People v. Salaam
| Citation | 187 A.D.2d 363,590 N.Y.S.2d 195 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Yusef SALAAM, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Decision Date | 19 November 1992 |
| Court | New York Supreme Court Appellate Division |
Before SULLIVAN, J.P., and WALLACH, KUPFERMAN and ROSS, JJ.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Thomas B. Galligan, J.), rendered September 11, 1990, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of rape in the first degree and robbery in the first degree, and sentencing him, as a juvenile offender, to consecutive terms of 3 1/3 to 10 years, and orders of the same court, entered December 20, 1990, February 14, 1991, and August 9, 1991, which summarily denied defendant's motion pursuant to CPL 440.10 to vacate the judgment, unanimously affirmed.
Defendant was prosecuted with others for his participation in a series of violent incidents in Central Park on the evening of April 19, 1989, and was convicted for the severe beating and robbery of a male jogger and the brutal rape and near killing of a female jogger a short time later in a nearby location. Contacted by police after being named as a participant by an apprehended suspect, defendant initially denied any involvement, but then gave a detailed inculpatory statement in which he admitted using a pipe to beat the male jogger, as well as the female jogger, when she resisted one of his accomplices. Details of this statement were corroborated overwhelmingly by substantial physical evidence.
The salient fact at the suppression hearing was that defendant was only 15 years old at the time of the crime and his interview by police. CPL 140.20(6) and Family Court Act § 305.2(3), literally construed, would have required police to notify defendant's parent or a person with whom he resided when he was taken into custody.
However, we find no violation of these requirements in this case. First, we credit police officer testimony that defendant accompanied them to the precinct voluntarily. Second, although defendant's mother was not at home when defendant left for the precinct, police had informed his sister and brother of their destination, and in fact, defendant's mother arrived at the precinct not long after him. More significantly, we credit police officer testimony that defendant consistently lied to them about his age, stating that he was 16 and showing a school transit pass to prove it. It is well established that a person should not benefit from his own misrepresentations (Matter of Hector C., 95 Misc.2d 255, 258, 406 N.Y.S.2d 958). We discredit the testimony of defendant's witnesses, as well as that of defendant himself, that sought to establish that the police were put on notice of defendant's actual age from the moment they had approached him at home as well as at the precinct during the course of his interview. Since we conclude that the police were not aware that defendant was a juvenile, and find that, once the police were put on notice, they scrupulously honored the request of his mother that questioning cease, we find no violation of CPL 140.20(6) or Family Court Act § 305.2(3) (see, Emilio M. v. People, 37 N.Y.2d 173, 177, 371 N.Y.S.2d 697, 332 N.E.2d 874; Matter of Luis N., 112 A.D.2d 86, 489 N.Y.S.2d 206).
Nor do we find any other infirmity in the hearing court's findings. The testimony of the People's witnesses was consistent and credible. The testimony offered by defendant's witnesses often was inconsistent or implausible.
Defendant's challenges to joinder of his trial with that of two codefendants, and the court's subsequent refusal to sever the trials, are without merit. Considering the extent and complexity of the evidence, as well as the number of witnesses and the duplication of testimony, the benefit of joinder to the economy of judicial and administrative resources is manifest (see, People v....
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