People v. HanssonPeople v. Hansson
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Appeal from a judgment of the County Court of Sullivan County (McGuire, J.), rendered January 13, 2016, upon a verdict convicting defendant of the crimes of assault in the first degree, assault in the second degree and criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation.
On June 18, 2014, police were dispatched to the Short Line bus terminal in the Village of Monticello, Sullivan County in response to a 911 call from a civilian reporting that two people had just gotten off of a bus with two small children who looked like they had been beaten. Upon arrival, the police encountered defendant, her three-year-old son (hereinafter the victim) and her 18-month-old son standing at a picnic table across the street from the bus terminal. One of the officers observed that the victim had two black eyes and various bruises. Upon inquiry, defendant informed the police that the victim was prone to falls and had fallen down a flight of stairs. Michael Croci, defendant‘s boyfriend, arrived shortly thereafter and, following a few additional questions, defendant and Croci agreed to accompany the police to their station. Shortly thereafter, the victim was transported by ambulance to Catskill Regional Medical Center (hereinafter CRMC) and then airlifted by helicopter to Westchester Medical Center. Upon admission to the intensive care unit, the victim was intubated and found to suffer from a major abdominal injury, a fractured neck, three pelvic fractures, a fractured left humerus, a fractured clavicle, numerous fractured ribs, multiple fractures in both his hands, bruises and hematomas across his abdomen, head, back, face and ears, a bruised pancreas and a perforated colon, and he was bleeding in his obturator muscle, belly and intestines. Meanwhile,
Defendant was thereafter charged by indictment with assault in the first degree, assault in the second degree and criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation. Defendant‘s subsequent motion to preclude her oral and written statements as involuntary was denied, as was her letter application seeking to call an expert psychiatric witness with respect to the theory of coercive control. Following a jury trial, defendant was convicted as charged, and she was thereafter sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 22 years followed by five years of postrelease supervision for the assault in the first degree conviction, seven years followed by five years of postrelease supervision for the assault in the second degree conviction and one year for the obstruction of breathing or blood circulation conviction. Defendant now appeals.
Defendant‘s initial contention that County Court erred in not suppressing her oral and written statements to law enforcement because she was taken into custody without probable cause was not preserved for our review as defendant failed to challenge the legality of her detention and/or arrest in her omnibus motion (see
We find similarly unavailing defendant‘s contention that County Court improperly limited her direct examination of Amber Dinoff, a friend of defendant who provided a temporary home for defendant‘s two children in the month prior to her moving into an apartment with Croci. Although County Court limited Dinoff from testifying to whether she observed Croci hit defendant during a visit to her residence, such testimony was not relevant to whether defendant was guilty of beating her son and, therefore, it did not serve to impair defendant‘s ability to present a defense (see People v DeFreitas, 116 AD3d 1078, 1082 [2014], lv denied 24 NY3d 960 [2014]). To the extent that defendant argues that such testimony was relevant to establish Croci‘s coercive control over defendant, we note that Dinoff testified to numerous other instances of Croci‘s controlling behavior, and the jury had previously heard defendant testify regarding Croci having struck her while at Dinoff‘s residence. Moreover, even assuming, without deciding, that County Court erred in limiting Dinoff‘s testimony in this regard, given the strength of the evidence against defendant, under the circumstances, we find that any such error was harmless (see People v Crimmins, 36 NY2d 230, 241-242 [1975]; People v Hughes, 114 AD3d 1021, 1023 [2014], lv denied 23 NY3d 1038 [2014]).
Next, we reject defendant‘s contention that she was deprived of her right to a fair trial when County Court denied her application to retain an expert witness in support of the theory that she was under the coercive control of Croci and that, by reason of that control, she falsely confessed to beating her son. Indeed, the Court of Appeals has recognized that psychiatric and/or psychological experts “may offer valuable testimony to educate a jury about those factors of personality and situation that the relevant scientific community considers to be associated with
In support of her application, defendant argued that it was essential that she be able to retain and present the expert testimony of Evan Stark, a forensic social worker, to explain why she would falsely confess to beating her own child and/or why she would protect the person who actually inflicted injuries on her child. Defendant‘s proffer in this regard suffered from two shortcomings. First, defendant failed to present any evidence demonstrating that the theory of coercive control itself has gained general acceptance in the scientific community (see People v Bedessie, 19 NY3d at 161; People v LeGrand, 8 NY3d 449, 457 [2007]). Second, even assuming that defendant could produce evidence that the theory of coercive control is generally accepted in the scientific community, she failed to proffer any evidence that, in such an instance, being subjected to coercive control would, in turn, cause an individual to falsely confess to a crime he or she did not commit. In fact, following an extensive colloquy with County Court, defense counsel conceded that she was not aware of any published scientific studies on the issue of whether women who have been in abusive relationships are prone to falsely confess to crimes against third parties 1[FN1]. Accordingly, in our view, County Court appropriately found that the admission of expert testimony in this regard would be far too speculative (see People v Ignatyev, 147 AD3d 489, 491 [2017], lv denied 29 NY3d 1033 [2017]), and we discern no abuse of discretion in its denial of defendant‘s application without a Frye hearing.
Further, we find no error in County Court‘s admission of two statements that the victim
Nor did County Court err in admitting medical records with regard to various injuries that the victim sustained predating the time period set forth in the indictment. Admission of such evidence was material and relevant on the issue of whether defendant‘s conduct evinced a depraved indifference to human life — an element of assault in the first degree (see
Lastly, we find defendant‘s contention that the sentence imposed was harsh and excessive to be without merit. The attending pediatric physician at the Westchester Medical Center emergency room — a level I trauma center — testified that the injuries that the three-year-old victim sustained were extreme, that he presented with “more bruises than any child abuse case [she had] ever seen” and that she had never witnessed this type of injury in a child even from a car accident. The director of the child abuse pediatrics program at Westchester Medical Center testified that she has attended to over 7,000 children throughout her career and that she could only recall observing such an extreme pelvic injury as that sustained by the victim one other time, which, in that instance, was caused by a high speed motor vehicle accident, and that the excessive traumatic force required to inflict such an injury from a kick, stomp or punch must have been horrific. She further opined that, absent medical treatment, the victim most certainly would have died from the injuries that he sustained. Given the wanton brutality of the beating that defendant brought to bear on her own three-year-old son, which left the child with life-threatening injuries including a broken neck, three pelvic fractures, broken ribs, a perforated bowel and a severe abdominal injury, the fact that she did not voluntarily seek any medical
McCarthy, J.P., Aarons, Rumsey and Pritzker, JJ., concur.
ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed.