THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK v. ANTONIO ROBINSON (2026)

The Exoneration Project, New York (Tara Thompson of counsel), and The Exoneration Project, Chicago, IL (Debra Loevy of the bar of the State of Illinois, admitted pro hac vice, of counsel), for appellant.

Darcel D. Clark, District Attorney, Bronx (Maria I. Wager of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Jeanette Rodriguez–Morick, J.), rendered July 31, 2023, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of murder in the first degree, and sentencing him to a term of 25 years to life, unanimously affirmed.

The jury found that defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree for killing his wife and adult stepson in their shared apartment sometime during the mid-day or early afternoon of October 1, 2016.  Defendant argued that the verdict is not supported by legally sufficient evidence.  He argued at trial that surveillance footage depicted him leaving the apartment at 3:07 p.m., and a witness heard gunshots “as late a[s] 3:30 p.m. or later,” and that there was no forensic evidence to corroborate the circumstantial evidence (see People v. Gray, 86 N.Y.2d 10, 19 [1995] ).  His remaining arguments concerning legal insufficiency are unpreserved, and we decline to review them in the interest of justice.

Even were we to consider all of defendant's assertions of insufficiency, we conclude that the verdict was based on legally sufficient evidence and was not against the weight of that evidence (see People v. Danielson, 9 NY3d 342, 348–349 [2007];  see also People v. Baque, 43 NY3d 26, 29–30 [2024] ).  Surveillance footage placed defendant in the apartment with his wife and stepson around the time of the shooting.  The jury could find that defendant shot the victims from the evidence presented, which included the sudden cessation of the victims' individual cellphone activities after 2:22 p.m. A witness also testified that she heard gunshots around 3:00 p.m., although she acknowledged that it could have been earlier or later, and another witness saw defendant at 2:43 p.m. in front of his apartment with the door slightly ajar, staring at the entrance to the building.  Surveillance also depicted defendant leaving the building shortly after that encounter, and no one was seen entering the apartment until defendant returned that evening.  Defendant also normally cared for his young son at the child's mother's home in Manhattan in the morning, and on the day in question he did not reach the Manhattan apartment until the late afternoon.  On the way to see his son he also purchased and donned a new set of clothes.  Defendant testified that he had lost the original clothes he had worn earlier in the day.

Moreover, the jury could also reasonably infer motive from defendant's repeated early-morning calls to his wife while she was staying with her boyfriend, supporting an inference of jealousy and agitation.  Coupled with defendant's later admission that he would assault the boyfriend, these calls showed that he was emotionally troubled by the relationship and supplied additional evidence of motive.

The court providently exercised its discretion in precluding defendant from introducing third-party culpability evidence purportedly connecting one of the victims to financial scams between 2014 and 2016 which he sought under the theory that the victim was killed for that involvement.  The financial-scam evidence consisted of inadmissible hearsay that failed to connect any third party to the murders beyond speculation (see People v. DiPippo, 27 NY3d 127, 136 [2016] [“speculative assertions that other unidentified individuals had a motive to harm a victim are insufficient to support admission of third-party culpability evidence”] ).  Defendant also sought to introduce testimony that relatives or friends of defendant's daughter had entered the apartment through the fire escape window in the past, to show that defendant was not the only person with access to the scene of the crime (see e.g. People v. Powell, 27 NY3d 523, 531–532 [2016] ).  Although the court permitted defendant to elicit from multiple witnesses the location and accessibility of the fire escape and its connected windows, it providently exercised its discretion by precluding defendant from presenting testimony that other individuals had accessed the apartment via the fire escape windows in the past, as this evidence was too remote and speculative to connect any third party to the crime.

Defendant's claim that a third party entered through his daughter's locked bedroom because FDNY found the room locked and saw that the fire-escape window gate was unsecured was speculative.  There was no evidence of any entry through that window on October 1 or any connection between that room and the shootings.  The court properly excluded the theory.  In sum, the fire-escape claim did not provide any

M–4932 – People v. Antonio Robinson

non-speculative link to a third party and did not undermine the strong circumstantial evidence of defendant's guilt.

Motion to expand the record, granted.