People v Wise
2012 NY Slip Op 07039 [99 AD3d 584]
October 18, 2012
Appellate Division, First Department
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
As corrected through Wednesday, November 28, 2012


The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Andre Wise, Appellant.

[*1] Richard M. Greenberg, Office of the Appellate Defender, New York (Eunice C. Lee of counsel), for appellant.

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., District Attorney, New York (Andrew E. Seewald of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Michael J. Obus, J., at suppression hearing; Bruce Allen, J., at jury trial and sentencing), rendered August 4, 2010, convicting defendant of robbery in the second degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of six years, unanimously affirmed.

The court properly denied defendant's suppression motion. The officers saw an apparently injured man lying on the ground. Defendant ran away from this man while attempting to stuff something into his rear waistband, that one of the officers believed, based on his experience, was a deadly weapon. That defendant continued these actions after the police told him to stop tended to negate any innocent explanations. At this point, the police had reasonable suspicion upon which to draw their weapons and forcibly detain defendant (see People v Rivera, 286 AD2d 235 [1st Dept 2001], lv denied 97 NY2d 760 [2002]). A bystander then told the police that defendant had assaulted the man lying on the ground.

The verdict was not against the weight of the evidence (see People v Danielson, 9 NY3d 342, 348-349 [2007]). We reject defendant's challenge to the weight of the evidence supporting the physical injury element of second-degree robbery under Penal Law § 160.10 (2) (a). The [*2]testimony of the victim, the officers and a bystander established that the victim had a swollen mouth, a bloody lip, and a bloody and bruised elbow, and that he temporarily lost consciousness. Concur—Friedman, J.P., Moskowitz, Freedman, Richter and Abdus-Salaam, JJ.