People v. Clarke

• Decision Date: 06 May 1999
• Citation: 690 N.Y.S.2d 501,93 N.Y.2d 904,712 N.E.2d 668
• Parties: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v. IAN CLARKE, Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

93 N.Y.2d 904

712 N.E.2d 668

690 N.Y.S.2d 501

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v.IAN CLARKE, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of the State of New York.

Argued March 25, 1999.

Decided May 6, 1999.

Lynn W. L. Fahey,New York City, for appellant.

Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney of Kings County, Brooklyn (Diane R. Eisner and Roseann B. Mackechnie of counsel), for respondent.

Before: Chief Judge KAYE and Judges BELLACOSA, LEVINE, CIPARICK, WESLEY and ROSENBLATT concur; Judge SMITH taking no part.

OPINION OF THE COURTMEMORANDUM.

The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.Defendant was convicted on a plea of guilty, the Appellate Division affirmed, and a Judge of this Court granted leave to appeal.The issue is whether defendant's claim, challenging the validity of the guilty plea, must be preserved before the trial court.Defendant argues that an ambiguous comment by the trial court, at the tail-end of the guilty plea proceeding and colloquy, rises to the level of a "mode of proceedings" concern.If so, he further urges, it was not necessary to preserve this challenge in the customarily required way.

We conclude that the challenge to the validity of the plea in this case had to be preserved and is not a "mode of proceedings" matter.The utterance, upon which defendant's claims hinge, was at most a "mere mistake" of language by the court(compare, People v Minaya,54 NY2d 360, 365, cert denied455 US 1024).The unassailable understanding at the plea proceeding by all participants as to what was functionally taking place, confirmed by their positions at sentencing, contradicts defendant's substantive reformulation, first advanced as an argument before the Appellate Division.The record convincingly demonstrates the trial...