Opinion
September 29, 1994
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Bronx County (Bonnie Wittner, J.).
Any prejudice to defendant in this "buy-and-bust" prosecution that might have arisen from the prosecutor's summation comments that defendant had entered a grocery store to dispose of the "incriminating evidence" of his drug sale because he was "practiced at his trade" and that defendant had put forward in his own summation a "conspiracy of the highest degree" theory requiring the jury, in order to acquit, to believe that police officers had committed perjury, was alleviated by the court's prompt sustaining of defendant's objections and giving of curative instructions, to which defendant did not object (People v. Santiago, 52 N.Y.2d 865).
Defendant's claim that he was denied his constitutional right to a jury of his own choosing and his statutory right to exercise peremptory challenges was waived when he withdrew his peremptory challenge.
Concur — Murphy, P.J., Rosenberger, Wallach, Ross and Rubin, JJ.