People v. Asaro

• Decision Date: 01 July 1968
• Citation: 22 N.Y.2d 842,293 N.Y.S.2d 106
• Parties: , 239 N.E.2d 734 PEOPLE, etc., Respondent, v. Joseph ASARO, Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 106

293 N.Y.S.2d 106

22 N.Y.2d 842, 239 N.E.2d 734

PEOPLE, etc., Respondent, v. Joseph ASARO, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 1, 1968.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, 29 A.D.2d 679, 286 N.Y.S.2d 872.

Joseph E. Brill, New York City, for defendant-movant-appellant Joseph asaro.

Aaron E. Koota, Brooklyn (Harold M. Brown, Brooklyn, of counsel), for respondents.

Defendant, who had been convicted of first degree robbery, and who had been sentenced to imprisonment of ten to thirty years, brought coram nobis proceeding.

The Supreme Court, Kings County, Samuel S. Leibowitz, J., entered an order denying, without a hearing, the motion for writ of error coram nobis.

The Appellate Division entered an order January 22, 1968 which affirmed the order. The Appellate Division held that in its opinion the documentary evidence justified the conclusion that defendant was not entitled to a hearing on his alleged claim of errors and denial of constitutional rights at the trial and sentencing, and that the record was barren of any of the proceedings that occurred at the time of the apprehension and incarceration of defendant for parole violation, and that the decision therefore was without prejudice to the right of defendant to seek whatever legal relief, if any, he deemed appropriate under recent decision of United States Supreme Court.

The defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals by permission of a Justice of the Appellate Division. The defendant contended in the Court of Appeals that coram nobis hearings should have been granted to determine whether defendant was denied his constitutional right of counsel, and that a coram nobis hearing should have been granted on the ground of the contamination of the 1944 sentencing record which made it practically impossible for defendant to obtain appellate consideration of his conviction in accordance with equal protection of the laws and due process of law under the state and federal constitutions, and that coram nobis relief should have been granted and the 1944 sentence vacated because that sentence was the product of that unconstitutional abdication of the judicial function of the sentencing judge who allegedly sacrificed his judicial objectivity to subjective personal emotions of vindictiveness against the defendant, and that, in the review of the denial of counsel, a coram nobis hearing should have been granted to determine whether defendant was given the right...