Opinion ID: 147061
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Failure to request charge on territorial jurisdiction

Text: Prior to trial Bierenbaum's attorney moved to dismiss the indictment, contending that the evidence presented to the grand jury failed to prove that New York had jurisdiction to prosecute him for the murder, because assuming that Katz was dead, there was no evidence that her death occurred in New York. The motion was denied. Bierenbaum argues that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request a jury charge to the effect that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime occurred within the state of New York. See People v. McLaughlin, 80 N.Y.2d 466, 591 N.Y.S.2d 966, 606 N.E.2d 1357, 1359 (1992) ([F]or the State to have criminal jurisdiction, either the alleged conduct or some consequence of it must have occurred within the State.). During trial the evidence was uncontroverted that Bierenbaum repeatedly stated to friends, to relatives and to the police that he last saw his wife in their apartment in Manhattan. Bierenbaum's only witness was Joel Davis, who saw a poster of the missing Katz and reported sighting her on a Manhattan street on the afternoon of Sunday, July 7. Bierenbaum suggests now that a jury could have concluded that if he killed his wife on July 7, 1985, he might have done so in New Jersey and not in New York. It was a reasonably defensible legal strategy to conclude that on the state of the evidence at trial the jury should be asked to make a choice between two, not three theories of the case. If the jury harbored a reasonable doubt concerning Bierenbaum's guilt, an instruction on jurisdiction would not have assisted the defense. If the jury concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Bierenbaum committed the murder, the jurors would not have harbored a reasonable doubt that it occurred in the apartment. Defense counsel could reasonably have concluded that it made no sense to request a territorial jurisdiction instructionunsupported by any evidencethat contradicted the defense's theory of the case, that Katz left the apartment alive and was alive that afternoon on the streets of Manhattan. None of the alleged errors, individually or collectively, amount to constitutionally deficient representation. It follows that the state court's rejection of Bierenbaum's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not an unreasonable application of the Strickland standard. See Hemstreet v. Greiner, 491 F.3d 84, 90 (2d Cir.2007).