People v. Aulet
| Decision Date | 28 November 1995 |
| Citation | 634 N.Y.S.2d 463,221 A.D.2d 281 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Carlos AULET, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
M.C. Farrington, for respondent.
M. Yucevicius, for defendant-appellant.
Before ROSENBERGER, J.P., and RUBIN, KUPFERMAN, ASCH and WILLIAMS, JJ.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Michael Corriero, J.), rendered October 22, 1993, convicting defendant, after a nonjury trial, of two counts of murder in the second degree and one count of kidnapping in the first degree, and sentencing him, as a juvenile offender, to concurrent terms of 9 years to life on the murder convictions and 6 to 15 years on the kidnapping conviction, unanimously affirmed.
The verdict was based on legally sufficient evidence and was not against the weight of the evidence (People v. Bleakley, 69 N.Y.2d 490, 515 N.Y.S.2d 761, 508 N.E.2d 672). Defendant's acts were "imminently dangerous and presented a very high risk of death" to the victim and were "committed under circumstances which evidenced a wanton indifference to human life or a depravity of mind" (People v. Register, 60 N.Y.2d 270, 274, 469 N.Y.S.2d 599, 457 N.E.2d 704, cert. denied 466 U.S. 953, 104 S.Ct. 2159, 80 L.Ed.2d 544). Defendant admitted that after the codefendant told him that he wanted to beat up the victim, defendant lured the victim to a pier on 112th Street. Prior to leaving with the codefendant for the meeting, defendant knew that codefendant had twice "jokingly" threatened to kill the victim, and had taken a knife from defendant's home. In accordance with their plan, defendant pretended to be surprised by the codefendant's "sudden" appearance at the pier, and he and the codefendant escorted the victim to an abandoned factory four blocks away. After the codefendant brutally attacked the victim and then left momentarily, defendant, while pretending to help the victim escape, alerted the codefendant. Defendant then accompanied the codefendant and the victim to the fifth floor elevator shaft; defendant acknowledged that he knew that the victim was going to die at that point. After the codefendant pushed the victim down the shaft, defendant subsequently threw dangerous debris on the victim even though he knew that the victim was still alive and had heard his "gasps". The court, as trier of fact, had ample basis to reject defendant's "innocent" explanations of the events, and defendant's claim that he was "intimidated" by the codefendant.
Dismissal of the kidnapping charge is not warranted since the merger doctrine is not applicable to first-degree kidnapping (see People v. Velez, 206 A.D.2d 258, 614 N.Y.S.2d 504, lv. denied 84 N.Y.2d...
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...diligently and in good faith in producing the surveillance video upon his discovery of it (see CPL 240.20[1][g], [2]; People v. Aulet, 221 A.D.2d 281, 283, 634 N.Y.S.2d 463). The defendant's contention in his pro se supplemental brief that the surveillance video and the investigating detect......
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...is unavailing both as a matter of law, because the merger doctrine is not applicable to first-degree kidnapping (People v. Aulet, 221 A.D.2d 281, 634 N.Y.S.2d 463 [1st Dept.1995], lv. denied 88 N.Y.2d 980, 649 N.Y.S.2d 386, 672 N.E.2d 612 [1996] ), and as a matter of fact, because under the......
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People v. Gonzalez
...by the belated disclosure of the records at issue. Moreover, the delay was not caused by bad faith (see People v. Aulet, 221 A.D.2d 281, 283, 634 N.Y.S.2d 463 [1st Dept. 1995], lv denied 88 N.Y.2d 980, 649 N.Y.S.2d 386, 672 N.E.2d 612 [1996] ). In any event, any error was harmless in light ......