Opinion
November 4, 1991
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Pitaro, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The defendant contends that the trial court, faced with an apparently deadlocked jury, failed to deliver a properly balanced Allen charge (see, Allen v. United States, 164 U.S. 492), in that it failed to expressly stress that no juror should abandon his or her conscientiously held opinions simply so that a verdict could be reached. The record reveals, however, that the supplemental instructions rendered in this case were essentially neutral, were directed at the jurors in general, and did not coerce the jurors to reach a verdict or to achieve a specific result (People v. Eley, 121 A.D.2d 462; People v Curtin, 115 A.D.2d 753). Nor did the instructions urge that a dissenting juror abandon his own conviction and join in the opinion of other jurors or shame the jury into reaching a verdict (People v. Hardy, 109 A.D.2d 802; see, People v. Gomez, 149 A.D.2d 432; People v. Zocchi, 133 A.D.2d 478).
In light of the overall balanced nature of the charge, the court's remark that this was not a difficult case, did not render the charge coercive (see, People v. Boyd, 150 A.D.2d 786, 787; cf., People v. Rodriguez, 70 N.Y.2d 523, 532). Thompson, J.P., Kunzeman, Eiber and Miller, JJ., concur.