People v. Jones

Full title: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v. ALAN JONES, Appellant

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

Date published: Dec 15, 1986

125 A.D.2d 494 (N.Y. App. Div. 1986)

Opinion

December 15, 1986

Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Giaccio, J.).

Justice Lazer has been substituted for the late Justice Gibbons(see, 22 NYCRR 670.2 [c]).

Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.

The hearing court properly found that the witness Livermen's repeated observations of the defendant in the neighborhood in which the crime occurred, prior to the crime, including an observation of the defendant at a party earlier that evening, coupled with his ability to observe the defendant clearly during the commission of the crime, constituted a sufficient independent basis for his in-court identification.

Concerning the defendant's contention that numerous instances of prosecutorial misconduct deprived him of a fair trial, we note that while some of the prosecutor's remarks would have been better left unsaid, for the most part, the prosecutor's remarks on summation were a fair response to remarks made by defense counsel on summation (see, People v. Anthony, 24 N.Y.2d 696). Moreover, any error was rendered harmless by the overwhelming evidence of the defendant's guilt (see, People v. Crimmins, 36 N.Y.2d 230). Lazer, J.P., Thompson, Eiber and Spatt, JJ., concur.