Court Opinion

ID: 9807623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:11:30.184936+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:49:52.366948
License: Public Domain

Saxe, J.,
dissents in a memorandum as follows: In my view, defendant’s conviction of criminal possession of a weapon in the second and third degrees was properly supported by the necessary quantum of evidence, and I therefore disagree with the majority’s dismissal of the indictment.
The evidence established that gunshots were fired in the *575area of 111th Street between Fifth Avenue and Lenox Avenue on the evening of July 19, 2009 at around 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. Natasha Fraser was in the street across from the entrance to the apartment building located at 46-50 West 111th Street when she saw someone who appeared to be holding in his hand, and shooting, a flat, black gun. It was night, and she did not have on either her glasses or her contact lenses, and she had been trying to avoid the people fleeing from the gunfire, but she could see that the shooter seemed to be a black man with a “low haircut” and a “big neck,” who stood about 5 feet 11 inches, and weighed “[a]nywhere from like 200 maybe to like 240, 230.”
At 8:55 p.m., defendant walked into the St. Luke’s Hospital Emergency Department with multiple gunshot wounds to his back and neck. At 9:00 p.m., Detective Roy Schmahl arrived at St. Luke’s and spoke with defendant, who was conscious and had injuries to his upper torso and neck area. Defendant stood about 6 feet tall, weighed about 240 pounds, and had “close hair.”
Sergeant Gerson Lopez and his partner, Andrew Seewald, arrived at 46-50 West 111th Street at about 10:30 p.m., and recovered four shell casings in close proximity to one another in the street, along with four deformed fragments of bullets, bullet impact marks and bullet holes on parked cars and a shattered back windshield. They also recovered from the bushes in front of 46-50 West 111th Street an operable .40 caliber semiautomatic Hi-Point gun, loaded with two cartridges, one in the chamber and one in the magazine. They swabbed the gun in several places for DNA, and sent the swabs for testing.
Medical Examiner Katey Nori concluded that while DNA found on the trigger/trigger guard of the recovered gun matched another suspect, Howard Perry, there were also small amounts of DNA present on the slide of the gun. She performed tests on that sample and determined that it contained a mixture of DNA from at least three people. From the mixture, Nori was able to form a full DNA profile, with “alleles in every single location,” and when she compared the DNA alleles of defendant to the DNA alleles that were produced from the mixture, she found that all defendant’s DNA alleles matched those included in the DNA mixture. While at one point in her testimony Nori said that defendant “could be one contributor to the sample” (emphasis added), she subsequently asserted definitively that “[e]very DNA allele in the profile of [defendant] . . . was also present in th[e] sample,” and she answered *576with a definitive “Yes” the question, “And in this case you determined that [defendant] was included in this mixture?”
A challenge to the weight of the evidence requires this Court to “weigh the relative probative force of conflicting testimony and the relative strength of conflicting inferences that may be drawn from the testimony” (People v Bleakley, 69 NY2d 490, 495 [1987] [internal quotation marks omitted]). I submit that the trier of fact gave the appropriate weight to the People’s evidence and the inferences to be drawn from it and that the verdict should not be set aside. The evidence fully justified the jury’s finding that defendant was a participant in that gunfight and that he fired that pistol.
Natasha Fraser’s testimony, combined with the evidence of defendant’s presence at St. Luke’s Hospital, easily permits the inference that defendant was present at, and a participant in, the shooting at 111th Street. The expert testimony regarding DNA on the gun found at the site of the shooting connected the use of the gun with defendant as well as with Perry.
The majority concludes that the conviction was against the weight of the evidence, because in its view the evidence failed to connect defendant with the pistol that had been used in the shooting incident. However, the majority overstates its case when it asserts that “[Nori’s] testimony and the forensic testing documents introduced by the People established only that defendant ‘could’ have been a contributor to that mixture.” Despite the expert’s use of the word “could” when acknowledging that defendant “could be one contributor to the sample,” elsewhere in her testimony she was conclusive and definitive in identifying defendant’s DNA as matching the sample found on the gun’s slide, when she answered “yes” to the question “And in this case you determined that [defendant] was included in this mixture?” In sum, there was a permissible inference from the DNA evidence that defendant had used the discarded gun, and that inference was not eliminated by the fact that the trigger of the gun held only Howard Perry’s DNA.
Accordingly, I would affirm the conviction.