People v Lewis

People v Lewis 2009 NY Slip Op 07766 [66 AD3d 611] October 29, 2009 Appellate Division, First Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. As corrected through Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Rosendo Lewis, Appellant.

—[*1] Robert S. Dean, Center for Appellate Litigation, New York (Seon Jeong Lee of counsel), for appellant.

Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Kate S. Woodall of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Ruth Pickholz, J.), rendered March 10, 2008, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of assault in the second degree, attempted assault in the second degree, and tampering with a witness in the third degree, and sentencing him to an aggregate term of seven years, unanimously affirmed.

To the extent that defendant's eve-of-trial expression of dissatisfaction with his attorney can be viewed as a request for new counsel, we conclude that the court properly denied it after sufficient inquiry, since defendant did not establish good cause for a substitution (see People v Linares, 2 NY3d 507 [2004]; see also People v Nelson, 7 NY3d 883 [2006]). Rather than cutting defendant off, the court gave him a suitable opportunity to be heard. Defendant's only claim was that his counsel had never met with him, an assertion the court knew to be unfounded.

We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence. Concur—Sweeny, J.P., Buckley, DeGrasse, Freedman and Abdus-Salaam, JJ.