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People v. Gerald

Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, Second Department
Mar 9, 1987
128 A.D.2d 635 (N.Y. App. Div. 1987)

Opinion

March 9, 1987

Appeal from the County Court, Suffolk County (Namm, J.).


Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.

On this record we see no reason to disturb the hearing court's findings that the defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily confessed to the crime. The defendant's inability to read or write and the fact that his intelligence quotient was only 68 were not a bar to his making an effective waiver of Miranda rights as the record discloses that he understood the immediate meaning of the warnings (see, People v. Williams, 62 N.Y.2d 285, 287; People v. Boutot, 89 A.D.2d 1027; People v. Caruso, 45 A.D.2d 804; People v. Chaffee, 42 A.D.2d 172; People v. Lux, 34 A.D.2d 662, affd 29 N.Y.2d 848). Similarly the voluntariness of the defendant's confession was not vitiated by his spending about six hours in custody (cf., People v. Tarsia, 50 N.Y.2d 1), or by the claimed misuse of a polygraph examination (cf., People v. Leonard, 59 A.D.2d 1). There were neither allegations of abuse nor mistreatment (cf., People v. Tarsia, supra, at 13) nor the kind of misuse of the polygraph examination as would be a contributing factor in a voluntariness analysis (cf., People v. Leonard, supra, at 15). The totality of the circumstances is to be considered in determining voluntariness and admissibility (see, People v. Williams, supra, at 289; People v. Leonard, supra, at 12).

The defendant's guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt (see, People v. Bauer, 113 A.D.2d 543), and we see no abuse of discretion in the trial court's sentence (see, People v. Suitte, 90 A.D.2d 80).

We have considered the defendant's remaining contentions and find them to be either unpreserved for our review or without merit. Thompson, J.P., Niehoff, Lawrence and Kunzeman, JJ., concur.


Summaries of

People v. Gerald

Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, Second Department
Mar 9, 1987
128 A.D.2d 635 (N.Y. App. Div. 1987)
Case details for

People v. Gerald

Case Details

Full title:THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v. CLEVELAND GERALD…

Court:Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, Second Department

Date published: Mar 9, 1987

Citations

128 A.D.2d 635 (N.Y. App. Div. 1987)

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