Case Name: The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Victor Breland, Appellant
Court: New York Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1994-03-22
Citations: 83 N.Y.2d 286
Docket Number: 
Parties: The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Victor Breland, Appellant.
Judges: 
Reporter: New York Reports
Volume: 83
Pages: 286–295

Head Matter:
[631 NE2d 577, 609 NYS2d 571]
The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Victor Breland, Appellant.
Argued February 16, 1994;
decided March 22, 1994
POINTS OF COUNSEL
Richard L. Herzfeld, New York City, for appellant.
I. The prosecution failed to adequately corroborate the accomplice testimony against appellant. (People v Moses, 63 NY2d 299; People v Tillotson, 63 NY2d 731; People v Cona, 49 NY2d 26; People v Pons, 159 AD2d 471; People v Goldfeld, 60 AD2d 1; People v Chamberlain, 38 AD2d 306; People v Hayes, 37 AD2d 375; People v Ohlstein, 54 AD2d 109, 44 NY2d 896.) II. The court’s conclusion that Ashton’s identification of appellant was merely confirmatory, based upon his familiarity with appellant was in error; alternatively, the procedure employed by the court was fundamentally defective. (People v Rodriguez, 79 NY2d 445; People v Williamson, 79 NY2d 799; People v Collins, 60 NY2d 214; People v Tas, 51 NY2d 915; People v Boyd, 140 AD2d 704; People v Newball, 76 NY2d 587; People v Gissendanner, 48 NY2d 543; People v Jackson, 159 AD2d 640; People v Jones, 153 AD2d 956.) III. The court’s restriction of defense counsel’s examination of a defense witness violated appellant’s statutory and constitutional rights and deprived him of a fair trial. (People v Hudy, 73 NY2d 40; People v Cade, 73 NY2d 904; People v Pavao, 59 NY2d 282; People v Green, 156 AD2d 465; Davis v Alaska, 415 US 308; Chambers v Mississippi, 410 US 284; People v Carter, 37 NY2d 234; People v Gilliam, 45 AD2d 744, 37 NY2d 722; People v Gaskin, 170 AD2d 458; People v Billups, 132 AD2d 612.) IV. The court erred in refusing to charge the jury regarding the interest of John Jamison, a prosecution witness who testified in exchange for a lenient sentence. (People v Strawder, 124 AD2d 758; People v Jackson, 74 NY2d 787.) V. The charges against appellant arising out of the Smith homicide were improperly joined. (People v Stanley, 81 AD2d 842; People v Pilon, 30 AD2d 365; People v Papa, 47 AD2d 902.) VI. The refusal to authorize the services of a paralegal assistant deprived appellant of his Sixth Amendment rights of effective assistance of counsel and due process of law. (Ake v Oklahoma, 470 US 68; People v Irvine, 40 AD2d 560; People v Vale, 133 AD2d 297.) VII. The court’s refusal to question the jury regarding potential exposure to inflammatory newspaper articles was reversible error. (People v Rivera, 26 NY2d 304; People v Genovese, 10 NY2d 478; People v Costello, 104 AD2d 947; People v Shaw, 92 AD2d 623; People v Cooper, 78 NY2d 476; People v Ventimiglia, 52 NY2d 350; People v Major, 154 AD2d 225; People v Lombardi, 139 AD2d 767.) VIII. The court erred in refusing to grant the defense request for production of the identifying witnesses at the Wade hearing. (People v Chipp, 75 NY2d 327; People v James, 159 AD2d 723.)
Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney of Kings County, Brook lyn (Victor Barall and Roseann B. Mackechnie of counsel), for respondent.
I. The People sufficiently corroborated the testimony of defendant’s accomplices to support his conviction on all charges. (People v Wing, 77 NY2d 851; People v Cobos, 57 NY2d 798; People v Henderson, 298 NY 462; People v Goldfeld, 60 AD2d 1; People v Fielding, 39 NY2d 607; People v Vedder, 98 NY 630; People v Dorta, 46 NY2d 818; People v Beaudet, 32 NY2d 371; People v Moses, 63 NY2d 299; People v Kress, 284 NY 452.) II. The affirmed finding of the trial court, that Willie Ashton’s pretrial identification of defendant was confirmatory, is supported by the record and therefore is beyond the scope of this Court’s review. Moreover, any error in permitting Ashton to make an in-court identification was harmless. (People v Rodriguez, 79 NY2d 445; People v Collins, 60 NY2d 214; People v Myrick, 66 NY2d 903; People v Tas, 51 NY2d 915; People v Gissendanner, 48 NY2d 543; United States v Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F2d 934; People v Wilson, 64 NY2d 634; People v Bell, 63 NY2d 796; People v Dickerson, 50 NY2d 937; People v Newball, 76 NY2d 587.) III. The trial court’s limitations on the examination of Oswald Dawkins were entirely warranted and did not deprive defendant of a fair trial. (People v Duncan, 46 NY2d 74; People v Crimmins, 36 NY2d 230; People v Culhane, 45 NY2d 757; People v Mayrant, 43 NY2d 236; People v Bethune, 105 AD2d 262; People v Alvino, 71 NY2d 233; People v George, 67 NY2d 817; People v Hudy, 73 NY2d 40; People v Pavao, 59 NY2d 282; People v Reynoso, 73 NY2d 816.) IV. Defendant’s claim that the trial court erred in declining to charge the jury specifically on the possible interest of John Jamison is unpreserved for this Court’s review. Moreover, any error in the court’s charge was harmless. (People v Jackson, 76 NY2d 908; People v Canty, 60 NY2d 830; People v Jackson, 74 NY2d 787; People v Irrizary, 180 AD2d 822; People v Sherman, 156 AD2d 889; Perrin v Winne, 123 AD2d 610; People v Bryant, 59 NY2d 786.) V. The Wayne Smith murder was properly joined with the other crimes charged in the indictment. Additionally, defendant’s claim that it was improper for him to have been tried jointly with his codefendants is unpreserved and meritless. (United States v Simmons, 923 F2d 934; United States v Minicone, 960 F2d 1099; People v Bongarzone, 69 NY2d 892; People v Quartieri, 171 AD2d 889; People v Casiano, 138 AD2d 892; People v Walker, 71 NY2d 1018; People v Russell, 71 NY2d 1016.) VI. The Court below did not abuse its discretion in refusing to authorize the expenditure of public funds for paralegal ser vices. (Johnson v Harris, 682 F2d 49; Ake v Oklahoma, 470 US 68; People v Vale, 133 AD2d 297; People v Brown, 136 AD2d 1; People v Marlowe, 167 AD2d 692; People v Anderson, 127 AD2d 885; People v Irvine, 40 AD2d 560.) VII. The trial court was not required to question the jury every time an article about this case appeared in the newspaper. (People v Rivera, 26 NY2d 304; People v Costello, 104 AD2d 947; People v Berg, 59 NY2d 294; United States v Casamento, 887 F2d 1141; People v Moore, 42 NY2d 421; People v Genovese, 10 NY2d 478; People v Hardwick, 137 AD2d 714; United States v Chang AnLo, 851 F2d 547; People v Testa, 61 NY2d 1008; People v Sullivan, 167 AD2d 564.) VIII. Defendant was not entitled to the production of the identifying witnesses at the Wade hearing. (People v Chipp, 75 NY2d 327; People v Peterkin, 75 NY2d 985; People v James, 159 AD2d 723; People v Watts, 130 AD2d 695; People v Mallory, 126 AD2d 750.)

Opinion:
OPINION OF THE COURT
Bellacosa, J.
Appellant Victor Breland was a key operative in a major crack cocaine network spread principally through Brooklyn. With the assistance of confederates, he committed a series of serious crimes during several months in 1988, for which he was jointly prosecuted. Breland was found guilty by a jury after a lengthy trial of enterprise corruption; murder in the second degree (six counts); attempted murder in the second degree of Willie Ashton; assault in the first degree; and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (four counts). The Appellate Division affirmed and a Judge of this Court granted him leave to appeal.
An affirmance of the unanimous order of the Appellate Division upholding the judgment of conviction is warranted. We address, as the only issues meriting discussion and analysis, the corroborative evidence under CPL 60.22 and a notice and identification feature arising under CPL 710.30.
L
Shirley Bibbs, an employee beautician, and James Hamilton, Sr., the father of Breland's rival drug lord, James Hamilton, Jr. (the target of reprisal who happened not to be present), were shot to death by Breland and an accomplice, Johnny Ray Robinson, shortly after noon on March 31, 1988 in the Glamorama Beauty Parlor. Accomplices of appellant Breland (not those jointly tried with him) gave confirmatory detailed accounts of the calculated assault designed to execute James Hamilton, Jr. A caravan of three cars containing the perpetrators assembled at Breland's house. He supplied everyone with the guns and instructed several members concerning their role in firebombing the Glamorama premises as an aftermath to the attack. A new confederate, Willie Ashton, aged 17, who was stationed as an outside lookout and who was to toss the Molotov cocktail, testified at Breland's trial. Breland argues that Ashton remained an accomplice at law (like all the other testifying accomplices) throughout the criminal adventure even though Breland, as he exited the Glamorama shop after the shootings inside, shot at a very close distance and seriously wounded Ashton and shot to death the other lookout, Mitchell Rich. No firebombing took place, as the two designated firebomb tossers were shot by Breland in his plan to eliminate witnesses against him, even if they happened to be confederates.
One week later, on April 6, 1988, as another aftermath of the murders inside and outside the Glamorama shop, appellant Breland also personally executed a man named Joseph Lovell. His role in the over-all criminal enterprise was as a front for all the vehicles used in the crack cocaine business. They were registered in Lovell's name, including vehicles used in the Glamorama attack. Breland duped Lovell into driving with him and another confederate to an isolated street in the gang's principal territory in Brownsville. Once out of the car, Breland turned and shot Lovell in the face at a distance of 12 to 18 inches, killing him instantly. The accomplices' accounts of this murder and of the Glamorama shootings is damning and varied with eyewitness, confessional and circumstantial aspects. As to the Lovell murder, the requisite tending-to-connect links for CPL 60.22 purposes are different from those presented to support the conviction on the Glamorama killings.
Our careful scrutiny of the varieties of nonaccomplice evidence compiled in a lengthy record convinces us that the corroborative links to Breland are sufficient as to both related sets of killings. While the independent evidence might not alone be enough to convict Breland on either murder, it respectively supports the several accomplices' testimony and other forms of evidence, and satisfies our established precedents and principles as to all the crimes for which Breland stands convicted.
Hi
We reject the notion that Ashton should be deemed Breland's accomplice as a matter of law to Breland's attempted murder of Ashton. That defies logic and reason, and is contrary to the plain language and purport of CPL 60.22. Also, it is not a conclusion compelled or supportable within the carefully confined rationales of People v Cona (49 NY2d 26) and People v Cobos (57 NY2d 798).
Breland's attempted murder of his erstwhile accomplice, Ashton, constitutes a subsequent independent criminal frame in a series of violent criminal scenes and acts. His own shooting of Ashton outside the beauty parlor severed, in the most profound legal and actual sense, Ashton's initial accomplice relationship to him. Those exit shootings are legally discrete for accomplice corroboration purposes from the slayings inside the Glamorama parlor. Indeed, Breland's disengagement from the murders inside the shop and his decision to eliminate even his own confederates as witnesses, fundamentally altered the legal relationship and operative evidentiary rubrics. That being so, Ashton's testimony was freed of the customary accomplice corroboration inhibitions.
The evidence that Ashton heaped upon a mountain of evidence from unquestionable accomplices readily satisfies the tending-to-connect, nonaccomplice evidence nexus that supports and validates the accomplices' testimony implicating Breland in the murders of the two nontarget individuals inside Glamorama (see, People v Steinberg, 79 NY2d 673; People v Moses, 63 NY2d 299; People v Hudson, 51 NY2d 233; People v Daniels, 37 NY2d 624; People v Morhouse, 21 NY2d 66; People v Dixon, 231 NY 111). Especially notable, as the Appellate Division observed, is "Ashton's testimony regarding his own attempted murder [corroborating] the accomplice testimony of Gladden and Easterling that the defendant had only moments before used the same weapon inside the beauty parlor to kill Bibbs and Hamilton" (People v Breland, 191 AD2d 500, 501 [emphasis in original]).
We have recently summarized some of the governing standards as follows:
"The corroborative evidence need not establish all the elements of the offense (CPL 60.22 [1]; People v Hudson, 51 NY2d, at 238, supra; People v Cunningham, 48 NY2d 938, 940). Seemingly insignificant matters may harmonize with the accom plice's narrative so as to provide the necessary corroboration (People v Bretti, 68 NY2d 929, 930; People v Moses, 63 NY2d, at 306, supra; People v Cunningham, 48 NY2d, at 940, supra)." (People v Steinberg, 79 NY2d, at 683, supra; see also, People v Goldfeld, 60 AD2d 1, 6.)
We are also satisfied that enough nonaccomplice evidence tends to connect Breland to the Lovell murder. Lovell could potentially be traced to implicating Breland in a host of criminal activities by official motor vehicle records ties. As noted, New York's accomplice corroboration protection, while persistently unique, requires only enough nonaccomplice evidence to assure that the accomplices have offered credible probative evidence (People v Steinberg, 79 NY2d 673, supra). The corroborative glue does not require independent proof of the elements of the crime to sustain a conviction; it just has to bind the accomplice evidence to the defendant.
In this case, the People supplied several strands of corroborative nonaccomplice evidence. Independent evidence from Emergency Medical Service and police and medical personnel as to the precise location of Lovell's body at the place of execution and the location of the fatal gunshot wounds corresponded with the details of the accomplice who accompanied and aided Breland in the Lovell killing and who testified against him at trial. The vehicle registration course-of-dealing that connected Breland and his confederates to Lovell and to the Glamorama siege is also significant. It provides an objective, strong, verifying synapse to the over-all and particular criminal acts of the enterprise and of Breland. Woven into that is the testimony of a United Parcel Service driver making a nearby delivery at the time of the Glamorama shootings. He provided details to tie the getaway vehicle by license plate number to Lovell. The United Parcel Service fellow also identified a third lookout accomplice, Winston Easterling, who, in turn, at trial implicated Breland to a number of murders, including those at issue on this appeal. Indeed, he testified that Breland confessed the Lovell murder to him while they were both confined at Rikers Island.
Additionally, the Ashton and Rich "lookout" shootings reflect Breland's common plan or scheme, unleashed to eliminate weak links and witnesses to his indiscriminate killings inside Glamorama. We need not, however, adopt a view that simple or mere motive evidence alone can suffice as corrobora tive evidence in accomplice situations (see, People v Ohlstein, 54 AD2d 109, affd 44 NY2d 896), because there is enough additional material here which, when taken together, fulfills a standard application of our governing principles. We said in People v Morhouse:
"As we indicated in People v. Fiore (12 N Y 2d 188, 201), the corroboration requirement of section 399 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is fully met when there is some nonaccomplice evidence 'fairly tending to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime' (quoting from People v. Elliott, 106 N. Y. 288, 292). The corroboration need not, as must circumstantial evidence, lead exclusively to the inference of the defendant's guilt. As this court has noted, even Matters in themselves of seeming indifference may so harmonize with the accomplice's narrative as to have a tendency to furnish the necessary connection between the defendant and the crime.' (People v. Dixon, 231 N. Y. 111, 116-117; see, also, People v. Crum, 272 N. Y. 348, 353-354; People v. Malizia, 4 N Y 2d 22, 27; People v. Reddy, 261 N. Y. 479, 484.)" (People v Morhouse, 21 NY2d 66, 74, supra [emphasis added]; see also, People v Henderson, 298 NY 462, 467.)
While the corroborative evidentiary details are not directly probative of the ultimate facts in connection with material facets of the elements of the crimes to be proved, they are standard confirmatory ties. It must be emphasized that proof of the elements of the crimes is not the determinative template of analysis here, and much less evidence and of a distinctly inferior quality is sufficient to meet the slim corroborative linkage to otherwise independently probative evidence from accomplices. In this case, the corroborative strands support overwhelming proof from the accomplices as to each element of all the counts beyond a reasonable doubt (compare, People v Booden, 69 NY2d 185, 187).
In sum, this record contains specific, separate and significant indicia of reliability with respect to the overwhelming evidence of guilt from the accomplices' testimony, braced by unusually interlaced facets of a common motive. The whole of the record evidence thus authenticates the veracity of the vivid descriptions of Breland's complicity in all the interre lated murders, including the assassination of Lovell, from many accomplices.
¡IL
We also reject appellant's additional argument of procedural irregularity arising out of claimed suggestibility by the police of the identification of Breland by Ashton. The argument finds no support in this record or in the governing authorities. Neither CPL 710.30 nor our precedents compels the relief Breland demands in this respect, because while Ashton's viewings of Breland's face and features, as described in the Rodriguez hearing (People v Rodriguez, 79 NY2d 445), may have been relatively brief, they could not have been more intense or focused. Ashton especially noticed Breland's large arms, his face and his stature. The viewing constitutes the kind of special prior relationship that provides assurance it was not, in these circumstances, the product of police suggestion (see, People v Tas, 51 NY2d 915; People v Gissendanner, 48 NY2d 543). Ashton was meeting a self-described lead assassin and Ashton was joining him in a violent criminal expedition. By common experience and understanding, the circumstances of their meetings would etch Breland's features unforgettably in Ashton's senses and memory cells. Moreover, some significance may surely be given to Ashton's also coming face to face with Breland again, only a few feet apart, at the moment of his own possible death at Breland's hand as Breland departed the Glamorama premises. The escalation of violence by Breland killing Rich in front of Ashton and wounding Ashton in an effort to eliminate witnesses against him provides a dramatic finale to any cognizable claim or concern about police suggestibility of Ashton's identification. He needed no one to remember Breland.
We have examined appellant's many other assertions on appeal and conclude that they are without merit and do not warrant further discussion.
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division afiirming the judgment of conviction against persistent violent offender Breland should be affirmed.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Simons, Smith, Levine and Ciparick concur; Judge Titone taking no part.
Order affirmed.