PEOPLE v. BELL (2020)

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Ann M. Donnelly, J.), rendered October 22, 2014, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree (eight counts) and resisting arrest, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to an aggregate term of 3 to 6 years, unanimously affirmed.

Defendant's conviction for criminal possession of a forged instrument was not against the weight of the evidence (see People v. Danielson, 9 N.Y.3d 342, 348–349, 849 N.Y.S.2d 480, 880 N.E.2d 1 [2007]). The evidence at trial established that defendant knew that the New York Rangers tickets he possessed were counterfeit. Defendant's knowledge was established by circumstantial evidence. The officer to whom defendant offered the tickets, testified that when defendant showed her the tickets, she could tell they were counterfeit by the texture of the paper, the ink and the blurriness of the text. An investigator from Madison Square Garden testified as to the inferior quality of the paper, the color of the print, the blurry writing on the back and incorrect event codes. This case is distinguishable from People v. Johnson, 183 A.D.3d 401, 123 N.Y.S.3d 596 (1st Dept. 2020), lv denied 35 N.Y.3d 1067, 129 N.Y.S.3d 390, 152 N.E.3d 1192 (2020), where we found the defendant's receipt of an envelope with tickets from a third party and then his handing the envelope to a codefendant, was insufficient to show the defendant's knowledge that the tickets inside the envelope were counterfeit. Here, in making the sale to the officer, defendant retrieved the tickets from a flowerpot near Madison Square Garden and was in physical possession of the individual tickets, not merely the envelope containing them, when he displayed the tickets to the officer. The evidence showed he actually saw the forged tickets. Furthermore, testimony from one of the officers that he had encountered defendant selling tickets in front of Madison Square Garden just a week before his arrest indicated that defendant regularly sold tickets and therefore was likely to know whether the tickets he possessed were real or counterfeit (see People v. Reisman, 29 N.Y.2d 278, 285, 327 N.Y.S.2d 342, 277 N.E.2d 396 [1971]).

Defendant's claim that his resisting arrest conviction was not supported by legally sufficient evidence is unpreserved and we decline to review it in the interest of justice. As an alternative holding, we reject it on the merits. We also find that this verdict was not against the weight of the evidence (see People v. Danielson, 9 N.Y.3d 342, 348–349, 849 N.Y.S.2d 480, 880 N.E.2d 1 [2007]).

We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence.