Opinion
September 20, 1994
Appeal from the Supreme Court, New York County (Rena K. Uviller, J.).
The guilty verdicts were neither based on insufficient evidence nor were they against the weight of the evidence (People v Bleakley, 69 N.Y.2d 490). The issues concerning the credibility of witnesses were properly placed before the jury, and, in view of the wealth of credible and consistent evidence from a variety of sources, that defendant, a police officer, falsely claimed that he saw the person he arrested strike another person with a shovel, we see no reason to disturb its findings.
Even were we to assume in defendant's favor that the supposed shovel-wielder at the very least struck the other person with her hand, and that defendant merely exaggerated that fact by falsely injecting the use of a shovel, we would nevertheless find such an exaggeration to be a sufficiently material falsehood to sustain the perjury charge.
We have likewise reviewed defendant's similar objections with respect to the other counts and found them to be without merit.
Concur — Murphy, P.J., Wallach, Kupferman and Asch, JJ.