IT WAS (HARMLESS) ERROR TO ALLOW THE ARRESTING OFFICER TO TESTIFY THAT DEFENDANT WAS DEPICTED IN THE VIDEOTAPE WHICH WAS BEING PLAYED (FIRST DEPT).

The First Department determined it was (harmless) error to fail to sustain defense counsel’s objection to the arresting officer’s unprompted identification testimony that the defendant was depicted in the videotape that was being played:

The officer was not previously familiar with defendant, and there was no basis to conclude he was “more likely to correctly identify the defendant from the [videotape] than [was] the jury” … . However, this isolated instance of apparent lay opinion was plainly harmless. After the overruled objection, the prosecutor immediately elicited that the officer could not “make out the face of the person” in the video whom he had said was defendant. The officer’s testimony as a whole made clear that he did not claim to recognize defendant in the video, but that he was testifying about similarities between the appearance and distinctive clothing of the man in the video and that of defendant when he was arrested. People v Calderon, 2019 NY Slip Op 02468, First Dept 4-2-19