People v. Ranghelle

Decision Date19 December 1986
Parties, 503 N.E.2d 1011 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Patsy RANGHELLE, Also Known as Joseph Ranghelle, Appellant. The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. John BUSTER, Appellant.
CourtNew York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Jennifer S. Brand and Philip L. Weinstein, New York City, for appellant in the first above-entitled action.

Elizabeth Holtzman, Dist. Atty., Brooklyn, (Richard J. Cutler, New York City, Barbara D. Underwood and Peter A. Weinstein, Brooklyn, of counsel), for respondent in the first above-entitled action.

Beverly Van Ness and Philip L. Weinstein, New York City, for appellant in the second above-entitled action.

Robert M. Morgenthau, Dist. Atty. (Mark Cammack and Mark Dwyer, New York City, of counsel), for respondent in the second above-entitled action.

OPINION OF THE COURT

SIMONS, Judge.

These two appeals present, in different contexts, various problems involving the application of the Rosario rule (see, People v. Rosario, 9 N.Y.2d 286, 213 N.Y.S.2d 448, 173 N.E.2d 881, rearg. denied 9 N.Y.2d 908, 216 N.Y.S.2d 1025, 176 N.E.2d 111, cert. denied 368 U.S. 866, 82 S.Ct. 117, 7 L.Ed.2d 64, rearg. denied 14 N.Y.2d 876, 252 N.Y.S.2d 1027, 200 N.E.2d 784, rearg. denied 15 N.Y.2d 765, 257 N.Y.S.2d 1027, 205 N.E.2d 538; see also, CPL 240.45). That rule requires generally that the People provide defense counsel with all pretrial statements of prosecution witnesses. The questions raised by these prosecutions include the nature of Rosario material; the obligation of the People to produce it even though it is available to the defense by subpoena; whether the People may be excused because of their good faith in failing to deliver such material; and whether the People's omissions in these cases constitute a failure to produce, and thus are not subject to harmless error analysis, or merely a delay which does not require reversal unless it caused substantial prejudice to the defendant (see, People v. Perez, 65 N.Y.2d 154, 159, 490 N.Y.S.2d 747, 480 N.E.2d 361). For reasons hereafter stated, both judgments must be reversed.

People v. Ranghelle

Defendant Patsy Ranghelle appeals from an order of the Appellate Term affirming a judgment convicting him of obstruction of governmental administration, second degree; menacing and harassment. The Appellate Term affirmed the judgment, notwithstanding the People's failure to timely provide Rosario material to defendant, finding that the failure was not deliberate and did not deprive defendant of a fair trial.

The convictions arose from an incident which occurred when complainant Doreen Nazario, a New York City Department of Sanitation enforcement agent, attempted to serve defendant with a summons for violating city codes in the repair of his Brooklyn apartment building. Nazario claimed that defendant threw a piece of wood at her and threatened to blow off her head with a nearby rifle. Following this incident, Nazario filed charges in the city's 77th police precinct. Later that day, after an alleged confrontation between Department of Sanitation Supervisor Harry De Vito and defendant outside a Department of Sanitation garage, De Vito filed a second complaint against defendant in the 72nd police precinct. The two complaints were filed at different precincts because proper procedure required that complaint reports be filed in the in which the incident occurred, and the two incidents involving defendant had occurred in different precincts. The latter complaint, in the 72nd precinct, resulted in a second harassment count against defendant which was subsequently dismissed after trial.

De Vito's complaint report for this second incident was included in the People's production of Rosario material prior to trial. The Nazario complaint report filed with the 77th police precinct and detailing her account of the first incident was not. Thus, during his cross-examination of Nazario, defense counsel moved for production of her report. The prosecutor stated that it was not in the People's possession and that Officer Lloyd, another police officer scheduled to testify later in the trial, would bring it with her when she appeared. The Trial Judge refused to adjourn the trial until the report was produced, ruling that defense counsel could recall the complainant for further cross-examination after receipt of the report, if necessary. When Officer Lloyd appeared, however, she did not have the report. Defense counsel did not make any motion directed at the failure to produce the report at that time, but, at the close of the People's case, he moved to dismiss the complaint because the People had failed to comply with the requirements of the Rosario rule. The prosecutor argued that she had not violated the rule because the report was not in the People's possession, that she had made every effort to produce it and that Officer Lloyd's failure to recognize it was understandable because the report in the 77th precinct identified defendant by another name. The Trial Judge denied defendant's motion, finding that the failure to produce did not appear to be "terribly prejudicial in any way". Both sides rested their case and the jury was instructed that the evidence was closed. The report was subsequently produced before summations started. It was brief, and not inconsistent with the witnesses' testimony, but did omit some details of the incident about which complainant had testified. After seeing the report, defense counsel renewed his motion to dismiss the complaint and the Trial Judge again denied the motion, reasoning that inasmuch as the report was not inconsistent with Ms. Nazario's testimony defendant had not been prejudiced in cross-examining her. Nevertheless, the court offered defendant the opportunity to recall Nazario for further cross-examination. Counsel declined the offer.

People v. Buster

Defendant John Buster appeals from an order of the Appellate Division, First Department, 110 A.D.2d 1093, 488 N.Y.S.2d 942, that affirmed, without opinion, the judgment convicting him of one count of robbery, first degree, and two counts of robbery, second degree. All three charges stemmed from a single incident during which Aquilino Benitez, a student attending Columbia University, was robbed by two men in the elevator of his apartment building. At trial, Benitez was the chief witness for the prosecution. He testified that on the day in question two men entered the elevator with him at the ground floor, stopped it at the sixth floor, and then robbed him of jewelry and money after displaying a gun and a knife. Although Benitez described the event in detail, he gave no description of the robbers beyond differentiating between them as "older" and "younger". Benitez made an in-court identification of defendant and his codefendant, and he testified to his prior identification of the two men during separate lineups at the police station.

The defense theory was misidentification. Aware that incident reports completed by a police officer and a Housing Authority detective contained descriptions of the robbers obtained from Benitez that varied from the physical attributes of defendant and his codefendant, and assuming that these incident reports constituted all the Rosario material to which the defendant was entitled, defense counsel contented himself with eliciting a detailed description of the two robbers from Benitez. He later called the police officer and the Housing Authority detective, as witnesses for defendant, and questioned them regarding the descriptions of the robbers contained in their incident reports in an attempt to impeach Benitez's testimonial descriptions by showing the inconsistent descriptions contained in the incident reports.

On cross-examination and over defense counsel's repeated objections and requests for a sidebar, the prosecutor was permitted to elicit testimony that both officers had kept memo books containing notes of their investigation of the Benitez complaint. In response to the prosecutor's questions as he read from the memo books, both witnesses acknowledged that they made the notes while interviewing Benitez shortly after the robbery and by their testimony they confirmed that Benitez's description of the robbers at trial and his description of them made during their investigation was consistent. The discrepancies in the incident reports, they testified, were due to errors in their own transcription of Benitez's statements from the memo books to the incident reports. Apparently, the books were never physically delivered to defendant's counsel before all parties had rested and the evidence was closed. Defense counsel then moved for a mistrial and the Trial Judge belatedly recognized that the memo books constituted Rosario material that had not been provided to defendant. Nonetheless, she denied defendant's motion and instead instructed the jury to disregard all testimony concerning the memo book entries. Defendant was subsequently convicted of all three charges, and the judgment was affirmed by the Appellate Division.

In People v. Rosario, we held that "a right sense of justice" entitles a defendant to inspect the prior statements of a prosecution witness, prior to cross-examination, whether or not his statements vary from his testimony on the stand (People v. Rosario, 9 N.Y.2d 286, 289, 213 N.Y.S.2d 448, 173 N.E.2d 881, supra ). Recognizing that even statements which appear to be harmonious with trial testimony may nevertheless be valuable, we required that "[a]s long as the statement relates to the subject matter of the witness' testimony and contains nothing that must be kept confidential, defense counsel should be allowed to determine for themselves the use to be made of it on cross-examination" (id.).

We have periodically refined the rule to ensure that a defendant "receives the full benefit of a [prosecution] witness' statements for impeachment purposes" (People v. Poole, 48...

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    ...statement of a witness who has been called at trial constitutes per se error requiring a new trial. People v. Ranghelle, 69 N.Y.2d 56, 511 N.Y.S.2d 580, 503 N.E.2d 1011,1016 (1986). Claims of ineffective assistance when dealing with Rosario material typically contend that counsel neglected ......
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    ...material "constitutes per se error requiring that the conviction be reversed and a new trial ordered." People v. Ranghelle, 69 N.Y.2d 56, 63, 511 N.Y.S.2d 580, 585, 503 N.E.2d 1011 (1986) (citation omitted). "The reasoning that spawned the Rosario rule [requiring such statements to be turne......
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    ... ... Rosario, supra, 9 N.Y.2d at 289, 213 N.Y.S.2d 448, 173 N.E.2d 881; see, People v. Ranghelle, 69 N.Y.2d 56, 62, 511 N.Y.S.2d 580, 503 N.E.2d 1011; People v. Perez, 65 N.Y.2d 154, 158, 490 N.Y.S.2d 747, 480 N.E.2d 361). As we stated in People v.Perez, supra, at 158, 490 N.Y.S.2d 747, 480 N.E.2d 361, "such statements are valuable not only as a source of contradictions, and * * * no one is ... ...
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  • Policing the police: the role of the courts and the prosecution.
    • United States
    • Fordham Urban Law Journal Vol. 32 No. 2, March 2005
    • March 1, 2005
    ...Law Enforcement Council, 1998 Legislative Priorities 37 (1998). (196.) N.Y. CRIM. PROC. LAW [subsection] 240.44, 240.45 (McKinney 2005); 503 N.E.2d 1011 (N.Y. 1986); see Mark M. Baker, The 'Rosario' Per Se Rule: Rest in Peace, N.Y. L.J., Mar. 14, 2001, at 1 (automatic reversal was the remed......

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