Justia New York Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs commenced this hybrid declaratory judgment action/article 78 proceeding, seeking a declaration that the implementation of Local Law No. 3-2011 in relation to the November 8, 2011 general election was null and void for lack of compliance with the Nassau County Charter. At issue was whether the metes and bounds descriptions in Local Law No. 3-2011 applied to the 2011 general election or whether they were the first part of a three-step process to take effect in 2013. The court held that Supreme Court properly declared that Local Law No. 3-2011 was in accord with Nassau County Charter 112, but that its implementation was null and void in connection with the November 8, 2011 general election for lack of compliance with Nassau County Charter 113 and 114. Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division, insofar as appealed from, should be reversed, without costs, and the order and judgment of Supreme Court reinstated. View "Yatauro, et al. v. Mangano, et al." on Justia Law

Benito Acevedo was convicted of criminal sale of controlled substance in the third degree and possession of a controlled substance in the third degree and sentenced as a predicate felony offender with a prior violent felony to a prison term of six years and three years of post-release supervision. Dionis Collado was convicted of two counts of second degree robbery and was then adjudged a second violent felony offender and sentenced to concurrent eight-year prison terms. At issue was whether a resentencing sought by a defendant to correct an illegally lenient sentence was effective to temporally resituate the sentence and thus alter the underlying conviction's utility as a predicate for enhanced sentence. The court held that the decisive feature in these cases was that the sentencing errors defendants sought to correct by resentencing were errors in their favor. The court also held that resentence was not a device appropriately employed simply to alter a sentencing date and thereby affect the utility of a conviction as a predicate for the imposition of enhanced punishment. Therefore, the Sparber relief defendants obtained was not effective to avoid the penal consequences of reoffending. Accordingly, the judgment of the Appellate Division was reversed and the order of the Supreme Court reinstated. View "People v. Acevedo; People v. Collado" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted for a 2003 drug transaction and sentenced to prison. On November 25, 2009 defendant filed an application for resentencing under the 2009 Drug Law Reform Act (DLRA), CPL 440.46. On December 3, 2009, before the application had been ruled on, she was released on parole. At issue was whether defendant was eligible for resentencing because she was not presently in custody. The court held that a prisoner who applied for resentencing before being paroled was not barred from obtaining resentencing after her release where the statute's plain language only stated that an offender must be in custody when he or she applied for resentencing but did not require that custody continue until the application was decided. View "People v. Santiago" on Justia Law

Defendants committed class B felonies involving narcotics and were sentenced to indeterminate prison terms. All defendants were subsequently paroled, violated their parole, and were sent back to prison. After the enactment of the 2009 Drug Law Reform Act (DLRA), CPL 440.46, defendants applied for resentencing. At issue was whether the DLRA provided relief to reincarcerated parole violators. The court held that prisoners who have been paroled, and then reincarcerated for violating their parole, were not for that reason barred from seeking relief under the statute where the statute's plain language stated no such exception. View "People v. Paulin; People v. Pratts; People v. Phillips " on Justia Law

Claimants in these four cases were convicted of crimes for which they received indeterminate sentences. A statute required that such a sentence include a period of post-release supervision ("PRS"), but in each claimant's case, the sentencing judge failed to pronounce a PRS term. Claimants were nevertheless subjected to PRS, and in three of the four cases, were imprisoned for a PRS violation. They now seek damages from the State, asserting that they were wrongfully made to undergo supervision and confinement. The court held that all of the claims were without merit where the only error in Jonathan Orellanes' case was by the sentencing judge, which was barred by judicial immunity, and where Farrah Donald, Shakira Eanes, and Ismael Ortiz sued for false imprisonment but failed to plead the essential elements. Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division in each case was affirmed. View "Donald v. State; Eanes v. State; Orellanes v. State; Ortiz v. State" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon, and criminal possession of a controlled substance where defendant was arrested for a shooting death, defendant's gray minivan was subsequently searched, and cocaine was recovered from a compartment behind the ashtray of the front console. After a jury convicted defendant of some of the charges, defendant appealed the Supreme Court's denial of his motion to suppress physical evidence. At issue was whether the Appellate Division erred by upholding the denial of suppression on a basis that the Supreme Court had squarely rejected. The court held that the Appellate Division's decision with respect to the suppression was clearly erroneous under People v. LaFontaine where CPL 470.15(1) precluded that court from affirming denial of suppression on the basis of consent because the trial judge ruled in defendant's favor on the issue. Consequently, the court had to decide whether granting suppression would be harmless with respect to defendant's conviction for the other crimes. The court held that there was no reasonable possibility that the evidence supporting the potentially tainted count, a drug possession crime related to the cocaine discovered, had a spillover effect on the guilty verdicts for weapon possession and assault. Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be modified by remitting to the Supreme Court for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion, and as modified, affirmed. View "The People v. Concepcion" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of weapon possession crimes, reckless endangerment, and menacing and endangering the welfare of a child. At issue was whether there was a conflict of interest where the newly-elected district attorney, who had previously represented defendant, immunized a witness from prosecution. The court held that the prosecutor possessed discretion to decide when to immunize a witness from prosecution and the County Court was a competent authority to confer immunity when expressly requested by the district attorney to do so. Therefore, the district attorney's "permission" did not vest the special prosecutor with any more authority than he already enjoyed. Accordingly, defendant failed to demonstrate actual prejudice or a substantial risk of an abused confidence to warrant vacatur of his conviction. View "The People v. Abrams" on Justia Law

Petitioners, 23 transportation vendors, commenced a CPLR article 78 proceeding to prevent the Department of Education ("DOE") from implementing allegedly illegal bid solicitations related to a school transportation contract. At issue was whether certain specifications in the bid solicitations of the DOE comported with the public bidding laws. The court held that the "Employee Protection Provisions" ("EPPs") contained in the solicitation were subject to heightened scrutiny and held that the DOE had not proven that the EPPs were designed to save the public money, encourage robust competition, or prevent favoritism. The court, however, applied the rational basis review to the remaining disputed bid specifications and held that the DOE's actions regarding pricing of school transportation and discounted payment arrangements were rational business judgments that lie within the DOE's discretion. View "In the Matter of L&M Bus Corp. " on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of second degree manslaughter and first degree reckless endangerment for her role in the events leading to the death of her son. At issue was whether there was sufficient evidence to support her convictions. The court held that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant's conviction for manslaughter in the second degree where defendant knew of the substantial and unjustifiable risk that her boyfriend would injure her son fatally and where the jury was also justified in finding that she consciously disregarded the risk. The court held, however, that the evidence was insufficient to support defendant's conviction of reckless endangerment where evidence that defendant not only knew of, but tried to conceal her boyfriend's abuse of her son, did not prove indifference. Accordingly, the court upheld the conviction of manslaughter and vacated the conviction of reckless endangerment. View "The People v. Lewie" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted for second degree murder, second degree assault, and second degree weapon possession in connection with a shooting. Defendant had also been arrested for a drug crime in Manhattan where he was represented by counsel for the drug charge. Counsel for his drug charge told detectives that defendant "was represented by counsel and that they should not question him." In defendant's view, if counsel made this assertion and gave this direction, the right to counsel had attached, and the statements subsequently given by defendant in the absence of counsel must be suppressed even though counsel was not, in fact, representing defendant in the murder case. Thus, at issue was whether the appellate court erred in denying defendant's motion to suppress inculpatory statements that he made to the police, after defendant was arraigned and released on his own recognizance for the drug charge and the detective arrested him for the "homicide," on the ground that they were obtained in violation of his right to counsel. The court concluded that it had never held that an attorney could unilaterally create an attorney-client relationship in a criminal proceeding in this fashion, and declined to do so now. The court also concluded that counsel made no statements during the arraignment on the drug crime even arguably related to the homicide and there was no ambiguity about whether defendant could have intended to invoke his right to counsel before making the inculpatory statements. Therefore, the court affirmed the order of the appellate court and held that nothing about defendant's conduct suggested that he meant to invoke his right to counsel before he made the statements and counsel had not already conspicuously represented defendant in an aspect of the homicide matter, causing the indelible right to attach. View "The People v. Pacquette" on Justia Law