D'Alessandro v. City of N.Y.
| Decision Date | 22 November 2016 |
| Docket Number | 13-CV-930 (SLT) |
| Parties | Giuseppe D'Alessandro, Plaintiff, v. City of New York et al., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York |
After serving fourteen and a half years of a fifteen year sentence for kidnapping, Giuseppe D'Alessandro's conviction was overturned by the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department on statutory speedy trial grounds. D'Alessandro commenced this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that he was wrongfully convicted as a result of various deprivations of his constitutional rights by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, former District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, former Assistant District Attorney Brenda Morris, New York Police Department Detective Anthony Vazquez, and the City of New York (the "City"). Currently before the Court are motions by the City on behalf of itself and Detective Vazquez and by the defendants, the District Attorney's Office on behalf of defendants Morgenthau and Morris (together the "DA Defendants") to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim, and a Federal Rules of Civil Procedural Rule 11 motion for sanctions by the City against D'Alessandro's counsel. For the following reasons, all of D'Alessandro's claims are dismissed and the City's motion for sanctions is denied.
Under the now well-established Twombly standard, a complaint should be dismissed only if it does not contain enough allegations of fact to state a claim for relief that is "plausible on its face." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). "A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). "While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (alteration, citations, and internal quotation marks omitted). While Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 "marks a notable and generous departure from the hyper-technical, code-pleading regime of a prior era, ... it does not unlock the doors of discovery for a plaintiff armed with nothing more than conclusions." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678-79. The Supreme Court has clarified that Twombly sets out a two-pronged approach for district courts considering motions to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Id. District courts should first "identify[ ] pleadings that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth," and second, if a complaint contains "well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief." Id. at 679. The Court is generally limited to the "facts stated in the complaint or documents attached to the complaint as exhibits or incorporated by reference." Nechis v. Oxford Health Plans, Inc., 421 F.3d 96, 100 (2d Cir. 2005). It may also consider "matters of which judicial notice may be taken, or ... documents either in plaintiff[']s[] possession or of which plaintiff[] had knowledge and relied on in bringing suit." Brass v. Am. Film Technologies, Inc., 987 F.2d 142, 150 (2d Cir. 1993) (citation omitted); Chambers v. Time Warner, Inc., 282 F.3d 147, 153 (2d Cir. 2002).
With this standard in mind, the following facts, which are drawn from D'Alessandro's amended complaint, are deemed true for purposes of the motions to dismiss.
In 1989, D'Alessandro worked as a manager of a restaurant. (Compl. ¶ 13.) After a "heated argument" with an employee suspected of stealing $3,000 from the restaurant, the employee accused D'Alessandro of confining him to the restaurant's basement for over twelve hours and seeking return of the $3,000. (Id.) D'Alessandro denied that he ever confined the employee to the basement. (Id.)
In August 1989, D'Alessandro was arrested on charges of kidnapping and prosecuted by the New York County District Attorney's Office, led, at the time, by Defendant Morgenthau. (Compl. ¶¶ 13-14.) In October 1989, Assistant District Attorney Brenda Morris ("ADA Morris"), who was assigned to prosecute the case, presented the case to the grand jury. (Id.) On November 3, 1989, ADA Morris "entered into the court files that a true bill was returned, indicting Plaintiff for kidnapping in the second degree and related offenses," although "a signed copy of the indictment was never filed with the court and does not exist anywhere in the Queens1 [sic] County court system or the District Attorney's office." (Compl. ¶ 14.) D'Alessandro alleges that "[t]here is no, and never was any, formal evidence of a true bill voted against D'Alessandro in 1989." (Id.)
The prosecution made a plea offer to D'Alessandro, which provided that D'Alessandro would receive only probation in exchange for a plea of guilty, however D'Alessandro,maintaining his innocence, rejected the offer. (Compl. ¶ 15.) ADA Morris resubmitted the case to a new grand jury and obtained a superseding indictment which included a count of kidnapping in the first degree - a charge that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years to life. (Id.)
D'Alessandro's counsel moved, in a pre-trial motion dated September 13, 1990, to dismiss the superseding indictment on the grounds that statutory speedy trial time pursuant to New York Criminal Procedure Law ("CPL") § 30.30 had run out. (Compl. ¶ 16.) D'Alessandro argued that, among other things, all of the time from arrest to trial should be charged to the People because they never produced grand jury minutes. The trial court denied the motion in a January 7, 1991 decision, in part relying on a representation from ADA Morris that the 196 day delay in providing the grand jury minutes to D'Alessandro's counsel was excludable. (Compl. ¶¶ 16-17.) In fact, eight months earlier, on May 8, 1990, the New York Court Appeals had decided the case of People v. McKenna, in which it held that "the People's [delay in] provid[ing] the Grand Jury minutes ... is a delay that should be counted against them in determining whether their [statutory speedy trial] obligation[s] under CPL 30.30 has been satisfied." 76 N.Y.2d 59, 66 (1990).
On June 25, 1991, a guilty verdict was entered in New York State Supreme Court, County of New York, following a jury trial. (Compl. ¶ 18.) However, the trial court granted D'Alessandro's motion pursuant to CPL § 330.30, to set aside the verdict, on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct in the summation. (Id.)
The District Attorney's Office appealed, and on December 22, 1993, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, reversed the trial court and reinstated thejury's verdict. People v. D'Alessandro, 184 A.D.2d 114, 591 N.Y.S.2d 1001 (App. Div. 1st Dep't 1992). The First Department explained that the prosecutor "on occasion did exceed the bounds of legitimate fair comment as when, for example, she suggested that a witness might be exposing himself to danger by testifying, appealed to the jurors' generalized fear of crime, and their sympathies, and vouched for the credibility of the People's witnesses." Id. (citations omitted). However, the Appellate Division concluded that the summation "was within the range of acceptability, and it cannot be reasonably found that [the prosecutor] tried to depict defendant as a mobster who merited punishment for his general character and intimidation of witnesses rather than for the specific crimes with which he was charged." Id. Because the First Department found the proof of guilt "overwhelming," it concluded that any misconduct was harmless and reversed the trial court's order granting the motion to vacate the conviction. Id.
On April 20, 1993, D'Alessandro was sentenced to the minimum of fifteen years in prison. (Compl. ¶ 19.) According to D'Alessandro, the sentencing judge "expressed its belief that the sentence was overly harsh, but that it was constrained by the statutory mandatory minimum sentence." (Id.)
On August 22, 1996, the Appellate Division affirmed D'Alessandro's conviction on direct appeal, finding that the evidence was "overwhelming," any prosecutorial misconduct was harmless error, and the jury's determination as to fact and credibility were supported by the record. People v. D'Alessandro, 230 A.D.2d 656, 656-57 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep't 1996). The Appellate Division further found that D'Alessandro's challenges to the jury instructions were unpreserved, and that the:
available record indicates that defendant received the effective assistance of counsel, trial counsel having made appropriate pre-trial, trial and post-trial motions and applications, vigorously cross-examined the People's witness and presented witnesses in support of the defense position that there had been no abduction orrestraint of the complainant, and interposed numerous objections to summation comments by the prosecutor. Trial counsel's failure to object to the jury charge on kidnaping in the first degree, which in any event does not constitute reversible error in the circumstances, does not render trial counsel's representation less than meaningful.
Id. The New York Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal on November 29, 1996. People v. D'Alessandro, 89 N.Y.2d 863 (1996).
D'Alessandro filed a pro se petition for a writ of error coram nobis asserting ineffective assistance of appellate counsel in connection with D'Alessandro's statutory speedy trial rights in August 1999, which the Appellate Division denied on May...
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