People v Burnside

People v Burnside 2009 NY Slip Op 00433 [58 AD3d 551] January 27, 2009 Appellate Division, First Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. As corrected through Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Michael Burnside, Appellant.

—[*1] Steven Banks, The Legal Aid Society, New York (Adrienne Hale of counsel), for appellant.

Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Steven Purdy of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Gerald Harris, J.), rendered June 27, 2006, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony drug offender whose prior conviction was a violent felony, to a term of six years, unanimously affirmed.

The court sufficiently instructed the jury on the People's obligation to prove identity beyond a reasonable doubt (see People v Knight, 87 NY2d 873 [1995]; People v Whalen, 59 NY2d 273, 278-279 [1983]), and its refusal to deliver an expanded charge on identification does not warrant reversal. We note that the court's general instructions on the evaluation of testimony included much of the same information that would be contained in a typical expanded identification charge.

Defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim is without merit (see People v Benevento, 91 NY2d 708, 713-714 [1998]; see also Strickland v Washington, 466 US 668 [1984]). Concur—Saxe, J.P., Gonzalez, Sweeny, Renwick and DeGrasse, JJ.