Court Opinion

ID: 9805226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 17:43:50.462549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:40:11.267376
License: Public Domain

Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County (William I. Mogulescu, J.), rendered July 19, 2011, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of robbery in the second degree, petit larceny, menacing in the second degree, and possession of an imitation pistol, and sentencing him to an aggregate term of five years, reversed, on the law, and the matter remanded for a new trial.
The issue presented is whether defendant’s rights under Bru*574ton v United States (391 US 123 [1968]) were violated by the admission into evidence of the codefendant’s grand jury testimony at their joint trial. The People’s case was founded primarily on the testimony of an undercover officer, who testified that he approached defendant and asked, “What’s good?” mentioning “crack.” After asking the undercover if he was a cop, defendant told the undercover to follow him. Defendant got into the front passenger seat of a silver Jeep Liberty in which the codefendant sat in the driver’s seat, and the undercover approached the open front passenger window. Defendant told the undercover, “Give [me] the money” and the undercover replied, “No, give me the stuff.” Defendant reached into his groin area, creating the impression that he was retrieving drugs, and the codefendant asked to count the money. In the belief that he was about to receive narcotics from defendant, the undercover leaned into the car and reached past defendant to hand the co-defendant $30 in prerecorded buy money. As the undercover leaned back out, expecting to take drugs from defendant, defendant pulled a pistol from his pants. Believing the gun to be real, the undercover stepped back, raised his hands slightly, and moved out of its path, shouting, “Gun, gun, gun,” to alert the field team that a gun was being pointed at him. The Jeep pulled out, and as it did, defendant turned his body toward the open window and pointed the gun partway out of it, at the undercover, who drew his weapon and fired once, striking the rear passenger window.
During the subsequent stop of the vehicle and arrest of its occupants, the police recovered $30 in pre-recorded buy money from the codefendant’s front pants pocket and an imitation pistol resembling a Walther, covered in blood, from between the front passenger seat and the door.
The codefendant’s grand jury testimony was, in essence, that on the night in question he was driving around with defendant in a Jeep, looking for defendant’s car, which had recently been stolen. Around midnight, defendant said he wanted to get something to eat, so the codefendant stopped at 167th Street, near a couple of restaurants, and kept the car idling while defendant got out to get some food. The codefendant claimed not to be paying much attention until defendant got back into the car. After defendant closed the car door, “someone came to the vehicle talking about where is the stuff and reaching money out.” That person “with money in his hand [was] talking about where is the stuff?” The codefendant testified that he then “knew it was time for me to leave.” He claimed not to see what defendant was doing at that point and denied having seen a *575black plastic toy gun in the car. As the codefendant drove off, “[t]he money dropped in the car.” The guy who had come to the window just “left it in my car.” At the same time, a shot was fired, the back window of the car shattered, and defendant said, “I am hit.” The codefendant admitted that when the car was subsequently stopped by the police, the $30 identified in court as prerecorded buy money was in his pants pocket; he said he had taken the money and put it in his pants.
Under Bruton v United States, “a defendant is deprived of his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation when the facially incriminating confession of a nontestifying codefendant is introduced at their joint trial, even if the jury is instructed to consider the confession only against the codefendant” (Richardson v Marsh, 481 US 200, 207 [1987]). Since the rule only applies where the codefendant’s statement was “incriminating on its face, and [not where it] became so only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial” (Richardson, 481 US at 208), the question before us is whether the codefendant’s grand jury testimony was facially incriminating as to defendant, rather than incriminating only when linked to other evidence.
The court found that the codefendant’s statement was not “facially incriminating as to Mr. Johnson” because nothing in the statement suggested that defendant was involved in any illegal conduct. We disagree.
Although the codefendant’s grand jury testimony was intended as an innocent explanation of the events surrounding the alleged robbery, and admitted no wrongdoing, nevertheless it was “facially incriminating” as to defendant within the meaning of Bruton.
The codefendant’s narrative placed defendant with the codefendant throughout the relevant events and, specifically referring to defendant approximately 40 times, described defendant’s conduct. Among other things, the statement recounted that, after defendant’s return to the codefendant’s car following an absence to “get food,” the alleged robbery victim (an undercover officer) appeared at the car window, asked where the “stuff” was, and dropped prerecorded buy money (the property allegedly stolen in the charged robbery) into the car. This narrative suffices to create an inference that defendant, while outside the codefendant’s vehicle, had purported to set up a deal for a sale of contraband that was to culminate in the vehicle, but did not fulfill the deal once he entered the vehicle.
In People v Martin (58 AD3d 519 [1st Dept 2009], lv denied 12 NY3d 818 [2009]), we found that a codefendant’s statement was violative of Bruton under analogous circumstances, even *576though the “brief references merely placed defendant at the scene, and his presence at the scene was essentially consistent with the defense theory of the case” (id. at 519). The incriminating implications against defendant are far stronger here.
Although in Martin we found the error to be harmless, here, we cannot say that admission of the codefendant’s statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, in view of the extensive references to defendant and the indications that defendant had purported to set up a drug deal with an individual whom he then led back to the car (see People v Hamlin, 71 NY2d 750, 760 [1988]). As defendant points out, there were numerous inconsistencies, gaps, and allegedly problematic aspects of the People’s evidence that, although plausibly characterized as innocuous by the People, might have been relied upon to create reasonable doubt in a trial at which the codefendant’s statement was not part of the evidence. Further, and most significantly in our view, in this case in which the defense claimed that the police fabricated a story of a sham drug sale leading to a robbery in order to excuse the undercover officer’s improper shooting of defendant as the codefendant’s car pulled away, the codefendant’s statement was the only nonpolice evidence that the codefendant possessed the buy money when the car was stopped.
We also note that defense counsel made a timely application for preclusion of the codefendant’s grand jury testimony, deletion of all references to defendant, or a severance. Since we are ordering a new trial, we find it unnecessary to reach defendant’s remaining arguments.
Concur — Tom, J.P., Friedman, Andrias and Saxe, JJ.