Opinion
May 2, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, New York County (Joan Carey, J.).
The court properly exercised its discretion in closing the courtroom for the testimony of the undercover officer where the undercover officer feared for his safety and identified a very specific street location, the site of defendant's arrest, at which he had functioned as an undercover for months and had open cases involving drug arrests, and to which he was immediately returning to continue his undercover work (People v Martinez, 82 N.Y.2d 436).
The trial court properly permitted the People to amend the indictment to read "a quantity of heroin" instead of "a quantity of cocaine" after finding that the description of the crime alleged in the indictment as filed was a clerical error; that the proof before the Grand Jury dealt with heroin; and that defendant was neither prejudiced nor surprised by the amendment (CPL 200.70; People v Heaton, 59 A.D.2d 704).
Concur — Sullivan, J.P., Wallach, Kupferman, Nardelli and Williams, JJ.