Opinion
March 21, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Bronx County (Joseph Cerbone, J.).
Giving due deference to the hearing court's determinations of credibility (People v. Fonte, 159 A.D.2d 346, lv denied 76 N.Y.2d 734), the court properly found that defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his wallet after he had transferred possession and control of it to another individual, while taking no normal precautions to maintain a privacy interest therein (People v. Ponder, 54 N.Y.2d 160, 165), particularly after defendant, albeit inadvertently, gave information to the police that the contents of the wallet, apparently relevant to the charges against defendant, were to be burned or destroyed (see, People v. Middleton, 54 N.Y.2d 474, 483). The court further properly found that the transferee, who possessed the requisite control over the property in question, had the authority to, and did, freely consent to a warrantless search of that property (People v. Cosme, 48 N.Y.2d 286, 290).
Where appropriate objection was entered to comments of the prosecutor during summation, the court sustained the objection and gave curative instructions to the jury, which presumably understood and followed those instructions (People v. Davis, 58 N.Y.2d 1102). In all other respects, the prosecutor's summation constituted appropriate response to the defense summation (People v. Marks, 6 N.Y.2d 67, cert denied 362 U.S. 912), and fair comment on the evidence, presented within the broad bounds of rhetorical comment acceptable in closing argument (People v Galloway, 54 N.Y.2d 396).
Defendant did not preserve by objection his current claim of error in the trial court's charge on reasonable doubt (see, People v. Jackson, 76 N.Y.2d 908). In any event, the court's charge, instructing that a reasonable doubt is one "for which a juror could give a reason if called upon to do so" during deliberations, did not improperly impose a duty to specifically articulate the reasons for their doubt, but merely "defined the required degree of clarity and coherence of thought, focusing on the jurors' intellectual effort" (People v. Brin, 190 A.D.2d 512, lv denied 82 N.Y.2d 751).
Concur — Rosenberger, J.P., Wallach, Kupferman, Asch and Tom, JJ.