People v. Davis

*828Appeal from a judgment of the County Court of Rensselaer County (Dwyer, Jr., J.), rendered December 12, 1989, upon a verdict convicting defendant of the crime of manslaughter in the second degree.

In 1985 defendant became involved in an altercation with his cousin, Melvin Merritt, in the course of which Merritt received six stab wounds from which he later died. Defendant was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree; that conviction was overturned, however, because County Court had improperly refused to charge the jury with regard to the lesser included offense of manslaughter in the…