People v. Byas
| Decision Date | 24 January 1995 |
| Citation | 621 N.Y.S.2d 579,211 A.D.2d 562 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Walter BYAS, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
J.F. Carrol, for people.
O. Holt, III, for Byas.
Before SULLIVAN, J.P., and WALLACH, KUPFERMAN and ROSS, JJ.
Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County, rendered November 1, 1988, after a jury trial (Ivan Warner, J.), rendered April 24, 1989, after a jury trial (Joseph Cerbone, J.), and rendered June 19, 1989, (William Wallace III, J.), upon defendant's pleas of guilty, convicting defendant of eleven counts of robbery in the first degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to three concurrent terms of 7 to 14 years and eight concurrent terms of 12 1/2 to 25 years, unanimously affirmed.
Defendant waived the right to be present at trial by continuing in his obstreperous behavior after the trial court warned him that he would be removed if he persisted in disrupting the proceedings, and refusing to return to the courtroom on three separate occasions (People v. Byas, 173 A.D.2d 314, 569 N.Y.S.2d 698, lv. denied 78 N.Y.2d 1126, 578 N.Y.S.2d 883, 586 N.E.2d 66). Nor did defendant demonstrate "good cause" for substitution of counsel prior to opening statements in claiming that his attorney had not "helped" him in encouraging him to consider a plea instead of going to trial on charges involving 21 robberies (see, People v. Sides, 75 N.Y.2d 822, 824, 552 N.Y.S.2d 555, 551 N.E.2d 1233; People v. Newell, 200 A.D.2d 451, 607 N.Y.S.2d 235). The court's direction to defense counsel to read the four questions and answers of a witness' prior testimony that followed the one question referred to by counsel, " 'encourage[d] clarity rather than obscurity in the development of proof' " and was otherwise a proper exercise of discretion (People v. Brown, 199 A.D.2d 11, 12, 604 N.Y.S.2d 100, lv. denied 83 N.Y.2d 849, 612 N.Y.S.2d 381, 634 N.E.2d 982.) We have considered defendant's remaining contentions and find them to be without merit.
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