Opinion
No. 2270.
March 2, 2010.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Daniel Conviser, J.), rendered January 22, 2009, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of assault in the second degree (two counts) and vehicular assault in the first degree, and sentencing him to two concurrent terms of 2½ years, concurrent with a term of 1 to 3 years, unanimously affirmed.
Law Offices of Annette G. Hasapidis, South Salem (Annette G. Hasapidis of counsel) for appellant.
Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Jaime Bachrach of counsel) for respondent.
Before: Gonzalez, P.J., Saxe, McGuire, Acosta and Abdus-Salaam, JJ.
Defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claims are unreviewable on direct appeal because they involve matters outside the record concerning counsel's strategic decisions ( see People v Rivera, 71 NY2d 705, 709; People v Love, 57 NY2d 998). Although defendant does not make any factual assertions outside the record, "[w]ithout the benefit of additional facts that might have been developed after an appropriate postconviction motion, we cannot conclude that counsel's actions lacked any strategic or other legitimate explanation" ( People v Denny, 95 NY2d 921, 923). This is not one of the rare cases where the trial record itself permits review of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim challenging counsel's strategy ( see People v Brown, 45 NY2d 852).
We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence.