 [1981]).  The People also concede that the
prosecutor's suggestion that defendant sold drugs was irrelevant
and not inferable from the evidence.  However, the People insist
that reversal is not warranted, and we agree.
To prevail on his ineffective assistance of counsel
claim on the basis of this single failure to object, defendant
must show both that the objection omitted by trial counsel is a
winning argument, here one that would have required a mistrial
(see People v Turner, 5 NY3d 476, 481 [2005]) and that the
objection was one that no reasonable defense lawyer, in the
context of the trial, could have thought to be "not worth
raising" (id.).  In this case defendant failed to meet his burden
of demonstrating a lack of strategic or other legitimate reasons
for his defense lawyer's failure to object (People v Rivera, 71
NY2d 705, 709 [1988]).  It is entirely plausible that counsel
chose not to object because the prosecutor's remarks impugned the
People's witnesses as well as defendant and therefore were
consistent with his own theory that the People's witnesses were
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No. 95
simply not credible.  It was their veracity, not defendant's,
that was at issue.  
Defendant also challenges the lineup in which he was
identified by two witnesses as unduly suggestive.  However, the
fact that the witnesses knew that the suspect whom they had
tentatively identified from a photographic array would be in a
lineup did not, under the circumstances of this case, "present a
serious risk of influencing the victim's identification of
defendant from the lineup" (People v Rodriguez, 64 NY2d 738, 741
[1984]).
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Order affirmed, in a memorandum.  Chief Judge Lippman and Judges
Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Smith, Pigott and Jones concur.
Decided June 7, 2011
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